@olegil

Where are those promised powerful PowerPC CPUs?

Thre is no hope for PowerPC on desktops.
Remember, Core i7 is now 3.5 times faster than most powerful PowerPC CPU in existence (4 years old 970MP 2.5 GHz) and more than 20 times faster than SAM...

SAM is nice board for those, who would like to use AmigaOS 4 - including myself. If Hyperion can´t port OS4 to x86, then we must stay on PowerPC. 1.5 GHz G4/G5 CPUs are fast enough for allmost all our needs - video, office software, internet, emulators and games. Even the overpriced and slow 440EP can be useable (if you don´t want to run Dungeon Keeper under DosBox...), it could be ideal CPU for something more portable.

Quote:

Sorry to nitpick, but isn't G4 == e600 ? QorIQ uses e500(mc) cores. Is e500 G2 or G3 ? (But still nice with 8 cores and 1.5 GHz manufactured in 45nm process.) Maybe 8641D would be better option than QorIQ. (Amiga software don't need such CPU speeds but Amiga making comeback with 8 cores when wintel people has max 4-6 cores would shock the world. One can always dream.

Supports it dual CPU configurations? 16 cores (2 x 8) sounds even more
shocking . pity that AmigaOS not support multi core/CPU........... yet

_________________
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@ olegil

Quote:

so ANY chip release in the future from ANY company that uses a core already on the market is ruled out as a desktop cpu now? I don't think Intel/AMD are gonna agree with you on that one.

Using 8 G3 (G2?) is amuzing, but I fail to see where it's going to lead anyone, especially for those none SMP OSs, anywhere close to modern desktop performances. Is the price been set yet?


Quote:

The QorIQ is extremely promising. Of course, having 8 G4 cores still qualifies as reusing old technology to damocles, so he will argue against it on religious reasons. Or something.

Wrong assumption. I also like ARM and MIPS CPUs, depends on what your using it for. For desktops, good luck with the QorIQ, I have my doubts about Freescale doing much right in PPC not too mention chipsets for it. If they can drag out the old tired G3/G2 and make it reasonable CPU by clustering 8 of them, more power to them. I'll stick to x86_64 and ARM for now.

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Dammy

@ jahc

Quote:

This one seems promising: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=P4080

Wait a minute, that isn't for desktops, it's for networking systems?

Last edited by damocles on 27-Jun-2009 at 10:11 PM.

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Dammy

@damocles

Quote:

Wait a minute, that isn't for desktops, it's for networking systems?

Oh okay. I didnt realise. What features is the chip missing to be useful on a desktop? (hardware isnt really my forte).

@jahc

It's missing the "this chip made for desktop systems" line in the product brief.

Honestly, nothing else. It's like the MPC5121e. The product brief for that specifies automotive. But you'll find it's being used more in embedded systems. Because it's the cheapest and least power consuming powerpc in it's performance segment.

The people who write the product briefs and try to figure out what customers will be using a chip for rarely get it right. Which is why discussing whether or not a chip was targetted for desktop systems is a waste of time. Discussing whether or not a chip is USEFUL for desktop systems is a lot more interesting.

And you can't get a whole lot more desktop oriented than PCIe, GbE and DDR2. Ok, so you could say that 10GbE isn't something you'll need in a desktop system any time soon (in fact it's more suited to clustering ). But so what? Just route the wires to the PCIe system instead (one 10GbE takes up 4 serial lines, taking away the possibility to use either 4 GbE or 4 PCIe).

And to anyone saying "but it's just a G3, that's too old" I say "poo poo on you". It's not a "G3". It's an "e500mc", a brand new core made to the PowerPC2.06 Instruction Set Architecture. And as for lack of Altivec. Well, you wouldn't need it, would you? Just set up anywhere between 3 and 7 cores to do the excact same instructions on slightly shifted copies of the data in parallell.

