Quote:

agami wrote: @Official_Amiga Over the past decade, and especially over the past couple of years, what does it even mean to the post-Amiga community to be "Official" Amiga OS? Not in legal terms, but in practical terms.

It's a typo.

I believe our friends meant to write "OFFICINAL Amiga".

That would make a lot of sense,
in the context of dealing with Qbit, Newlight, BigD...



/MEGA!

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@MEGA_RJ_MICAL

Quote:

MEGA_RJ_MICAL wrote: It's a typo. I believe our friends meant to write "OFFICINAL Amiga". That would make a lot of sense, in the context of dealing with Qbit, Newlight, BigD... /MEGA!

Over the counter, or does one need an Rx for that?

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@agami

4 Million? Interesting. I also read somewhere in a interview that one of Hyperion claimed that they invested somewhere around 2.5 Million dollar in amigaos (including lawsuits of course). So asking 4 million sounds not unrealistic from my point of view. But that is not how the value of a product is defined. Nobody is interested what you "might" have invested in the past but what you can earn with it in future, And of course what investments are needed to get it in a state to sell it again. There AmigaOS is not worth million, in fact it is not much worth then (expecially if it looses "the name" in the lawsuit against Cloanto).

Last edited by OlafS25 on 28-Oct-2022 at 12:02 PM.

@OlafS25

I’d say OS4 would benefit from getting rid of “the name” and everything people associate with that, which it can never live up to. Also a good opportunity to get rid of old legacy design and misfeatures.

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@kolla

but what is left without the heritage? A oldfashioned OS with limited software base running on obscure hardware

@OlafS25

The “heritage” is what’s been preventing real progress for a quarter of a century now. There was a time MorphOS showed some promise, but then they got stuck in the heritage as well.

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@kolla

we will see how MorphOS will be after ISA change. In any case the differences between a modern OS and f.e. AmigaOS is so big that it makes not much sense to me to "modernize" it. My own preferred option is known so I do not need to repeat it

@kolla

Ax Runtime with an Amiga UX-alike desktop and integrated UAE to "transparently" launch 68K executables on a modern system would definitely be a modernisation and have 64 bit/SMP out of the box. However, I just don't think it appeals to most users. Happy to be proven wrong.

Last edited by Karlos on 28-Oct-2022 at 02:32 PM.

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@Karlos

most users is depending on definition

current users propably no

but there are much more users ourside

@OlafS25

What does such a solution offer to an "outsider" that any existing Linux distribution does not?

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@matthey

Quote:

o Retro Games Ltd. released THEA500 Mini which was far up on Amazon's UK top computer products sales list despite having no Amiga branding, no functional case, no AmigaOS and not being as cheap as originally planned using a custom Amiga ASIC. Michele Battilana, who may have inside knowledge of sales, talks about a more niche market Amiga Maxi product selling hundreds of thousands of units. Also, Michele claims to have signed over 20 Amiga license agreements.

FYI, THEA500 Mini used AllWinner H6 SoC with quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 and ARM Mali-T720 MP2 GPU (OpenGL ES3 and DirectX 11).

Orange Pi 3 LTS also uses Allwinner H6 SoC.

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@Hammer

Yeah I wonder where he got 'custom Amiga ASIC' from?! It would have been a mammoth undertaking without Arm and AmiBerry!

Last edited by BigD on 28-Oct-2022 at 06:16 PM.

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Hammer Quote:

FYI, THEA500 Mini used AllWinner H6 SoC with quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 and ARM Mali-T720 MP2 GPU (OpenGL ES3 and DirectX 11). Orange Pi 3 LTS also uses Allwinner H6 SoC.

Yes, all the same ARM Cortex-A53 in-order CPU cores as the RPi 3. It's likely the most popular 32/64 bit CPU core in the world because in-order CPU cores are significantly smaller (area, transistors, cost) than OoO CPU cores and the higher performance successors are bigger. RISC in-order CPUs are notoriously poor performance and difficult to schedule instructions for but there isn't much competition (RISC-V has weaker performance than ARM and x86-64 is too big and hot for embedded use). The in-order 68060 is a dream to use and schedule code for in comparison and I believe it could match integer performance at the same clock rate with minimal upgrades. The 68k has the code density to compete with Thumb2 but has better performance traits.

