Slashdot Mirror

Best ever OS I've seen, from a purely technical standpoint, is Tao Group's Intent, that started life as TAOS. Truely a beautiful piece of software engineering. This is a fairly old story that gives some background: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=157 This is the modern website: http://tao-group.com/

This whole XNA run-any-game-anywhere sounds very much like Amiga Inc's AmigaDE platform, which is really just Tao's Intent with some extra APIs. Initially billed as a universal platform, AmigaDE turned into a platform for playing PocketPC games, and little else - it was an interesting idea that was technically unfeasable (even Tao said that it wouldn't do what Amiga said it would).

Damien

The Tao Group is the foundation partner for the AmigaDE, Amiga Inc has a license to adjust their OS to suit Amiga's needs. It often goes like this, for instance AmigaDOS was licensed by big C= from 3rd parties as well.

The Tao Group is the foundation partner for the AmigaDE, Amiga Inc has a license to adjust their OS to suit Amiga's needs. It often goes like this, for instance AmigaDOS was licensed by big C= from 3rd parties as well.

Old news.

Wasn't the original intent of TAO to create an OS that ran in a distributed hetrogenous(=running on any mixture of processors) environment? This is now being used as the basis of the new Amiga OS, and by various mobile phone companies as it allows them to use any chip (Motorola, ARM, etc) without having to re-port their software (with the plus of having a very compact JVM on top of it). Did they continue the multi-processing aspect of their OS or was it lost over the past few years in 'refocussing'? If Sony do go the Linux route and pour a lot of money into creating a parallel processing set of libraries, it will be amusingly ironic to then use them to DiVX one of their DVDs ultra-fast...

Phillip.

> The one good thing I've seen in all of this so called ".NET"
> is the language-agnosticism technic.

No, it isn't. Don't just brainlessly repeat marketing blahblah, neither MS's nor anybody elses.

In any place where a run-time behaviour plays a part, the specific implementation/design choices of the run-time environment, and its dynamic semantics, are quintessential.

There is no single runtime to host the wide scope of run-time semantics of the various programming languages.

Actually, there is one (that I know of). TAO elate is a machine code level 'VM'. It can host any language you can throw at it.

Which, IMHO, is the only way to make a runtime. KISS, remember?

One point that is interesting is that the license that ships with the ADK does allow you to sell your applications to other intent users (and keep them closed source if you want)!

Now let's say as an example that customer A is a mobile phone company who is going to ship one million units with intent installed, if you create a game (let's say) and you charge 1 dollar for it then you have potential of up to 1 million dollars revenue. Now here's the good bit. Customer B also like's the look of your game and is selling 1 million set-top boxes - then without recompiling - your game works on his intent powered set-top you've just got yourself up to another million quid :) Get the picture :)

OK so that is a little contrived but there is definately a lot of potential there. New markets are now being opened up by Tao in the consumer electronics space and all it needs it someone with a bit of talent and a good idea to exploit those new markets.

Anyway read the license and readme in the ADK for full details.

Remember the ADK is FREE (in terms of free beer). So you have a chance to evaluate our technology at no financial cost to yourself.

AmigaDE should be Cool. It includes technology from the Tao Group called Intent. I'm not up on all the recent details, but originally this was a system that ran a small (~8KB) VM on each CPU and could translate from their byte-code system to native during the time it took to transfer the byte-code from: HDD, Network, or another CPU. Translation - you could run the same software on multiple CPUs OF DIFFERENT TYPES! On the same bus no less. Check out the Tao Group

Mentioning Amiga on Slashdot is dangerious.
But here's the scoop.

Linux is of course GPL but running on top of that is the tao-group "intent" Java engine which is proprietary and where the AmigaDE exist upon.

This is not the AmigaOS (as those who have had amigas know) but rather a new product of Amiga Inc. (a two year old start up that bought the name and all other Intellectual and stock property from Gateway - except for the patents which gateway still owns).

I understand that Tao-group makes a linux version of "intent" w/o the Amiga stuff but I don't know where one may obtain it.

The deal is one of Amiga acting something like a talent agent for programmers, complete with providing programmers application distribution and financial/royality cuts, etc.