So you see, AmigaOS wouldn't even NEED to support SMP to get full utilisation of that chip. Just set up AmigaOS on one core, Linux on three (it supports virtualisation and partitioning just like any good old IBM server). Allocate four cores to be vector processors for AmigaOS. Make Linux draw in a frame buffer that AmigaOS can choose where and if it wants on screen. One GigE for each system.

What do you have? Something truly awe inspiring, that's what. With Amiga and Linux applications running side by side with no emulation. Each core restricted to only access it's own memory subsystem (so you could reboot the Amiga side without mucking up the Linux side).

All of this is possible with that tiny chip at 30W. Hardly any special software needed (bar making Linux draw it's output in a suitable place).

Now. At a good price, is there anyone here who wouldn't like to have such a system?

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@damocles

excuse my language, but what the hell do you mean chipsets for it? It's a god damn SoC, for heavens sakes.

As in, it's got onchip ethernet (2x10 or 8x1 gigabit), PCIe, DDR2 controller, UART, USB2. What the #### would they need to make a chipset for?

Are you completely barking mad?

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

Quote:

Has anyone managed to use ANY of the cool functions in the Radeon HD 24xx/34xx series outside Windows?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Njc4Ng
"UVD Is Enabled For Linux In Catalyst 8.10"

Quote:

Edit: And using closed source binary drivers wouldn't excactly help us either

Does SAM motherboard support a PPC 7447 CPU?

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

Quote:

Sorry to nitpick, but isn't G4 == e600 ? QorIQ uses e500(mc) cores. Is e500 G2 or G3 ? (But still nice with 8 cores and 1.5 GHz manufactured in 45nm process.) Maybe 8641D would be better option than QorIQ. (Amiga software don't need such CPU speeds but Amiga making comeback with 8 cores when wintel people has max 4-6 cores would shock the world. One can always dream

I'll bite.

Intel Larrabee has up to 48 X86 cores. Each core has 512bit wide SIMD. Primary target market servers and gaming graphics card add-ons.

AMD's Bulldozer based product has OOO 8-Core "Valencia" and 16-core "Interlagos" with each core supporting 256bit wide SIMD (Intel AVX).

Anyway, Windows running 256 X86 cores i.e. HP Superdome server.

Different WIndows editions count via the number of CPU sockets.

Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2009 at 09:07 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2009 at 09:05 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2009 at 09:04 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2009 at 09:00 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 28-Jun-2009 at 08:57 AM.

_________________
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Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@BigC Quote:

Fine,so let's leave the price of the 733 board alone and cut the 667 by another 100 euros!

Are you kidding? The Sam440 (667MHz) is set at price ACube thinks they can recover their development/etc costs from. If they charge less, you will have to expect to loose something. My suggestions as to what might happen:
* Much delayed development of a faster mobo, due to ACube making no profit that can be put back into development.
* Lack of customer service, thus if e.g. your mobo is faulty, perhaps they won't be too keen on replacing it, let alone responding to emails or engaging the public in forums.

Doesn't look like a good idea to me.


Of course, if you believe it can be done cheaper, then feel free to get together with a few other people, make a proposal to a bank to get a loan (good luck!), get it designed, prototyped, tested & debugged, re-prototyped, tested & debugged again (maybe it boots this time!), repeat for a few more months, pay to get tons of boards manufactured (it will be cheaper per board, but might cost you a few million up-front), advertise widely, haggle with distributors, ship around the world, deal with customs & tax problems, try to get your distributors to pay you back, deal with replacing faulty boards that weren't detected at manufature, deal with ignorant customers who haven't a blody clue how to build a computer or install an OS correctly & wrongly blame your mobo, deal with FUD spread by "Amiga fans" about how your board is faulty by design, deal with complaints that it hasn't got X even though that would add $50 to the cost & isn't needed by the majority of users, and finally go bankrupt because not enough Amigans bought your board.

Last edited by ChrisH on 28-Jun-2009 at 11:20 AM.