BigD Quote:

Yeah I wonder where he got 'custom Amiga ASIC' from?! It would have been a mammoth undertaking without Arm and AmiBerry!

https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/08/a500-mini-amiga-console-interview-thats-our-passion-for-commodore-16427365/ Quote:

GC: How difficult was this to do on a technical level, because I’m sure I’ve heard that the Amiga is actually quite hard to emulate. Have you got the original chip in there or is this all emulated? DM: I’ll turn the clock back again to 2004. We managed to rebuild the entire chipset of a C64 on one chip. And when I say we, I mean there’s a genius called Jeri Ellsworth who is a lone woman who lives out in Portland, Oregon who’s an absolute genius. And I spent quite a lot of time with her. We redesigned how we wanted the chip to work, and she got it running on one chip; that is utterly unique for one person to be able to do, the job she did is normally the job of an entire fabrication factory. We weren’t able to replicate that for the Amiga, Jeri’s off doing other marvellous things in AR and VR. We looked at doing it again but to create a bespoke solution for it would’ve been prohibitively expensive, so it is an emulation.

The Amiga on a Chip Project - Too bad it was canceled
Jeri Ellsworth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uaDzF99a80 Quote:

So I hooked this into an Amiga 500 and started removing the chips from the Amiga 500 and replacing them and sticking them in this FPGA to get ready for making the full custom ASIC. ... In fact, it was much easier to reverse engineer the Amiga, even having the schematics that helped a lot, but the Amiga was a far more straight forward design than the original C64 because I didn't have to do as many naughty tricks to make things work.

Retro Games Ltd. wanted to do a custom SoC ASIC for THEA500/Amiga which is a cost reduction. They are a tiny business and with too many variables (no AmigaOS, no Amiga branding) they went with cheap emulation instead. The cost reduction from using an ASIC could have easily resulted in several times the number of THEA500 Minis being sold. You would like to hit 500,000 units sold for mass production which is entirely possible if THEA500 Mini was half the cost. I would like to see a more advanced Amiga Maxi than what they were originally planning for THEA500 Mini. Michele Battilana was asked about the Amiga Maxi at the Amiga37.

Commodore Amiga - Live from Amiga37 (1:01) https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1625889488 Quote:

Amiga Bill: But speaking of hardware, I know you probably can't say but a lot of people have been talking how much they love the Amiga 500 Mini and they want to know about a Maxi. Is there any chance of a Maxi in the Future? Michele Battilana: What do you want a Maxi without the operating system? Amiga Bill: No. Michele Battilana: So, there needs to be a solution that meets also the constraints, which right now, so you know, Cloanto and Amiga and the Amiga parties took prudent approach. We preferred to wait until the legal issue has clarity. Also, others think they should jump faster and risk. We are more risk adverse. I can not speak for our partners. I think the Mini is doing very well now. It's a form factor, a price point and has this power flow effect that appeals to the masses. A Maxi might be more of a niche product which certainly now you have challenges like pandemic. Logistics like a container used to cost $1,000 now its $20,000. Chip constraints, chips not being available and costing ten times as much. These devices are proof that you can with a nice group deliver hardware in spite of all of this and deliver hardware in quantities than normal Amiga hobby manufacturing can not reach with their scale. Here we can talk about hundreds of thousands of units, sure. An Amiga Maxi with hundreds of thousands of units would be cool but it should be legally available maybe with an operating system and not just games.

There, everything I've posted multiple times before together in one post. Do we understand what we miss(ed)? Actually, we were likely close to viable ASIC Amiga recreation hardware on other occasions including the BoXeR and Natami projects. There are multiple advanced FPGA Amiga chipset recreations that could be used. The tough part is the CPU and the road blocks. Some people would rather have their hobby PPC hardware recreations using PC hardware (Trevor), emulation (half the Amiga community that thinks an ASIC would cost too much) or a pile of cash and complete control of everything (Ben) instead. The Amiga is running out of opportunities. Another lost decade and the Amiga legacy is sealed.

Last edited by matthey on 28-Oct-2022 at 08:25 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: The Amiga is running out of opportunities. Another lost decade and the Amiga legacy is sealed.

Why care about “outsiders” - satisfy the insiders first! All this focus on attracting “outsiders” is what why I don’t use Linux as desktop anymore.

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@kolla

Yep… every one is avoiding Commodore and Amiga names, thats how it is now.

