FW : Son of Transputer powers new Amiga box

[killergorilla]

@ Pyromania

I wouldn't hold your breath

[Zetr0]

Originally Posted by Arnie

@Zetro

How much would a iMica Icaros system cost and what is it?.

At the show deals start from £150 and up lemmie find a link... AHa! http://www.imica.net/

heres a pic I took from the event

(click for zoom)


The iMica machine is the small unit to the left of the keyboard. (the one with the blue light) - The Acer laptop infront was also running Icaros AROS, all devices fully supported... very impressive stuff.


I met the guy (ClusterUK), seems a nice geniune chap, and seeing the system run on a 32" flat pannel was a joy to see =)

Clusters prices aren't to bad for an off-the-shelf system, although for people that are tech savvy you could built it yourself cheaper, which I do intend to do =)

the iMica is based on the dual core Atom board, the Icaros desktop is an AROS release

[Paul_s]

I'm putting in an order now, NOT!

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

I would suspect with its embedded multicore, multprocessor and transputor proccessing cores this would make a very good rendering engine / farm

I think you're visiting dreamland again. My god it is going to be sooo underpowered compared to an off the shelf Xeon Nehalem workstation!

Originally Posted by Zetr0

time will tell if this is a cost effective solution compared to SGI workstations

I don't think SGI have made workstations for years. And the last generation were just standard Xeon or Opteron PC's in a custom case.

[Zetr0]

@Alexh

look, I am not singing from the X1000 song-sheet, its an interesting machine with 2006/7 technology -

Simply put the X1000 is not going to be any messiah, its not even going to be rival platform or OS per-say. The X1000 is an expensive / collectable / classic car (although depreciation might be a little higher)

what one person feels is a classic is another persons scrap heap, btw how much do "off the shelf" Xeon Nehalem workstation render farm plumb for these days? including a maintence and service package ?

Anyway, you and I both know thats not all the story, processing has a cost, albiet in hardware ownership / service + maintennce contracts and power usage, the latter is a bit of a big deal these days.


I only suggest a hypothetical question - is it possible pending on "price-point" and "available software" that the X1000 could find a niche in an ever expanding industry?

Personally I do doubt it - but I never rule anything out to be honest, besides these two hypothetical questions have been done to death for the most part.

IMHO: The longer AEON/Hyperion leave its market launch the less of anything it will become.


I do wonder the target for the X1000, at some of the prices I have been reading it would be an elite few.

what ever happens all the best to them (AEON) and Hyperion, I do hope they can make a go of it.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

The X1000 is an expensive / collectable / classic car (although depreciation might be a little higher)

Classic? You mean 'cult', don't you? Really, there's nothing 'classic' about it yet and probably never will. I only see people talking about 'power users' wanting/buying it and I seriously wonder what they will use it for.

Originally Posted by Zetr0

I only suggest a hypothetical question - is it possible pending on "price-point" and "available software" that the X1000 could find a niche in an ever expanding industry?

No. See above. Nobody that never used an Amiga before will even notice or if they do, but it. Neither will it attract people that switched to other platform before to 'come back'. Those who still use an Amiga today will think at least twice if they want to spend so much for it. Which means that there will be little interest to make commercial software, except for the occasional enthusiastic team or open source conversion.

Hope someone can explain me what they will use it for, except the 'what I do on Linux/Mac/Windows today' argument.

[Zetr0]

@TCD,

I was comparing the price / collectability of the X1000 to a classic car - not that the X1000 is in anyway classic... a classic forum frenzy would be the only term I could use classic with the X1000.

I complete agree - the What I do on *Nix/Mac and Win argument is pointless, at the end of the day, people enjoy differing platforms, I enjoyied QNX and Amiga XL - relatively pointless and the latter nowt more than a farcical fancey but its good to see this recretion attempts if you will.. I have even enjoied XAmiga and Icaros

Its very easy to bash the X1000, after all it is on old hardware with not much more than a bare OS / Dev support (for the moment) - to be fair to make it into the home it needs a hook, and that it just doesn't have, because of this it could never be a mainstream device, as such I suspect it will have a limmited run, like the A1 or C1 systems

Alas with Hyperion's track of dropping things like the Peggy I am concerned for those involved that could lose out on their time/investment - Since I have met them they are not just a faceless entity or a picture on a webpage - they are nice people and I would't want to see them in any detriment for following their dreams/visions.

My hope is that they take onboard what people in the community want instead of just throwing out another rebadge PPC that can run OS4


Please dont take this post as a defence to the X1000, It must stand on its own merits if its not for you then thats fine, if one finds nothing in it for them then its truly an epic pointless waste of time arguing about it.

The X1000 is not for me,... I like the idea of playing / coding with mutli core PPC as well as delving into the XCore chip, but even at the lowest prices floating around the interwebs its not going to be under my christmass tree for a few years if at all.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

The X1000 is not for me,... I like the idea of playing / coding with mutli core PPC as well as delving into the XCore chip, but even at the lowest prices floating around the interwebs its not going to be under my christmass tree for a few years if at all.

Which is my point Someone on A.org said that 'this machine is not aimed at Amigans at large but a small population of developers and PowerUsers (read: enthusiast with enough money or "will")'. Furthermore : 'It only serves as a vehicle for the first, to evolve the platform, and it's just a first step.'. I wonder if there ever will be a second step when you're not aiming for at least a viable niche market. I hope noone gets that I wish it to fail, but as it is now, I really don't see how it can succeed.