I really don't know what development Amiga is doing with the AmigaDE (Amiga Digital Environment) as although I bought the SDK, I found I had been mislead in being told it was not encrypted, where in fact it is and requires a registration process that does not apeal to me. Additionally additional libraries for sound and I think video have yet to be made available as promised somewhere around a year ago (in a month or so).

Amiga is actiing as a content provider to the consumer while acting as a talent agent for the programmers.

Originally this device was supposed to ship with TAOs Elate, which has its own Personal Java implementation. Tao's Java is currently Personal Java 1.2 compatible (personal Java always lags behind in versions), and has a host of cool features. For instance the Java is NOT interpreted, or even JIT-compiled, rather it's statically recompiled (on first use) to VP assembler, and then from VP to machine code for the target processor...

Alas, somehow that deal fell through. Sigh. Incidentaly, Tao's Elate is also the basis for Amigas much hyped next generation system AmigaDE which is looking to be a good candidate for that vaporware of the year list.

Carl Sassenrath is now pushing his yet-another-lisp-like-language-with-prettier-synta x Rebol. It's quite a nice language, but it's proprietary. Doubt it'll go anywhere unless he open sources it.

Dave Haynie is now working for merlancia, who are producing nice non-apple PPC boxes to run, among other things, Linux, QNX and the new Amiga/ Tao system (which is a kindof Java/.net-done-right generalised multi-language VM architecture)

The main opertating system on the Zaurus PDA is based on technologies developed by the Tao Group. The Japanese version of the Zaurus PDA doesn`t have a Linux kernel at all. The common application layer is provided by the Tao Group. The OS is very good but this is not a fully open source solution by any means. It is all simple hype to create support for such products. For many other products which are so called "Linux Powered" counts that they are unfoundedly hyped as Linux devices. Think of it is Linux with X a viable solution in lowly powered low memory environments? NO WAY

Using Linux pieces does make sense though as you can use them freely and even gives you more news coverage. These devices are extremely cool, but NO way are they true Linux devices.

Fastest Java-like VM I've seen is the Tao/ Amiga one. It's an interesting architecture, since the virtual CPU has no particular upper limit on the number of registers you use, rather than the stack-machine approach used by most VMs.

Just to let you know, Amiga Inc. actually have a product available again, in conjunction with Tao - it's a language independent VM architecture that can run on x86 among other things, both native and hosted under linux or windows. It's actually pretty well-designed, sortof a cross between what Java or .NET should have been and a unixy system, and has some pretty sweet features (including being a very fast Java environment). It doesn't really have all that much to do with the original Amiga design except for the name, though (and the virtual processor assembly is very similar to the (already quite C-like, with structs and so on) Amiga-style M68k/PPC macro assembly).

I've actually got the SDK sitting on my desk, so, for once, it's not complete vaporware (unfortunately I've got the windows-hosted version, which is utterly useless to me with my linux-only PC).

It's also the OS for a product that /is/ currently vapor - a non-apple PPC computer from merlancia. Even without the new Amiga OS, the merlancia box'd be nice, if only to put LinuxPPC on. PPC is so much nicer than x86, it's a shame it's tricky to find anything but apple mobos...

Note that the Tao-group Intent /amiga architecture is probably technologically the best of the bunch - except for not being Open Source :-(.

It's like Java done right, and is light years ahead of .NOT. - it's a language-independent VM, with the VM processor being an idealised infinite-register machine, which can be algorthmically optimised for anything from cruddy register-starved x86 platforms, to pure stack processors, to RISC and VLIW machines.

~Why am I telling you this? Because, the Japanese electronics giants have the power to force the Tao system through as the global standard for
network-enabled PDAs. It's a proper (sun certified!) superset of Java too, as well as running atop linux (and others, including wince and bare x86 metal). And the Amiga media processing APIs are
very, very powerful.

See
this press release (abstract below)

Global 'Open Contents Platform Association' To Be Launched
World's leading consumer electronics firms push to create premium contents platform standard

Tokyo, Japan July 13th, 2001: Sharp, JVC, Kyocera and the Tao Group today announce the launch of the Open Contents Platform Association (OCPA).

This move, initiated by Japan's consumer electronics giants, will promote the global standardization of the inte nt® media platform as a core on home and mobile connected devices, such as PDAs, phones, web tablets, digital cameras and smart phones.

