Amiga MA Magazine 1998 #6/amigamamagazinepolishissue1998.iso/www/cucug/at/at951212.txt

Internet Message Format | 1997-11-07 | 4KB

From [e-mail] Dec  7 07:40:39 1995
Date: Thu, 07 Dec 95 00:17:41 0700
From: James Grubic <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
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 [e-mail]