_________________
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It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

Quote:

Of course, if you believe it can be done cheaper, then feel free to get together with a few other people, make a proposal to a bank to get a loan (good luck!), get it designed, prototyped, tested & debugged, re-prototyped, tested & debugged again (maybe it boots this time!), repeat for a few more months, pay to get tons of boards manufactured (it will be cheaper per board, but might cost you a few million up-front), advertise widely, haggle with distributors, ship around the world, deal with customs & tax problems, try to get your distributors to pay you back, deal with replacing faulty boards that weren't detected at manufature, deal with ignorant customers who haven't a blody clue how to build a computer or install an OS correctly & wrongly blame your mobo, deal with FUD spread by "Amiga fans" about how your board is faulty by design, deal with complaints that it hasn't got X even though that would add $50 to the cost & isn't needed by the majority of users, and finally go bankrupt because not enough Amigans bought your board.

Chris, you really need to edit thispost.
Not because I think any part of it's inaccurate, I'm certain it hits the nail dead on.
But it's depressing and might just convince Acube and others to give it all up as a bad job.

Last edited by TiredofLife on 28-Jun-2009 at 11:44 AM.

_________________
If your nose runs and your feet smell, you're upside down.

Quote:

excuse my language, but what the hell do you mean chipsets for it? It's a god damn SoC, for heavens sakes. As in, it's got onchip ethernet (2x10 or 8x1 gigabit), PCIe, DDR2 controller, UART, USB2. What the #### would they need to make a chipset for? Are you completely barking mad?

Yeah, I was thinking something was missing until I realized after I posted that it's an network control system and not a desktop CPU. Your right, it's a complete SOC for embedded network system and doesn't need the glue chips. Feel better yet now?

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Dammy

@ TOL:

Quote:

But it's depressing and might just convince Acube and others to give it all up as a bad job.

Their bottom line will dictate that action, not some post on a message AWN.

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Dammy

@damocles

much better.

Now if you could just explain why it's unsuitable as a desktop CPU to us idiots who don't get it, all would be good

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

Only sort of kidding in answer to the post suggesting 667 and 733 boards needed bigger price difference.Remember older slower boards got sold a low price a year or so ago.I missed out on deal for 400mhz.
For what you and I know the ACube cost difference may be insignificant in producing the two boards.
So why suggest raising the price of 733 boards?
You can kill off market several ways;one way is to set prices too high and few people buy ,another way is to sell too low and the company cannot pay its suppliers and staff.

oh boy, what a useless discussion thread.... again ...

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@olegil

You've sold it to me If that's not hypeions mysterious most ambitious projects then it should be

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

Quote:

Just set up AmigaOS on one core, Linux on three (it supports virtualisation and partitioning just like any good old IBM server). Allocate four cores to be vector processors for AmigaOS. Make Linux draw in a frame buffer that AmigaOS can choose where and if it wants on screen. One GigE for each system.

That would be really nice.

@Hammer
Maybe in labs and for servers but not for desktops, not at least yet.

(Edit:)
@thread
Sorry, this is a news thread and we are discussing ... erm ... "normal" discussion here.

Last edited by Tomppeli on 28-Jun-2009 at 04:36 PM.
Last edited by Tomppeli on 28-Jun-2009 at 04:34 PM.

_________________
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@olegil

Quote:

Now if you could just explain why it's unsuitable as a desktop CPU to us idiots who don't get it, all would be good

Since Genesi passed on it in favor of ARM, I would have little hope of it being a reasonable choice for desktop/laptop CPU. I wouldn't be surpised to hear IBM pulling the plug on any development of PPC beyond the Power family. Actually google Joint Development Alliance. and see what arch IBM is heavily supporting these days.

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Dammy

Google results...
http://commonplatform.com/about/joint_development_partners.asp
... several PPC firms seem to be involved...
... ARM chips are leading in developments...

but I do not see PPC ruled out.

(pages seem to require IE, so f*ck them )

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?