The OCPA is a response to the proliferation of wired and wireless devices with a requirement from carriers and broadcasters to deliver premium contents to users. This trend of more devices has pushed up development costs and increased application and device time to market - an inevitable consequence when developing divergent software implementations on every new product.

The need for a flexible, open environment has become paramount. By standardizing around Tao's open and pluggable platform, OCPA manufacturers and developers will create powerful and differentiated products, at the lowest cost and in the shortest possible time, capable of running the kind of premium services required by operators and broadcasters.


I am also telling you this because we need a GPL
clone pretty damn quickly! (Note that it will be patent encumbered in the US, so we'll have to develop it in Europe.)

Note that the Tao-group Intent /amiga architecture is probably technologically the best of the bunch - except for not being Open Source :-(.

It's like Java done right, and is light years ahead of .NOT. - it's a language-independent VM, with the VM processor being an idealised infinite-register machine, which can be algorthmically optimised for anything from cruddy register-starved x86 platforms, to pure stack processors, to RISC and VLIW machines.

~Why am I telling you this? Because, the Japanese electronics giants have the power to force the Tao system through as the global standard for
network-enabled PDAs. It's a proper (sun certified!) superset of Java too, as well as running atop linux (and others, including wince and bare x86 metal). And the Amiga media processing APIs are
very, very powerful.

See
this press release (abstract below)

Global 'Open Contents Platform Association' To Be Launched
World's leading consumer electronics firms push to create premium contents platform standard

Tokyo, Japan July 13th, 2001: Sharp, JVC, Kyocera and the Tao Group today announce the launch of the Open Contents Platform Association (OCPA).

This move, initiated by Japan's consumer electronics giants, will promote the global standardization of the inte nt® media platform as a core on home and mobile connected devices, such as PDAs, phones, web tablets, digital cameras and smart phones.

The OCPA is a response to the proliferation of wired and wireless devices with a requirement from carriers and broadcasters to deliver premium contents to users. This trend of more devices has pushed up development costs and increased application and device time to market - an inevitable consequence when developing divergent software implementations on every new product.

The need for a flexible, open environment has become paramount. By standardizing around Tao's open and pluggable platform, OCPA manufacturers and developers will create powerful and differentiated products, at the lowest cost and in the shortest possible time, capable of running the kind of premium services required by operators and broadcasters.


I am also telling you this because we need a GPL
clone pretty damn quickly! (Note that it will be patent encumbered in the US, so we'll have to develop it in Europe.)

The JVM doesn't claim to support all languages - so I also doubt that language-specific features are available for many of the other languages that target the JVM. The JVM doesn't claim to be multi-language in its blurb, though (if you want a _true_ multi-language VM, the Amiga/Tao VP is closest).

As far as I can tell, were it not for microsoft's ability to break the sun java vm and plug-in with every new windows release, the .NET framework offers no advantages over the already established Java framework, particularly in the enterprise space.

Also, as far as I can tell the GUI system for client side .NET apps is tied to GDI and Windows - it even says as much in the msdn System.* class hierarchy description .

Given that client side java use is increasing due
to mobile devices, which no microsoft OS (not even wince) is particularly well-suited for, as far as I can see, the client-side .NET stuff is only useful on the windows platform as in:

System.Windows.Forms - "rich user interface for WINDOWS-based applications" (my emphasis)

I very much doubt MS will provide the level of cross platform 2d and 3d pluggable gui support that java provides.

In fact, I'd say that this is a hidden admission that MS sucks on the server side, and they just plain need the server-side subset of .net on BSD, simply so that they have a reliable server for their buggy, crash-prone clients....

The Amiga DE has little in common with the original AmigaOS besides the name - although the DE is pretty cool in itself -based on the Tao virtual machine architecture.

Intersting that you should mention PalmOS - the old AmigaOS is being Open-source cloned by the aros project, and, it's recently beern ported to Palm hardware - if anything, the old amigaos, let alone the new DE, is better for palmtops than Palmos (which is quite limited - no preemptive multitasking, dodgy shared libraries, yadda, yadda) - then again, EPOC32 is better than either...

Japan seems to be the place to look for what's hot (though it may only be hot in japan) and the PDA market is behind cell phone devices by a factor of 10 or better. That is cell phones with internet connectivity. Tao Group is into the PDA market as well, thru such companies as Amiga and Embedix.

