New Amiga computer...

[BarracudaUAK]

Decided to take a moment to do a search for the most recent Amiga that was produced...

To my surprise, I found a review dated for May of this year.


https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017...ga-meets-2017/


I read the review, specifications wise, it looks pretty good.

A few interesting variations vs a "PC"...

Of note is the fact that it has

... a custom PowerPC motherboard, supporting a dual-core Freescale CPU at various clock speeds up to 2.5GHz.
...

AND

... a very curious custom chip. The “Xena” is an XMOS 16-core programmable 32-bit 500 MHz coprocessor that can be configured by software to act as any type of custom chip imaginable. It is connected to a special “Xorro” slot that has the same physical connection as a PCIe x8 expansion card, but it is dedicated to adding more Xena chips as desired.

So it has a 32bit, 16 core, 500mhz co-processor that can be made to do "whatever"...
AND YOU CAN ADD MORE?

So does this mean I could have a dual-core CPU taking care of the OS, and multiple 16-core 'CPU's running the GAME???

I think I'm getting a bit giddy....


I might (read: most definitely will) check this out more closely over the next few days...

It's not cheap, but it's less expensive than when I priced a new AMD Threadripper from scratch...

Thoughts?

Barracuda

[d@rk51d3]

Way cool.

[Skybird]

A hobby for historians or enthusiasts. As that neither bad nor good, but this: a hobby.

I had an Amiga, and I loved it and it were good times. But I do not feel like wanting to go back from where we are now. It necessarily must result in only realising the back then almost unimaginable improvements computers made in the past 25 years. And that you only loose these if you go back to this machine and old Amiga games.

Times moves in one direction only. Not backwards. Saying farewell to the old, is part of living. Sometimes its hard, sometimes it hurts, sometimes we feel the lack, but thats how it is.

Sometimes I get sentimental over old times and memories. But I try to never let it get control over my present.

[Rockin Robbins]

From the review:

The good

• A new Amiga exists in 2017!
• Runs all classic Amiga software (including games) and new PowerPC-compiled Amiga software.
• The Odyssey web browser can handle many current web applications.
• The Xena XMOS chip is interesting from a hobbyist developer perspective.

The bad

• It's very expensive!
• There is relatively little new Amiga software.
• The Odyssey web browser still has a few compatibility issues.
• There is no Xena-specific software available yet.

The ugly

• The difficulty level required to convince my wife that I need to buy another $2000 desktop computer.

It would be a no-show in my house.

[BarracudaUAK]

I did another search, and found a bit more info.

Pictures of the Mother Board on this one:
http://www.amigaos.net/hardware/133/amigaone-x5000

The company web-site:
http://www.a-eon.com/

The predecessor:
http://www.a-eon.com/index.php?page=nemo



Also did a search for the XMOS chip, found this:
http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon

So it appears that the 2012 model, the X1000, has a 16-core processor for a desktop years before AMD and Intel...
I wouldn't exactly call that "behind the curve"...
(Yes, I know about the 16-core 2+GHZ Opteron server CPUs.)

Primary is a 2.5ghz Dual Core... My Athlon X2 5600 (2x2.8ghz) isn't exactly slow.
It's always been fast, makes me wonder what A-eon/Amiga could do if they decided to "up-the-ante".

Still, $2K is a bit "up there", but... since about 2010, every time I priced a "fully equipped" PC it was between $1,500 and $2,000...
And that's if I built it, something from Alienware would have been much higher...

A fully equiped Ryzen 1800 is $1,700 as of a month ago. (EDIT: plus hard drives! I forgot to mention this.)
Very few things will take full advantage of it right now. I'm really not seeing a difference with the Amiga.


Just a quick note, first link:

A-EON technology, have once again commissioned Ultra Varisys to develop a new high-end, prestige platform specifically created to run the AmigaOS, although it also supports a number of other PowerPC operating systems such as Ubuntu and Debian etc.

So it's not like you absolutely *must* wait for things to be ported to the AmigaOS.


Just thought I would update with the additional links I found...

Barracuda

P.S. I've been waiting since the early '90's for computers to get as good as the graphics were shown to be in books, some as old as the late 70's... and movies such as "The Last Starfighter", and "TRON"... (granted TRON was definitely "8-bit")
And get as fast a they were said to be.

So waiting isn't that big of a deal to me. As I've been waiting for a LONG time.

[propbeanie]

... but only 2 Sata ports... ~but~, it has 2 PCI ports!... I wonder if they would be able to crack a driver for an EMU 1820M sound card... doubtful... I remember a friend of mine years ago doing video on his Amiga (model lost to RAM failure in my brain) way before it was even a brain farht on a PC... did some amazing stuff, though he did invest quite a bit in other gear with it... I had actually done some video stuff with the C-64, though it controlled the player and copied the edits from one VCR player to another deck set-up as a re-recorder, and did titling and text. You couldn't do that on a PC either... Thank goodness for the User Port. I even got an "SSD" drive for the C-64, before they existed. Booted the beast in nothing flat... who was that? CMD?... they did a lot of Amiga too.