@matthey

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MorphOS 4 likely only has a few thousand users which is not enough to attract attention. The PPC architecture being dead and PPC Mac hardware getting old make it less attractive now.

I doubt there are that many (although I'm not sure what MorphOS "4" is).
Aeon X5000 support was a nice addition, as its new hardware.
Although our older PowerMac G5s outperform it in several areas.

As to whether the PPC is dead, since PPC code runs unaltered on Power9 I'd beg to differ.

While MorphOS is supposed to move to X64, I'd love to see the initial NG done on Power.
Something like a Raptor Engineering Blackbird could run concurrent sessions of our legacy OS, our NG OS (and for that matter QEMU emulations of the X5000 for OS4 and X64 systems).

Don't get me wrong, mainstream I still like the Ryzen 3000 and AMD graphics (either Posideon or Vega).

But Power9 is pretty cool, especially the hardware hypervisor (a component since Power 4) wich only uses about 2% of the cpu's capability, versus about 20% for a software hypervisor implemented on X64.

So...for VMs, Power has it all over X64.

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JimIgou wrote: I doubt there are that many (although I'm not sure what MorphOS "4" is). Aeon X5000 support was a nice addition, as its new hardware. Although our older PowerMac G5s outperform it in several areas.

PPC Mac hardware is cheap so the biggest obstacles to MorphOS acceptance are the high price of the OS and deficiencies with MorphOS. AmigaOS 4 has most of the same deficiencies and a much higher initial price for hardware. AmigaOS 4 had a chance to proliferate on affordable PPC PS3 hardware but chose the high margin obscure niche market instead. Either way, neither MorphOS nor AmigaOS 4 gained large enough markets to be successful, especially at attracting developer support.

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As to whether the PPC is dead, since PPC code runs unaltered on Power9 I'd beg to differ.

PPC is not a light weight architecture and POWER adds more fat. POWER can't target embedded devices which are replacing personal computers today. That leaves high end servers as the only growth market for POWER. Everything else is headed to a smaller footprint and better energy efficient. POWER CPUs are very expensive to design and I believe at risk of dying too. IBM opening up POWER more and trying to lower entry level prices are signs of the stress.

High performance CPUs (like POWER) cost hundreds of millions of dollars to design and produce.
Mid performance CPUs cost tens of millions dollars to design and produce.
Low performance CPUs cost millions of dollars to design and produce (or less using older fabs).

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While MorphOS is supposed to move to X64, I'd love to see the initial NG done on Power. Something like a Raptor Engineering Blackbird could run concurrent sessions of our legacy OS, our NG OS (and for that matter QEMU emulations of the X5000 for OS4 and X64 systems). Don't get me wrong, mainstream I still like the Ryzen 3000 and AMD graphics (either Posideon or Vega). But Power9 is pretty cool, especially the hardware hypervisor (a component since Power 4) wich only uses about 2% of the cpu's capability, versus about 20% for a software hypervisor implemented on X64. So...for VMs, Power has it all over X64.

I wonder how IBM improved the hypervisor efficiency. It is difficult to make two consecutive MMU lookups efficient. POWER does have very efficient threading which is necessary because they have lower single core performance than x86_64. Does that have something to do with the better hypervisor efficiency? Can you link to articles on the subject?

@matthey

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AmigaOS 4 had a chance to proliferate on affordable PPC PS3 hardware

Let's be real about this. It didn't.

@NoCache

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@Everyone Hi I'm not so experienced with porting, but I will try to look at it... actually, I already started :) Now I have problem with porting scons, there is no GNU makefile for Godot so I will probably need to build it manually or whatever... I will keep You informed

Well done! Hope you enjoy the process, ask as many questions as you need to. Those of us that work on this kind of thing wil be happy to give help and advice...

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