About reference to the linux desktop tombstone... guess that means linux has the home server market all wrapped up. You know, something for all them smaller devices to communicate thru.


3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!

Yes, there's an Amiga port of Quake, available from Clickboom - but you need a pretty souped up amiga for it.

For reference, my last Amiga before I finally gave in and migrated to x86 Linux was a 233MHz PPC box with a Permedia 2 gfx card, 6GB HD, cdrom, and 64 MByte ram. The Amiga isn't exactly dead, but it's not exactly alive either.
The "classic" Amiga is still around (and the OS is still being updated - it's now at v3.9), but the owners of the Amiga trademark are concentrating on their new language-independent virtual machine which is basically a rich multimedia library set for the tao elate embedded operating system. Technologically, it is very impressive. It's not open source or Libre Software, though, so it's not exactly grabbing developer mindshare left right + centre as fast as linux does.

A lot of the good ideas that appeared on the Amiga in the 80s and 90s are only making it across to "mainstream" platforms now, however. I really wish people would occasionally check out the aminet before starting new projects, and make sure that there isn't a ready-made wodge of amiga source code there for whatever they're doing. The GPL and BSD licenses were very popular among amiga developers too, and the entire GNU CLI tools suite was ported to AmigaOS years ago, via a shared library arrangement like cygwin on windoze, called ixemul.library (shared libraries on the amiga have a .library extension....)

Well I have the SDK so I think I could answer some of your questions:

Real-time only means it meets timing guarantees. Not that it is fast. Real-time only means when I say it'll take 100 days to add two numbers, it absolutely won't take 101 days.

Yes, its true. It only means that it will meet the timing requirements. I'm sure that it doesn't meet them when it is hosted, but for a virtual processor is really fast. I always read here comparisons with Java. Java is slow, very slow. I have the Windows SDK and everything runs as fast as the host. I heard the Linux SDK is even faster. I was really surprised with the speed of the alpha blending demos that come with the SDK.

It is either new or it has a legacy. I don't understand how it can have both. In any case I seriously doubt this statement is anything other than marketing vapor.

You are right, this line is just marketing stuff.

Multiplatform and multimedia-centric are relatively useless buzzwords for game developers. Until Amiga's SDK becomes as powerful as DirectX (not that I'm saying DirectX is perfect, just that it's nice not to have to reinvent the wheel all the time) the Amiga will never be a dream come true for developers.

The Amiga DE will come with RenderWare (according to the manuals) and the framework is used in PS2, Dreamcast, PC and Mac. Don't know anything about sound or input devices but they are supposed to be working on something. We'll see.

That's a lot. The original Playstation only has 2 MB of system memory. The N64 has 4 MB. The Dreamcast has 16 MB. I'm not sure I want the OS eating up over 1/4 of the available memory on my console. Since it doesn't sound like they're talking about consoles, what do they mean when they say "multiplatform"?

The PS1 and the N64 don't count anymore. Everyone will start programming for the Dolphin, PS2, and Dreamcast only. They are talking about consoles and computers as well. The OS can run hosted in other operating systems and native in a lot of chips. Why everyone that posts here doesn't even bother to look for information before posting? Visit TAO which is the basis of the new OS.

Another thing you guys should know. Not everything is 'virtual-assembly'. When you compile a program the extension is program.00 (.00 means VP, the virtual processor instructions). You could compile to native code if you wanted but you will lose the portability. There is an extension for each native processor, for example .04=386, .16=PPC, .24=Pentium2, etc.

The only thing that I actually is a huge, but HUGE mistake is, believe it or not, that it doesn't have memory protection. It only protects the addresses from 0-128. I heard they were going to add it, and that currently it wasn't there because it was an embedded os. I hope is true.

This article doesn't really convey the point of the Tao Group's technology. Sure its a nifty assembler, but programmers middle aged and above will remember that assemblers used to be very much like this back when humans used them. Thats not new. (Dang whippernappers always thinking they're inventing repiration.)

The point behind the Tao stuff is that all of your code is built to the virtual assembly language and shipped as the virtual machine code. It is translated to local machine code as needed on the target system (and cached as appropriate for that system, eg. once forver to disk for desktop PCs).

