Very nice, fun and interesting interview! Thanks to AW staff and Alan!

Ps: i also want a dual G4 cpu module



AMIGA OS4 beta! SOOOON

_________________
ikir

Quote:

Stilgar The megahurtz wars are over, and no one has really won, except perhaps the consumer, who has now got more possible options, and better products to choose from.

Hi Stilgar,
Well, they do seem to have stagnated on the GHz front.

So if you can't go high, go wide, 64 bits, 128 bits, etc.

Personally, I wonder if ram could keep up, EVEN if you could go to 100GHz!

GHz max is an unknown for now, but YES, our power comes from the OS. That's why I'm here.

But we have to catch up to the x86'ers. We need to be at least within 300 to 400 MHz of them, because the common person WILL NEVER believe our system is as good/better, otherwise.


Amiga64!

Good Read! Thanks alot Staff and Alan Redhouse.

The current RAM solutions aren't that good really, except for RAMBUS, because they need a hella lot of tracks, and so you start having physical problems on your motherboard, because there just isn't enough room, add to this the timing problems with your ram and all the tracks start having to be the exact size, uhh nightmare!

I think Rambus is nice because it solves this problem by giving more bandwidth but using a smllaer bus, meaning less motherboard, real estate. Of course it is propitory, and has other issues, but in real world manufacturing, it presents some compelling solutions. Of course as it isn't a widley adopted standard it is more expensive than the stalwart DDR, and perhaps DDR2. I do think that the prizes will start to go to the people who start thinking smarter than thinking bigger. And one of the ways to do this is through software.

Imagine when CPU's can no longer go any faster windows will be able to speed up infintely by removing bloat. Just think how fast it'll run in the future if you completely format your harddrive.

That was the best interview/Q&A i've heard in a long time. I was glued to the screen every inch of the way... Andi loved how it was semi technical!! Something i havnt goten from the Amiga world in a while!

That is ofcourse except for the OS4 show! But im talking on the web! Best for ages. Thanx AW!

I want my A1 Lite

@ Stilgar
Quote:

or how many megahurts it can manage

There's only one of me

_________________

As always, Alan tells you exactly how it is. No BS. No sunshine blown up your ####. Just practical responses and pragmatic approaches to sales and marketing issues.

A quick comment to everyone who keeps clamoring for G5 and AGP 8x and so forth: We have to learn to crawl before we can walk. It will be at least another 2 years of heavy development before we can reach the limits of the current hardware. As we say accross the pond: "Hold your goddamn horses!" .

What I think will be REALLY interesting in the coming years is how hyperion redesigns the amiga 3-D and sound API's... to their own specifications. I hope to see the Amiga come back as a killer gaming platform

_________________
...wait... what?

Quote:

I was glued to the screen every inch of the way

I agree!

_________________
ikir

@Chunder:

Excellent question, man.

Would be nice to see his roadmap, though

_________________
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.

What a nice fellow Everything's looking quite good on the H/W front at the moment.

Happy Friday Folks!

_________________
Folding@Home Team AmigaWorld no: 33424

(I'm probably going to be flamed for this.)

I like the idea of a HDD bootable beta at Christmas time, but I am relieve to see that OS4 will still be in the production phase into January.


I can't get my A1 Mobo until Tax time.

At least we know where my priorites are. I need a car BAD, but when income tax comes, I'm buying a motherboard.

_________________
'Having no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.' - Bruce Lee

Computer Specs: 1.3Mh

Quote:

What I think will be REALLY interesting in the coming years is how hyperion redesigns the amiga 3-D and sound API's... to their own specifications. I hope to see the Amiga come back as a killer gaming platform

Me too. Take back what was originally ours to begin with.

@drebben
Quote:

Maybe one of you Arm chair chip designer can wxplain to me how TWO devices (CPU and IDE) can read/write a single devcie (Memory) at the same time. it's not posible. Fleecy where are you?

I'm not an armchair chip designer, nor Fleecy, but I did study computer architecture in college, and unless my brain has atrophied to where I'm confusing your question with another, it's not very hard to do. I think it's the principle behind DMA and multiprocessing. The only thing you can't do is write to the same region of memory at the same time.

I think this can be handled by the operating system through semaphores and paging, so long as one's motherboard has DMA features. I believe the original Amiga did this, which is why copying files from one floppy to another did little to slow overall system performance. But don't quote me on that.

_________________
I've decided to follow an awful lot of people I respect and leave AmigaWorld. If for some reason you want to talk to me, it shouldn't take much effort to find me.

@ Drebben

Quote:

Maybe one of you Arm chair chip designer can wxplain to me how TWO devices (CPU and IDE) can read/write a single devcie (Memory) at the same time. it's not posible. Fleecy where are you?

Well I don't know #### about "armchair chip designing" but if you read the news article just before Alan's interview maybe there is something there that will explain it.