“The C64”,"The A500", “Vampire”, “AROS”, “MorphOS”, “AmiKIT”, the list goes on..

Why pay for a "unkown" name (the kids of today don't know what a Amiga computer is), people who know what it is already know,
and people who don’t know, don't care.

Name branding / name tax, who wants to pay for that, is so small market like we have here.
it cuts all margins.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 28-Oct-2022 at 11:51 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 28-Oct-2022 at 11:35 PM.

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@matthey

OK. maybe a custom ASIC could have brought costs down but no one with the skills was available. AmiBerry IS a great solution and it's sad the coder will never get rich off from the work he did. Yes, the implementation from RGL isn't ideal but it's functional and Pandory/AMiNIMiga take up the slack IMHO. I was playing The Settlers tonight and although there is a bug on Pandory V2 at present with the game (I overcome it by starting it by loading a Save State) it is still great emulation and with 2-player mouse support. Deluxe Paint V works great on AMiNIMiga V200. I own real 68k Amigas but for 99% of people who don't need serial or parallel functionalty, I'd recommend THEA500 Mini.

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@Hypex

As of April 2022, TheA500Mini has sold 186,000 units (ref 1).

TheA500Mini can support AGA, virtual 68040 CPU can up to 268 MIPS and 187 MFLOPS backed by quad-core ARM Cortex A53 @ 1.8 GHz (ref 2).

TheA500Mini has the potential surplus A600 and A1200 install base.

TheA500Mini's GPU is ARM Mali-T720 MP2 complies with OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.1, and DirectX11 feature set hardware.

TheA500Mini's 186,000 units sale blows away PowerPC neo-Amigas and Apollo-Core's Vampires.

TheA500Mini substantially increased AGA and super-68040 with up to 268 MIPS Amiga userbase.

ARM is Amiga's future and it should return to "For the Masses Not the Classes".

Reference
1. https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/08/a500-mini-amiga-console-interview-thats-our-passion-for-commodore-16427365/


2. https://www.retro32.com/a500-mini/190420224064-the-ultimate-a500-mini-faq-usb-whdload-workbench-adf-guide

Last edited by Hammer on 29-Oct-2022 at 12:54 AM.

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@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: Yes, all the same ARM Cortex-A53 in-order CPU cores as the RPi 3. It's likely the most popular 32/64 bit CPU core in the world because in-order CPU cores are significantly smaller (area, transistors, cost) than OoO CPU cores and the higher performance successors are bigger. RISC in-order CPUs are notoriously poor performance and difficult to schedule instructions for but there isn't much competition (RISC-V has weaker performance than ARM and x86-64 is too big and hot for embedded use). The in-order 68060 is a dream to use and schedule code for in comparison and I believe it could match integer performance at the same clock rate with minimal upgrades. The 68k has the code density to compete with Thumb2 but has better performance traits.

Performance is IPC x clock speed, not just IPC. Attendable clock speed is part of the chip's implementation.

FYI, as of April 2022, TheA500Mini has sold 186,000 units.

Meanwhile, Edmundson revealed shipments for the Steam Deck have surpassed one million units (ref 2)


At the 28 nm process node,

NVIDIA's ARM Cortex-A15 (three ARMv7 instructions issue, out-of-order) has 1.62 mm2.

AMD Jaguar (dual fused X86-64 instructions issue, out-of-order) core has 3.1 mm2.

VS

From TSMC 20 nm process node via MediaTek Helio X20, each ARM Cortex A53 (dual ARMv8 instructions issue, in-order) core is 5.41 mm2 (ref 1)

From TSMC 40 nm process node, the AMD BobCat core has 4.9 mm.

ARM Cortex A53 has superior availability when compared to AMD's EoL Jaguar and EoL Bobcat.

ARM Cortex A53 has the performance of Cortex A9 with 64-bit, SIMD NEON, and Ghz clock speed.


SteamDeck's Van Gogh APU, PCB, and cooling solution can fit inside an Amiga 600 case btw.


Reference
1. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/arm_holdings/microarchitectures/cortex-a53

2. https://www.vgchartz.com/article/455068/report-steam-deck-ships-over-1-million-units
"They have crossed over a million, and they're still processing back orders," said Edmundson.

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Last edited by Hammer on 29-Oct-2022 at 01:09 AM.

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PADDING

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