This means one version of the application that runs on any (supported) target processor. It also means your final executable code is optimized for your particular processor, say K7 instead of just generic IA32 instruction set.

Tao has been add this since at least 1995, maybe earlier. They have good technology. Maybe its even useful. :-)

Ho hum. Tao/Amiga generalised VM. Runs Java, C, C++, various scripting languages + shells, and native virtual processor assembler.

Does the Indrema console support the Amiga / Tao Virtual Environment for development? I ask mainly because that would mean that any developers could be assured that their game would run on a variety of systems, and since RedHat bundles the new Amiga SDK.

• May I note to you that the SDK is running hosted on top of Linux with a performance penalty of 30-50%. ALso note that VP native assembler is several magnitudes faster than Java code while maintaining all the portability benefits.

  Tao`s Java engine is reported as being on THE fastest Java engine available on the market today (on native hardware with its own drivers etc)!

I've heard the claims about Tao's speed on native hardware. I believe that Java should be running on naked hardware, and I do believe that it could run that damn fast.

But I'd like to see it for myself.

Let's go to Tao's Website & look for benchmarks:

• While benchmarks are occasionally useful for clearly defined applications (such as the TumblerTM cryptographic toolkit), they can in most circumstances be thoroughly misleading. Most benchmarking systems for operating systems, the C language and the JavaTM platform fail to present relevant information in running 'real world' applications. Furthermore, different companies are selective about definitions so comparitive benchmarks between official corporate 'marketing' results has little value. While the benchmarks we have run for ElateRTM and for intent JavaTM Technology Edition, have provided stunning results, the Company has a policy of not providing operating system-related benchmarks which will inevitably lead Tao into an unwanted set of discussions. Tao's policy is to co-operate to allow the customers to reach their own conclusions about Elate's performance, compactness, consistency across platforms and other key criteria.

Okay - so does the native Tao VM come with the SDK, or only the Linux version? Does anyone actually have the native Tao VM, so we can see some benchmarks?

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade.
I do hope this is true.
I'd just like to see a grain of evidence.

cheers,
G

• May I note to you that the SDK is running hosted on top of Linux with a performance penalty of 30-50%. ALso note that VP native assembler is several magnitudes faster than Java code while maintaining all the portability benefits.

  Tao`s Java engine is reported as being on THE fastest Java engine available on the market today (on native hardware with its own drivers etc)!

I've heard the claims about Tao's speed on native hardware. I believe that Java should be running on naked hardware, and I do believe that it could run that damn fast.

But I'd like to see it for myself.

Let's go to Tao's Website & look for benchmarks:

• While benchmarks are occasionally useful for clearly defined applications (such as the TumblerTM cryptographic toolkit), they can in most circumstances be thoroughly misleading. Most benchmarking systems for operating systems, the C language and the JavaTM platform fail to present relevant information in running 'real world' applications. Furthermore, different companies are selective about definitions so comparitive benchmarks between official corporate 'marketing' results has little value. While the benchmarks we have run for ElateRTM and for intent JavaTM Technology Edition, have provided stunning results, the Company has a policy of not providing operating system-related benchmarks which will inevitably lead Tao into an unwanted set of discussions. Tao's policy is to co-operate to allow the customers to reach their own conclusions about Elate's performance, compactness, consistency across platforms and other key criteria.

Okay - so does the native Tao VM come with the SDK, or only the Linux version? Does anyone actually have the native Tao VM, so we can see some benchmarks?

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade.
I do hope this is true.
I'd just like to see a grain of evidence.

cheers,
G

Seems to fall into the same genre ( only with all the "yeah right... Amiga's making more promises" flames that get kicked up whenever this topic surfaces ) down to the "our Java code kicks Sun's Java code" machismo. Amiga aside, those of you who are interested should check out what Tao and their partners are doing on DeviceTop.com. Looks like Java for PDA might be here to stay.

I'll stop rambling now. :^)

--- [DrPsycho] Coping with reality since 1975.

