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Wasn't part of the appeal of Amiga its unique hardware? The dedicated co-processors? In some ways, it was very ahead of its time in this. Is the PPC version abl

Wasn't part of the appeal of Amiga its unique hardware? The dedicated co-processors? In some ways, it was very ahead of its time in this. Is the PPC version able to replicate this somehow?

ZenoArrow 11y ago
Yes, the big draw was the hardware acceleration, and the software this enabled. There were many Amiga users who barely used the OS, and just played games instead (the OS was split over two parts, the Kickstart that would run from a ROM chip, and the Workbench that was run from floppy disk or hard drive. If you played games, you only needed the Kickstart). However, as the competition caught up to the hardware of the Amiga, the importance of the OS in setting the Amiga apart increased. The PPC Amigas don't really have custom co-processors. One or two of the PPC Amigas has an embedded microcontroller or FPGA, but they're not very powerful. You're also able to use some dedicated PC GPUs. With regards to the future of Amiga hardware, what interests me more than the PPC machines are the FPGA computers/accelerators. For example, MiST board is able to recreate Amiga hardware in FPGA, along with a number of other classic computers. http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=96 http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=96
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Good explanations. What's more interesting is the Amiga model of CPU + accelerators is becoming the new default in high-performance applications. There could be a revival of OS's natively supporting accelerators of a niche market that cares about that sort of thing. My favorite example is Cavium's Octeon's that basically nobody has heard of: http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html The Octeon II's often go for around $200 on eBay. They have 16 cores, multi-Gbps network acceleration, onboard crypto, Linux support, and use little power. That's the kind of shit that has potential. Maybe that plus a good FPGA for high-end model where main SOC is multiplexed like usual but one app at a time gets FPGA and/or GPU. A bunch of simple cores, the right on-board accelerators, and FPGA could combine in performance-critical apps to blow Xeons out the water despite being on older process nodes. My old prediction and dream gets even closer to reality with the rise of the "semi-custom" businesses of AMD and Intel that do this on a case by case basis for their x86 lines. And Intel's acquisition of Altera w/ likely FPGA circuitry in future Xeon's. You can already buy a FPGA desktop from Pico Computing in small form factor. I envision something a bit more integrated into OS API and management systems.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    > "Good explanations." Thanks. > "What's more interesting is the Amiga model of CPU + accelerators is becoming the new default in high-performance applications. There could be a revival of OS's natively supporting accelerators of a niche market that cares about that sort of thing." It's possible, though I'd like to see an OS designed from the ground up to support this type of heterogeneous architecture. A few years back I wrote a few notes about how to make better use of reconfigurable computing (on an Amiga forum, funnily enough), still think the basic ideas are sound, though there are plenty of details left to work out: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=679874&postcount=98 http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=679874&postcount=... > "The Octeon II's often go for around $200 on eBay. They have 16 cores, multi-Gbps network acceleration, onboard crypto, Linux support, and use little power. That's the kind of shit that has potential. Maybe that plus a good FPGA for high-end model where main SOC is multiplexed like usual but one app at a time gets FPGA and/or GPU. A bunch of simple cores, the right on-board accelerators, and FPGA could combine in performance-critical apps to blow Xeons out the water despite being on older process nodes." The Octeon III sounds like quite a high end device, I'm sure it'd be a beast with regards to performance, but do you know of anything similar at a lower price point? Does $200 get you an Octeon II evaluation board on eBay?
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      The Amiga post is interesting but too much on memrister. I avoid speculative stuff. For FPGA's, what's proven so far is integration into embedded/HPC and automated partitioning of apps to FPGA's. So your idea of an OS clean slated for that with Kay style DSL's is possible, maybe even with current hardware. Also, their LISP work could turn to hardware easily with SHard Scheme-to-hardware compiler or an improvement to it. Re octeon Yeah, it's high-end but that's due to its market & low volume. Probably custom, too. I got the price by various boards that show up on eBay with Octeon II's priced from $150-300. Example: http://m.ebay.com/itm/Interface-Masters-Quad-1GbE-PCIe-Ethernet-Network-Bypass-Adapter-Niagara-804-BP-/301802719638?nav=SEARCH http://m.ebay.com/itm/Interface-Masters-Quad-1GbE-PCIe-Ether... Far as cost, a standard cell design with a few accelerators should be straight-forward. I also just got half a dozen papers on transistor-level optimization techniques that are automated and get a bit closer to custom performance. So potential there.

