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News   News : AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
   posted by Mikey_C on 8-Jun-2004 21:34:48 (46877 reads)
By Hans-Jörg Frieden, Hyperion Entertainment

With the Developer Pre-release finally out, the time is right for a status report on the current state of AmigaOS 4.0. The huge amount of work invested into the project by a lot of dedicated developers means that there has already been substantial progress since the pre-release.


Some of the 68k components of the pre-release have in the meantime been ported to PowerPC code. The most prominent of these are Picasso96 and MUI. While Picasso96 is still in alpha test among the developers, the PPC version of MUI is being beta-tested right now, and is expected to be stabilized soon.

The kernel has also seen some updates. Among other things, it now supports a special resource called the performance monitor. The performance monitor is a hardware profiler within the CPU that allows the programmer extremely fine-tuned profiling of code, even including counting cache hits and misses,instruction timing, pipeline stalls, number of instructions patched, instruction throughput, and a lot of other factors. The performance monitor is controlled via performancemonitor.resource, which offers an easy-to-use API that wraps all this functionality into a few functions.

Further improvements of the kernel include support for the Altivec unit. The Altivec unit is a SIMD vector processing unit. SIMD stands for "single instruction multiple data", meaning that a series of instructions is executed in parallel on multiple streams of data items. Altivec has a lot of uses, most prominently in 3D graphics, but also in image processing, signal processing, compression/decompression, and all general computing applications that inherently work by executing the same instructions on large datasets. Altivec support in the kernel isn't 100% stable yet, but is expected to be fully functional very soon.

Moovid, the well-known media player, has now also been ported to PowerPC, and the results are quite spectacular. An Altivec-enabled version is also in the works. Moovid plays a wide range of movie codecs, including DivX.
A lot of progress has also been made on the shared C library, newlib, and the static C library, clib2.

Subsequently, there is now a new gcc compiler suite that runs up to six times faster than the compiler included in the SDK. Furthermore, since the final release of GNU C 3.4.0 has emerged, it has also been successfully ported to AmigaOS 4.0, and is now used for most components and programs. GCC 3.4.0 features a much better code generator than previous versions, much better support for ANSI C++, and implements the Motorola 'vector' extension for Altivec (meaning you can use types like 'vector unsigned char x' in your program to signify a vector for Altivec).

One program that has seen a tremendous speed boost is AmiPDF. The new PowerPC version of AmiPDF is, depending on input, up to 60 times faster than the original version on the prerelease.

Furthermore we expect a working serial device and floppy support soon.

The USB stack is shaping up as well. It now supports HID devices like keyboards and mice as well as HID joysticks and steering wheels, and USB mass storage devices like USB sticks, flash card readers, 7-in-1 card readers and cameras.

The A1 IDE device now has working UDMA support. Also, interrupts are no longer polled but delivered properly. This means that the device does not require any CPU time for transfers.

Currently, work concentrates on performance optimization. Results look quite good already, and stress tests have shown the device to be 100% reliable - no data corruption occurs

This material will in due course be released for download to registered users of the Developer Pre-release on our web site at:
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz
    

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PosterThread
FuZion 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 21:37:54
#1 ]
Super Member
Joined: 22-Nov-2003
Posts: 1962
From: Birmingham, England

Oh yeah, it's my birthday, I'm gonna party like, it's my birthday...

...

... ... What? It's ot. Oh well, this is just as good. I'm sure I don't have to say it again guys

FuZion.

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Bobsonsirjonny 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 21:40:34
#2 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 28-Jul-2003
Posts: 2880
From: Unknown

OS 4 is marching full steam ahead

Glad that all the UDMA doubters can now be put to rest!

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neongod 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 21:41:22
#3 ]
Member
Joined: 4-Jan-2004
Posts: 64
From: Budapest, Hungary

Ho, well done guys! Imressive list, keep on the work!

It's good to see that p96 is finally on ppc.

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Matt 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 21:41:56
#4 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 16-Nov-2003
Posts: 467
From: Sherborne, UK

Superb news!!!! Great work.

Thanks for all your efforts everyone!


_________________


AmigaOne XE-G4, 512MB RAM (AmigaOS 4.1)
Radeon 9250, Terratec Aureon 5.1
CDRW, DVDRW, SII0680

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-Sam- 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 21:55:32
#5 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Apr-2003
Posts: 3035
From: Yorkshire Dales, United Knigdom

Looking forward to release!

Looks like it will be an even more special XMas this year.


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Sam

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GregS 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 21:59:13
#6 ]
Super Member
Joined: 28-Apr-2003
Posts: 1797
From: Perth Australia

Suitably impressed.

This all seems to be coming together so fast and so well. Once all the bits are together (even before) the OS will be a very impressive thing indeed. It is also nice to see that the harping criticism about DMA and Altevic will be put to rest (not that I understood very much of it).