From what I could tell from the pdf it may have to do with the "Bus-Centric Design" of the Articia chip as opposed to the "CPU-Centric Design" used in x86 motherboards. See link:

technical summary of the Articia chipsets

@ Atheist

Quote:

Let's see, "We have this really cool, ultra super chip (and it is), but, well, you see, it's expensive, we don't provide you with control chips

I'm not sure where I saw this but I was under the impression that IBM was looking into the possibilities of designing a northbridge or southbridge themselves to help further the developement of PPC architecture for wider usage.

As for the availability of the 970 chip, it may be that Apple will be the only ones large enough to buy significant #'s of this chip to make it worthwhile. Probably too expensive and overpowered for normal servers so we will all have to wait until production costs fall before we see them in any great quantities.

Otherwise Alan did a fine showing as he usually does.

Undeniably a perfect spokesman for the Amiga.

_________________
Fixed A1G4XE 7455 RX933PC with fried CPU
Sapphire Radeon 9100 128mb
ESI Juli@ 24bit 192kHz Envy24HT
Sil 680 Ultra Ata 133 E-ide
SeaGate Barracuda 120gb 8mb cache

I am co-admin on a German Mini-ITX newssite/forum.

As this and user of the VIA C3 platform, I would like to express my observations.

From all those chats, forum-posts and participations in ongoing discussions as well as seeking the web for news, I have come to the conclusion, that noone decides for Mini-ITX because of the low costs.

The contrary! Mini-ITX is not cheap at all.
The cases are a tad more expensive, the PSUs being chosen often are external passively cooled ones. Their price ranges from 80-120 Euro for 60-110 Watts! In order to save a few inches in size, most customers pay for expensive slim-line optical-drives and 2.5" harddisks.

www.mini-itx.com has prices.

Now why pay people much money for systems with a low performance ?

Most, if not all people decide to go Mini-ITX because of the SIZE !
The second aspect is the very low power-consumption of the VIA EDEN platfrom.

The main aployment are HTPC (playback systems) and Micro-Servers. Noone uses it for gaming and only a few for Office. Of course, one must consider the low CPU performance, I do not know how these compare to the PPC you use.

I know well, that you have better insight on the OEM level.
As far as users go, I would like to recommend a recalculation of the strategy.

It would be important to equip these minis as good (!) as possible ! No cost-savings.

With one PCI slot (very few cases accept the dual-PCI riser card) high integration is essential. With this I mean: Firewire, Ethernet (no Realtek please), 6ch Audio + S/PDIF, VGA+TV-Out, preferably MPEG2 and 4 decoding inhardware. It would not be bad to even add RAID and S-ATA as well as USB2.0 (not 1.1).

S-ATA will gain momentum within the next year, cheap S-ATA RAID solutions already equal expensive U360 SCSI! S-ATA allows for swapping hard-drives during power-on. And much more.

I also would recommend doing two versions:

One for HTPC and general Desktop use, with
6ch audio+S/PDIF
USB2
Ser/Par
best possible VGA+TV-Out
best possible CPU, that can be cooled silent
MPEG decoding in hardware
1x NIC
S-ATA+P-ATA/ATAPI
IRDA
maybe Bluetooth
maybe CF

Micro-Server
2ch Audio
2x NIC
2x COM
1x LPT
USB2
Firewire
simple VGA
S-ATA RAID+P-ATA/ATAPI
IRDA, maybe Bluetooth, maybe CF

The G3 is coolable passive also. With the G4 it gets more difficult.

Latter IO is interesting in a home-environment, where Palms and coming smart-phones are being synched. No need to power up the desktop if the server listens on its ports.

Only Amiga enthusiasts and afficionados will buy under-powered Mini-ITX solutions, I believe.

If you want to go broad, it is vital to deliver modern solutions. BTW: I doubt if the LCD people will go for Mini-ITX. There is much smaller embedded solutions for flat-panel systems and the like.

Firstly welcome .jon .

I agree with your post. People seem to be under the impression that mini-ITX boards correlate with cheap. They don't! In Australia a miniITX board with cpu goes for above $300AU. One could buy a larger sized mobo and much faster processor for similar amounts.

@all
Let us all start pushing Alan so we can see ATI's Mobility 9000 being used in the mini ITX!!!! .

Are you speaking from a desktop users point of view? Alan (the creator/distributor/co-designer?) is mainly considering these boards for the industrial markets and other markets. But for home desktop use, i would think these boards may not be appropriate. You'r better of getting an A1 and/or waiting for the Micro ATX AmigaOne if you want to use these as a desktop.

Quote:

Let's see a P IV should be available then that runs at 5.7 GHz!!!!!!!

Hey, when we get to 5.7, we wont be using P IVs any more. More like P Vs :)

"Though I'm certain that a lot of campers and trolls will take every opportunity to downplay 4.0 for whatever problems the .. beta .. has."

A very good point. Beta is beta, yet I am sure there will be a lot of noise about whatever does no work right.