[Retro1234]

Ive lost intrest in the newer stuff - Maybe because im skint or maybe im just getting to old
but when you see the stuff up and running first hand it always seems intresting

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Boo Boo

Ive lost intrest in the newer stuff - Maybe because im skint or maybe im just getting to old
but when you see the stuff up and running first hand it always seems intresting

Or maybe you exactly know what you really need. A PC/Mac for daily work and a 68X Amiga for your daily retro dose.

[Arnie]

@Zetro. iMica Icaros system.

Now that`s both impressive and affordable.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

how much do "off the shelf" Xeon Nehalem workstation render farm plumb for these days? including a maintence and service package ?

The X1000 comes with a maintenance and service package?

We are buying our Xeon Nehlam 12-core workstations with 2x500GB (RAID0) hard drives, 16GB RAM, ATI FireMV 4-head gfx card, 1 year on-site maintenance & service package (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5) for around £2300 from Dell (No monitor).

[Amiga1992]

What I get from all this:

I find it incredible that there's still zealots of the Amiga platform after all that happened to them. This is yet another sprinkle of piss directed to their faces.

I guess they are all into masochism and bondage


regarding that "iMica" desktop.... You can build the SAME computer, for around 100 dollars. The Intel motherboard that comes with the Atom 330 Dualcore processor costs around 60 dollars.


All this Amiga shit should cease to exist and that will only start when stupid people stop paying overprice for items that are either cheap if you make them yourself or just weird unsupported underpowered platforms.



Here's some links for smart people who want a small, cheap system to run Icaros:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-D945GCLF2-...ht_2027wt_1139
http://cgi.ebay.com/ECS-NetTop-3-Lit...#ht_3735wt_913
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Atom-330-D...item1e5c927a06

I built my parents a system based around the Intel motherboard and it really flies. Very recommended.

[Zetr0]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Which is my point Someone on A.org said that 'this machine is not aimed at Amigans at large but a small population of developers and PowerUsers (read: enthusiast with enough money or "will")'. Furthermore : 'It only serves as a vehicle for the first, to evolve the platform, and it's just a first step.'. I wonder if there ever will be a second step when you're not aiming for at least a viable niche market. I hope noone gets that I wish it to fail, but as it is now, I really don't see how it can succeed.

That pretty much sums me up too...

Originally Posted by Arnie

@Zetro. iMica Icaros system.

Now that`s both impressive and affordable.

indeed it is.... I have been looking at the posibility of using some old A500 plastics and yomping one of these into it.... especially with RunUAE working soo well =)

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by moijk

At least a modern pc with modern chipsets and fairly high end processor/gfx card. If you want the more extreme, as in "hell of a PC" you would need to go a bit further north of that price, probably up to twice that.

The £1500+ x1000 is using 50% of a 1.8Ghz Mac G5 PowerPC CPU from 2005. £800-900 will build you a PS3/Xbox360 game busting ultra modern PC with an i7. And remember that the x1000 price doesn't include a graphics card...the most expensive part of your PC build next to the i7 CPU.

There are much better CPUs with a future to base a next generation 'ultimate Amiga' on like the PowerPC compatible CELL and Xenon CPUs from IBM. Given 50 million Xenon CPUs have been produced by IBM now for Xbox 360 it would probably cost less than a PPC 604e if anyone bothered to telephone and ask IBM lol. And at 3 cores and 3.2Ghz it's a monster of a CPU (which is why your £125 Xbox360 plays ultra detailed games in 1920x1080x32bit colour in 30-60 FPS)

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Zetr0

That pretty much sums me up too...



indeed it is.... I have been looking at the posibility of using some old A500 plastics and yomping one of these into it.... especially with RunUAE working soo well =)

I have been toying with building a PC inside one of my spare A2000 cases to do the same thing...run AROS

[Zetr0]

@ImmortalA1000

the beauty of the iMica atom board is that all the devices on it are supported - gfx / sound / disk (ssd) / usb etc the lot.

I know a lot of peeps get upset with the fact its using a *nix core, but its much more specific distro of nix, its also not as messy as some of the big distro's like ubuntu etc.

Installing an iMica Atom in an A2000 would give you ooodles of room to play arround with extras - heres a good start for you -

ASROCK Intel ATOM 330 A330GC Mini ITX Motherboard £66.13 + £7.50 Postage




OR somthing a little less powerfull and hence cheaper

Intel Atom Motherboard - D945GCLF2 (+ extras) £45 BIN + £10 Postage


Also have a look around the iMica site for more info on mobo-compatability etc - it might also be an idea to look at old Acer EEEPC's note books based on Atoms.

[NovaCoder]

The X1000 is taking longer than was planned and the 'estimated' cost is going up....not a good situ for Hyperion/AEON.

The lack of power-for-the-money argument doesn't hold much water for me. If you could buy it for say $1000 then it would actually be good value for a bespoke computer but would still be well overpriced compared to a PC.

The XMOS chip was a good idea but without any software (or hardware) support it's a waste of silicon.

I think the biggest obstacle that AEon have is that lack of developer resources that Hyperion can chuck at it.

If it launches at Xmas for the projected $2000+ it doesn't really stand much chance of selling enough units to recover their investment costs which is a real shame as Trevor seems to be a genuine guy (and confirmed ‘Amiga Nut’).

I personally think they’d have been better off going for something low-end (eg SAM 460 level + maybe the XMOS) for a lot less $$$.

[Oscar Castillo]

Originally Posted by Jimbo

£1500 would buy one hell of a PC.

I was thinking the same thing. I suppose it was inevitable considering the limited number of units they're going to produce.

[kriz]

They should have used more time on some cool new software, a browser and office suite is just mandatory these days.. Some new video app, sound app or something else creative and good...