Wasn't part of the appeal of Amiga its unique hardware? The dedicated co-processors? In some ways, it was very ahead of its time in this. Is the PPC version able to replicate this somehow?

ZenoArrow 11y ago

Yes, the big draw was the hardware acceleration, and the software this enabled. There were many Amiga users who barely used the OS, and just played games instead (the OS was split over two parts, the Kickstart that would run from a ROM chip, and the Workbench that was run from floppy disk or hard drive. If you played games, you only needed the Kickstart). However, as the competition caught up to the hardware of the Amiga, the importance of the OS in setting the Amiga apart increased. The PPC Amigas don't really have custom co-processors. One or two of the PPC Amigas has an embedded microcontroller or FPGA, but they're not very powerful. You're also able to use some dedicated PC GPUs. With regards to the future of Amiga hardware, what interests me more than the PPC machines are the FPGA computers/accelerators. For example, MiST board is able to recreate Amiga hardware in FPGA, along with a number of other classic computers. http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=96 http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=96

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Good explanations. What's more interesting is the Amiga model of CPU + accelerators is becoming the new default in high-performance applications. There could be a revival of OS's natively supporting accelerators of a niche market that cares about that sort of thing. My favorite example is Cavium's Octeon's that basically nobody has heard of: http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html The Octeon II's often go for around $200 on eBay. They have 16 cores, multi-Gbps network acceleration, onboard crypto, Linux support, and use little power. That's the kind of shit that has potential. Maybe that plus a good FPGA for high-end model where main SOC is multiplexed like usual but one app at a time gets FPGA and/or GPU. A bunch of simple cores, the right on-board accelerators, and FPGA could combine in performance-critical apps to blow Xeons out the water despite being on older process nodes. My old prediction and dream gets even closer to reality with the rise of the "semi-custom" businesses of AMD and Intel that do this on a case by case basis for their x86 lines. And Intel's acquisition of Altera w/ likely FPGA circuitry in future Xeon's. You can already buy a FPGA desktop from Pico Computing in small form factor. I envision something a bit more integrated into OS API and management systems.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  > "Good explanations." Thanks. > "What's more interesting is the Amiga model of CPU + accelerators is becoming the new default in high-performance applications. There could be a revival of OS's natively supporting accelerators of a niche market that cares about that sort of thing." It's possible, though I'd like to see an OS designed from the ground up to support this type of heterogeneous architecture. A few years back I wrote a few notes about how to make better use of reconfigurable computing (on an Amiga forum, funnily enough), still think the basic ideas are sound, though there are plenty of details left to work out: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=679874&postcount=98 http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=679874&postcount=... > "The Octeon II's often go for around $200 on eBay. They have 16 cores, multi-Gbps network acceleration, onboard crypto, Linux support, and use little power. That's the kind of shit that has potential. Maybe that plus a good FPGA for high-end model where main SOC is multiplexed like usual but one app at a time gets FPGA and/or GPU. A bunch of simple cores, the right on-board accelerators, and FPGA could combine in performance-critical apps to blow Xeons out the water despite being on older process nodes." The Octeon III sounds like quite a high end device, I'm sure it'd be a beast with regards to performance, but do you know of anything similar at a lower price point? Does $200 get you an Octeon II evaluation board on eBay?
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    The Amiga post is interesting but too much on memrister. I avoid speculative stuff. For FPGA's, what's proven so far is integration into embedded/HPC and automated partitioning of apps to FPGA's. So your idea of an OS clean slated for that with Kay style DSL's is possible, maybe even with current hardware. Also, their LISP work could turn to hardware easily with SHard Scheme-to-hardware compiler or an improvement to it. Re octeon Yeah, it's high-end but that's due to its market & low volume. Probably custom, too. I got the price by various boards that show up on eBay with Octeon II's priced from $150-300. Example: http://m.ebay.com/itm/Interface-Masters-Quad-1GbE-PCIe-Ethernet-Network-Bypass-Adapter-Niagara-804-BP-/301802719638?nav=SEARCH http://m.ebay.com/itm/Interface-Masters-Quad-1GbE-PCIe-Ether... Far as cost, a standard cell design with a few accelerators should be straight-forward. I also just got half a dozen papers on transistor-level optimization techniques that are automated and get a bit closer to custom performance. So potential there.