-Daniel

1. everything is an object (limited by the fact that berlin is a GUI, so no Integer type classes, but thats to be expected in this problem domain), check.
2. the system is unified in the manner you speak of, check.
3. base classes don't really have to do with this, so no check on that.
4. i don't know about berlin having a CodeBlock object, and the http://www.berlin-consortium.org/ site appears to be currently down... (they were up yesterday, dammit!) but it seems like a CodeBlock object (or something close enough for jazz) would be damn good to have; necessary, even. hmmmm... i do remember something about how because of the way berlin uses CORBA, programmers are not restricted to one language in their dealings with berlin objects. that sounds close to what you describe. too bad the site is down. heh. i don't know enough about berlin to give this a checkmark or not.

and i have nothing whatsoever against object manipulation being done visually. shrug. if people dig it, let em. it could be kinda cool looking, although it would most likely end up as a cheesy attempted-gibsonish pile o' shit... aw well. we all know that people will find themselves irresistably drawn back to the command line from whence they came ;)

oh yea: you said "The possibility of a "language that's not a language" isn't meant to turn users into programmers---something not likely to happen"... i gotta disagree with ya there... i think that, as more and more people use open operating systems, the urge to try to change things will take its toll, and the user/programmer distenction will began to grow fuzzier... at least, thats a naive hope of mine :p

The Amiverse looks very exciting, I also found some interesting articles at devicetop.com relating to Tao/Amiga`s new OS:

Motorola`s first mobile phone based on Tao technology,

Review

Tao becomes Sun authorised JVM,

Elate first Heterogenous Multiprocessor OS,

ARM even states: "Because of the patented techniques, the intent JTE runs Java applications extremely quickly, more than 30 times faster than competitor's products."

Classic/NG Amiga article

The Amiverse looks very exciting, I also found some interesting articles at devicetop.com relating to Tao/Amiga`s new OS:

Motorola`s first mobile phone based on Tao technology,

Review

Tao becomes Sun authorised JVM,

Elate first Heterogenous Multiprocessor OS,

ARM even states: "Because of the patented techniques, the intent JTE runs Java applications extremely quickly, more than 30 times faster than competitor's products."

Classic/NG Amiga article

Amiga/Tao`s JVM technology is according to ARM "Because of the patented techniques, the intent JTE runs Java applications extremely quickly, more than 30 times faster than competitor's products"!

President of Amiga said at an Amiga show in Germany that it was around 22x faster with multimedia than ANY other JVM including Sun`s efforts. He also said Sun was introducing this new technology to its clients and it will become the new JVM standard. He also demonstrated the new SDK with blazing Java speeds.

An Amiga assembler coder founded a company in 1992 which is today known as the Tao Group.Read this interesting article. Its platform independence goes much further than solely application, but kernel, device drivers etc as well!

Amiga/Tao`s JVM technology is according to ARM "Because of the patented techniques, the intent JTE runs Java applications extremely quickly, more than 30 times faster than competitor's products"!

President of Amiga said at an Amiga show in Germany that it was around 22x faster with multimedia than ANY other JVM including Sun`s efforts. He also said Sun was introducing this new technology to its clients and it will become the new JVM standard. He also demonstrated the new SDK with blazing Java speeds.

An Amiga assembler coder founded a company in 1992 which is today known as the Tao Group.Read this interesting article. Its platform independence goes much further than solely application, but kernel, device drivers etc as well!

The only reason why x86 processors are still developed despite its inferior archtecture is because of the many x86 applications available.

This is why Java will soon become the main language for programming applications. The only limitation stopping this development is the speed of Java code execution.

Now with the new technologies developed by Tao Group and Amiga Inc this disadvantage will bew eliminated. Their JVM is quote "22x faster with Multimedia than any other JVM!".

Sun Microsystems will advice all it`s clients to use their JVM instead! More info here

The only reason why x86 processors are still developed despite its inferior archtecture is because of the many x86 applications available.

This is why Java will soon become the main language for programming applications. The only limitation stopping this development is the speed of Java code execution.

Now with the new technologies developed by Tao Group and Amiga Inc this disadvantage will bew eliminated. Their JVM is quote "22x faster with Multimedia than any other JVM!".

Sun Microsystems will advice all it`s clients to use their JVM instead! More info here

My personal favorite to go against Microsoft is Amiga Inc. which is developing some remarkable software together with the Tao Group !

But then there`s also QNX Neutrino which is more like the traditional OSes but with a solid clean structure. Outsiders like BeOS and MacOS X look less promising but have more potential than the current Microsoft monopoly. And finally Linux won`t become a truly better desktop OS, but it will survive as it`s free and has it`s useful for being a good server or development tool.

