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News   News : AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
   posted by Mikey_C on 8-Jun-2004 22:34:48 (46958 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
    

STORYID: 1496
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PosterThread
ExiE 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 13:23:39
#41 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 18-May-2004
Posts: 450
From: Czech Amiga News

Quote:
@ Crumb
Yes and MPEG will be supported by Moovid 1.7 for OS4.


Does the Mooviid still look so ugly (like in OS3.9) ?

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vortexau 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 13:25:14
#42 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 2651
From: . . outside the Pod-bay; Australia

I pointed Beerman to this report, . . .

. . . and he smiled, saying that he'd definitely have to raise a glass to this progress!

I concur . . . . well done Hyperion folk!


_________________
-vortexau, who's A1 XE-G4 remains at half-RAM !
A2000HD (from 1991) 060 64Mb PicassoII with OS3.5 . . . still working.

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mr2 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 14:50:29
#43 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 3-Feb-2004
Posts: 691
From: Poland

Excellent work!!


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rolpho 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 15:03:34
#44 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 28-Nov-2003
Posts: 128
From: Poland

@ExiE
Quote:
Does the Mooviid still look so ugly (like in OS3.9) ?


I haven't seen any other os4 Moovid screenshots than those with "ugly" GUI.
Frogger produces more "guru meditations" than Moovid, but at least has rather "normal" gui for these times.

How many years has traditional Moovid gui - 8? It's obvious it should be more up to date now..

I think it's very ugly too, and it just doesn't harmonize with os4 in general.

[complaining as usual ]


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ikir 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 15:08:29
#45 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Dec-2002
Posts: 5647
From: Italy

@ ExiE

For now it looks the same, i like it. Iit is a question of personal taste Anyway i think that the final version will have a new gui


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ExiE 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 15:41:13
#46 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 18-May-2004
Posts: 450
From: Czech Amiga News

Maybe there is the reason why majority of players have separated movie window and control window so controls can be visible even in fullscreen and moved freely
...and no brown please

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L8-X 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 15:44:54
#47 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 24-Dec-2002
Posts: 2630
From: Glasgow, UK

@Vortexau

How many livers has beerman gone through?


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xeron 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 16:08:16
#48 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Jun-2003
Posts: 2440
From: Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England, UK, Europe, Earth, The Milky Way, The Universe

You know, turning off the brown control panel is just one shell switch, or tooltype...


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Rogue 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 17:09:49
#49 ]
OS4 Core Developer
Joined: 14-Jul-2003
Posts: 3999
From: Unknown

Quote:
But tell me why you think Moovid is "the well-known media player


"well-known" means that everybody knows it. From your complaints, you obviously know it, too, so that qualifies for "well-known" in my book.

As for GUI's, well, we all have different tastes...


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Rogue 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 17:11:41
#50 ]
OS4 Core Developer
Joined: 14-Jul-2003
Posts: 3999
From: Unknown

Quote:
The things missing/not yet complete in OS4 is just what you (Rogue) mentioned in the status-update? Testing, optimizing mainly, or?


There are other things. I just mentioned things that have seen serious evolution since the pre-release. We're still planning to do some things that I didn't metion.

Quote:
Also, since you didn't mention 68k JIT emulation in your update, what does that mean exactly?


Nothing really. It only means that since the prerelease, it hasn't seen much changes.


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Anonymous 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 17:42:25
# ]



Oh, YES...

Thank you Hyperion, thank you OS4-team

Thank you for soon kicking a**es again (kind of)

 
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ExiE 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 17:53:41
#52 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 18-May-2004
Posts: 450
From: Czech Amiga News

Quote:
You know, turning off the brown control panel is just one shell switch, or tooltype...


I said it looks ugly but not that it is useless...

Quote:
"well-known"
ahh sorry, english isn't my native.
I thought it should also evoke positive rating... I was wrong. Sorry

But the GUI *IS* ugly no matter what taste you have (IMHO its the problem of AmigaOS, it doesn't look consistent enough since OS3.5)

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Coder 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 17:56:41
#53 ]
Team Member
Joined: 15-May-2003
Posts: 4523
From: The Netherlands

@Rogue

Quote:
"well-known" means that everybody knows it.


I did not. Really. Only what I heard recently. That it plays movies.

But I do know moovid as move your lazy butt of the chair and put the trash out. Or as you did, moovid with that pre-release.

Coder


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Coder 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 18:01:24
#54 ]
Team Member
Joined: 15-May-2003
Posts: 4523
From: The Netherlands

@vortexau

I always enjoy it when Beerman comes to pay me a visit. He does not say much at all. But then again, what's the point of that? We talk to the wife and drink with our famous buddy! And the last rather then the first.

Coder


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Rogue 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 18:14:52
#55 ]
OS4 Core Developer
Joined: 14-Jul-2003
Posts: 3999
From: Unknown

@coder

Quote:
I did not. Really. Only what I heard recently. That it plays movies


It was known as "Action" under OS 3.9.


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JCC 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 18:17:07
#56 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 15-Sep-2003
Posts: 254
From: NY/NJ, US

Many thanks for taking time out to give us such a detailed update. The progress looks very good , congratulations are in order to Hans-Jörg and the Hyperion-OS3 team

Question: Any "guestimate" ETA for the scsi.device, I have burner & ZipDrive ready to give it a test drive!

Regards,
JCC

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Coder 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 18:25:12
#57 ]
Team Member
Joined: 15-May-2003
Posts: 4523
From: The Netherlands

@Rogue

Quote:
It was known as "Action" under OS 3.9.


Sorry, again. But I never had OS 3.9. Always just standard Amiga's. I did not belong to the "upgrade" people. Always wanted too but there was always something new just around the corner so I waited. But this way my view on OS4 will be a fresh look. Really looking forward to the SDK.

Coder


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amipal 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 18:35:35
#58 ]
Super Member
Joined: 8-Apr-2003
Posts: 1907
From: Saltdean, East Sussex, UK

@Rogue
Quote:
"When its done"
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.

Can't say fairer than that! Oh well, added incentive to get broadband then!!

@FuZion
Quote:
I think you've set yourself up for it

LOL! Yeh, guess I did a bit!


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Coder 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 18:39:55
#59 ]
Team Member
Joined: 15-May-2003
Posts: 4523
From: The Netherlands

Hi,

Just found out that my dealer got the cd's today (wednesday) and they are going to be shipped also today. By now mine is on it's way. With luck next wednesday and if no luck longer or even longer then longer. But if I do get it then next week I have to go away for some days too. The important thing is that I have it.

Coder


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FuZion 
Re: AmigaOS 4.0 Status Report
Posted on 9-Jun-2004 19:13:07
#60 ]
Super Member
Joined: 22-Nov-2003
Posts: 1962
From: Birmingham, England

@Coder

Quote:
Just found out that my dealer got the cd's today (wednesday) and they are going to be shipped also today.

Good news for you. However, there's still not even a word from the UK sides

FuZion.

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