Opinion: PPC, 68080 and other

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

They are way too busy selling/shipping Vampires to radically change the website which is already functional.

I take your word for it

[pix]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

What would a 'higher power' OS 4 'Amiga' offer developers that other platforms don't?

Thanks for your comment, you make some good points.
"That other platforms don't" with higher power is a bit of a tricky one, There is nothing conceiveable that any platform offers over say Windows on x86_64. At least on the surface it has is all anyone would ever need and has better support for a wider range of software, development tools and hardware.

Yet people still use and develop for Mac OS despite its meager market share. I guess my answer is that developers will develop for an Amiga if Amiga were a viable platform and they like Amiga?

In the 90's Mac enthusiasts used to cite FPU performance? as a reason to use their machine instead of a PC and justify the cost. There no longer exists any such hardware distinctive. Yes, the modern custom ARM designs of Apple have some impressive performance characteristics, but the Intel CPU's have more support, still maintain a slight edge in raw power and are the only real choice for gaming outside consoles.

I agree that x86 and ARM are boring. But OS 4/PPC isn't any better IMO - still the same exploitive business model that keeps you on the treadmill, running faster and faster just to keep up. That's why I choose to continue using my A1200 with 50MHz 030. I also have an A600 with Vampire, but I find the higher power systems less interesting. Finally I have a stock A500 with 1084 monitor to preserve that true retro experience.

Personally I like the idea of keeping PPC going as well and I love the polish of Amiga OS4. Some Amiga accelerators employed PPC, so to me its a somewhat legitimate bloodline.

What you say about the treadmill is right. Being realistic, the distinctives that made the Amiga chipset groundbreaking cannot be repeated today. 3d, video and AI acceleration are becoming part of the instruction set for almost all computers. I think a new Amiga chipset should support these innovations so it can push these kinds of projects around. If I had an excuse to do AI development on an Amiga, I would take it. But I'm not expecting a modern Amiga development to overturn ARM, Apple or Intel in raw performance.

There are things an Amiga chipset COULD IMO sport to offer value. High quality audio and DAC's for music production. Also, I think it would be kickass if Amiga supported voxel acceleration on the chipset. This would be one of the few real distinctives that could give Amiga a unique feature set.

Your original Amiga setups are great. I had an Amiga 500 which I rescued from a skip at the council dump several years ago. Sort of wish I had kept it now I have a bit more appreciation for the accelerator boards that are available.

Personally, after listening to everyone here, I am leaning toward that Amiga 600 and Vampire combo myself.

For me, nothing beats real 1990's Amiga hardware doing the stuff we were doing (or wanted to do) back then. So many games, so many programming challenges, so many hardware projects I want to do - I doubt that I will live long enough to complete a fraction of them!

Definitely, I share your sentiment. My own experience was just the few years in the late 80's with our family Amiga 500+ and I have fond memories of going to the local Amiga club as a kid. Later we bought an Amiga CD32 instead of a Playstation or Saturn .... whoops!

If you chase the high end you will never be satisfied. No matter how high powered an OS 4 'Amiga' is it still won't match a PC. The OS and apps will always be a little clunky and not do the job quite as well, and you won't be able to do half as much despite spending megabucks on it. So why not just use a PC for that stuff?

I think you are absolutely right, I just wondered when I came across the 68080 and its extensions if it couldn't develop into something more.

ChromeOS is a piece of crap which runs on cheap hardware, but some people choose to use it and work with purely cloud based applications, however slowly despite most people having superior Windows machines as well. The Amiga doesn't need to be ultimately powerful in the way the original was, it just needs to be usable. Someone started an Amicloud service years ago which I still pay for to this day just because I appreciated the initiative and hoped the Amiga community would get behind an Eco system.