From isgrub@hawks.bps.montana.eduThu Dec 7 07:40:39 1995 Date: Thu, 07 Dec 95 00:17:41 0700 From: James Grubic To: cucug@cucug.org Subject: PowerPC Attached is a copy of some news from the PowerPC mailing list. I was surprised that no one has pointed you to this information earlier. --- POWERPC AMIGA ON THE WAY - AMIGA OS TO BE PORTED TO CHRP (November 15th 1995) The world should see the first PowerPC-based Amiga by the end of next year or the beginning of 1997, according to Petro Tyschtschenko, President of Amiga Technologies. But whether the first of the new generation machines - dubbed Power Amigas - will be straight Common Hardware Reference Platform clones is still an open question, as the Escom subsidiary debates the best way to maintain backwards compatibility with existing applications. An Escom spokesperson said the company is also in discussion with Motorola on the practicalities of building a variant of the PowerPC 604 processor that includes a 68000-family CISC core. This would ease Amiga's transition to the new RISC architecture. Whether such a hybrid chip can or will be built in time to satisfy Amiga Technologies' tight deadlines remains to be seen, so the company is also pursuing the software emulation path. The spokesperson acknowledged that Amiga is talking to Apple about using its 68k emulation technology, but said that it is also talking to alternative emulator software providers. Running existing Amiga applications on a plain CHRP platform will be tough - the Amiga contains a number of proprietary support chips that the software expect to be present. In the first instance, therefore, it seems likely that the Power Amigas will be a superset of CHRP containing these extra chips. The first models will also have to incorporate Amiga's proprietary bus to allow the use of existing peripherals. However the spokesperson says that the intention is to when application developers away from accessing the hardware directly; so that newer applications will be hardware independent. Tyschtschenko says that his company intends to actively licence the Amiga OS version 4.1 to other computer companies. The eventual aim is to have the shrink-wrapped OS available in the shops for users of CHRP machines to buy. He is clear that the Amiga's strength is in its software - though asked whether in a few years time Amiga Technologies will just be a software house, he answers frankly "I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball". The PowerPC is just the first processor that the company intends to port the OS to, other RISCs will follow and though the company remains tight lipped about exactly which. Sources say that the DEC Alpha is on the shopping list. The strategy is clear, Amiga Technologies believe that what the industry needs - and in particular what multimedia developers want - is a skinny, fast, multiprocessing operating system which won't steal too many of their precious processor cycles. In the age of OS-bloat it is worth remembering that the Amiga OS can run in 500K from a floppy drive. Amiga OS is set to get bigger. Converting it to RISC code, making it hardware independent and adding much-needed features such as real memory protection and networking support will cause some expansion. Nonetheless the company should still have a fast low-overhead system that it claims will run applications faster than the competition - important in the Amiga's heartland desktop video market. And yes Tyschtschenko said that he did have discussions with the people at Be Inc, but in the end, the need to retain compatibility with existing applications proved too important. As for what clinched it for PowerPC, the Amiga spokesperson said that quite simply that it was the level of support that Motorola in particular was able to offer the company. (c) PowerPC News - free by mailing add@power.globalnews.com