In short great and a very exciting time ahead (once my pre-release arrives - damn living in Australia).


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Ami603 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:00:18
#7 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 7-Mar-2003
Posts: 580
From: Valencia,Spain 8-)

Cool! can`t wait to get my dirty hands on this beast

Oh, nevermind, just remembered that i`ve got my hands dirty with "the Stuff®" Already


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A1200/030 32Mb
A4000D
A1-X1000.

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Bean 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:14:08
#8 ]
Super Member
Joined: 4-Apr-2003
Posts: 1225
From: U.K.

Wow!

Truely awesome work!


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RIP my A1XE.. that used to have an appetite for batteries!

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tomazkid 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:14:28
#9 ]
Team Member
Joined: 31-Jul-2003
Posts: 11694
From: Kristianstad, Sweden

Quote:
In short great and a very exciting time ahead (once my pre-release arrives - damn living in Australia).


I haven't got mine yet either....


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Marky_D_Sahd 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:26:26
#10 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 21-Aug-2003
Posts: 537
From: a chair in front of my computer.

WOW! Summer holiday begins soon, and I've yet to secure employment so I may have to bite the financial bullet.....


... AND PLAY WITH OS4 ALL SUMMER!! EEEAAAAAAARRRRRRGGHHH!!!


_________________
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freaks 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:29:18
#11 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 8-Jun-2004
Posts: 318
From: france

looks great.. better in better.
and nice feedback, that count for us, users who are waiting for it.
thanks to the os4 team a lot for the good work!

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sTix 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:31:32
#12 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 22-Oct-2003
Posts: 138
From: Lund, Sweden

Absolutely wonderful!

Can't wait to get my hands on this piece!


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amipal 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:33:26
#13 ]
Super Member
Joined: 8-Apr-2003
Posts: 1907
From: Saltdean, East Sussex, UK

@ Rogue

Quote:
Furthermore we expect a working serial device and floppy support soon.

Sorry to push you for any answer, but any idea when serial.device will be finished? Its just that I don't have broadband, and my only 'net access atm is through my A1200 via modem. Would be nice to use my AmigaOne for the internet!


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After a decade away from the scene, I am back!

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FuZion 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:50:18
#14 ]
Super Member
Joined: 22-Nov-2003
Posts: 1962
From: Birmingham, England

@amipal

I think you've set yourself up for it

Also, I'd like to know. Does MooVid have a resizable window yet or is the window set to the size of the video? If it does resize, does if have a form of interpolation like RiVA?

FuZion.

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Rogue 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:51:56
#15 ]
OS4 Core Developer
Joined: 14-Jul-2003
Posts: 3999
From: Unknown

Quote:
any idea when serial.device will be finished




Honestly, I can't tell you for sure, I don't work on that (and even if I did...). AFAIK it works quite well but is lacking support for modem signals.


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DrBombcrater 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 8-Jun-2004 22:55:48
#16 ]
Super Member
Joined: 6-Feb-2004
Posts: 1382
From: UK

Looking Good!


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painter 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 0:39:49
#17 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 5-Oct-2003
Posts: 681
From: Manitoba, Canada

well with no ppc serial.device i hope there is the 68k serial.device for the early-birders who do not have high speed internet but use a serial port telephone dialup connection, so they can connect after installing os4 beta.
oops i sound a bit crabby there but i'm not. just have fingers crossed-

painter

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gregthecanuck 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 0:55:58
#18 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 30-Dec-2003
Posts: 846
From: Vancouver, Canada

Thanks for the status update.

Now for the $64,000 question - when is OS 4.0 considered "done".

I presume this would be broken down something like:
1. PPC conversion? Removal of 68k code?
2. "Feature freeze" - no new functionality
3. "Minimum known bugs" - beta-testing completed
4. "Hardware compatibility" - final testing with all supported hardware

Is there an official to-do list? Is this public?

Is there a list of items deferred to future 4.x releases?




Thanks and keep up the great work!

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rossv 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 1:49:15
#19 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 22-Mar-2003
Posts: 383
From: Sydney, Australia

@ painter:

Quote:
well with no ppc serial.device i hope there is the 68k serial.device for the early-birders....


HJF is talking about the AmigaOne.

You cannot use the 68k serial.device from a Classic Amiga on the AmigaOne.

Regards,

Ross..


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samo79 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 2:58:15
#20 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 13-Feb-2003
Posts: 3505
From: Italy, Perugia

Hi Ross, sorry for my big off topic, but i like to know if you are plan to make a new Linux Kernel (maybe 2.6.x) for AmigaOne soon

Thanks


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BACK FOR THE FUTURE

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Sam440ep Flex 800 Mhz 1 GB Ram + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6
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