What`s view upon for the future?

About the only thing the forthcoming new Amiga has in common with the old "classic" Amiga is the name. If you read up on the Amiga and Tao, you'll see the new Amiga is quite innovative - a generalised virtual machine and operating system that dynamically recompiles for the target architecture, using optimising compilers running within the virtual machine (currently supported languages are C, C++, Java, and assembler for the virtual machine).
Sort of Transmeta-Crusoe-backwards. I also suspect the Tao Virtual Processor machine code will turn out to be quite similar to Crusoe native code, but that's just a hunch.

You may have seen the recent slashdot articles connected to Tao, such as the one about heterogenous multiprocessing CPU cores on a single die, with each core at least semi-automagically executing the parts of a Tao/Amiga application that it is best suited for.

As an ex-Amiga user, I find that many of the "innovations" of microsoft are only innovations with respect to their own previous product line. I'm sure many mac and UNIX people feel the same way. (Beleive it or not, many amiga people simply assumed versions of MS windows prior to 95 had pre-emptive multitasking, simply because it was such a trivial feature of a usable system in their eyes, the amiga having had it since 1985. Many were thus very surprised when MS touted it as a big new feature of W95, similarly with the multiple clipboards of Office 2000 - the amiga having had them since 1985 too...)

Anyway, my point is Microsoft does not innovate. It brings other people's innovations into the mainstream. It is a "close follower", not an "innovator", no matter what their PR dept. say.

Also, I'd hardly say systems research is dead. EROS is a very promising pure-capability GPLd OS, Atheos was recently mentioned on slashdot, Exokernels are still in development, The Tao/Amiga Enivronment is new, and ground-breaking system.

If you ask me, Mr. Pike is either hopelessly out of touch or just spouting the MS line for money...

It`s just an ordinary box with a super duper graphic card developed by nVidia. Anyone (with cash) can make such a deal with nVidia. But Microsoft has the power to push it forward and again dominate another market segment. IMHO the sooner M$ dies the better!

Let`s pray for salvation. Come on Tao show the world what your Elate RTOS can do!

Hmm... that means there are 4 Amiga-Like systems available today - two closed source and 2 open source:

Closed source:

AmigaOS itself: closed source operating system, now severely outdated, but groundbreaking for its time - soon to be replaced by a completely different OS from Tao, which is rather cool in itself, being a VM a bit like a Java VM, but without the language dependency (it includes a gcc/g++ port...)

BeOS - what most people think of as the AmigaOS done right. While it has been market mostly to Mac-like media people, in fact it attracted a load of ex-amiga people, particularly developers too. It's OS structure is undeniably similar to a refined AmigaOS.

Open Source:

AROS, the Amiga Research OS. An Open-source clone of Amiga OS 3.x, ported to architectures including x86. Many Amiga os-legal apps work with just a recompile. Not finished. Work progressing slowly due to legal complications - the OS depends on Amiga-copyrighted system include files and infringes on several Amiga patents. However, the current amiga intellectual property owners seem to look quite favourably upon AROS, and it looks increasingly likely it will get their blessing, since the Amiga is now going to be based on a completely different OS from Tao, and does not use any old AmigaOS code, so AROS is a good option for keeping the "classic" amiga alive and up-to-date. There's already Quake and Doom ports, so they've got the important stuff going. :-)

Atheos The new kid, the subject of this discussion. People have noted its UI similarity to the AmigaOS UI already on this thread, but architecturally it is also very similar to AmigaOS and BeOS. But it's open source, unlike AmigaOS and BeOS.

Taos was created by a former Amiga game programmer; I think I first saw the OS written up in Byte magazine nearly seven years ago.

I'm curious as to whether this will ultimately become the kernel of the full OS, and whether Linux isn't just a temporary move to get developers up and running until the real foundation is ready. I'm also curious why Taos was chosen. It doesn't seem to make sense at first glance, unless there's some interesting, new hardware coming down the pipe, or perhaps unless there's going to be a focus on automatic clustering.

Taos at the base could be a very brave, very challenging new step, entirely worthy of the Amiga name.

The new Amiga OS is supposed to be the Tao Elate. This OS can be run hosted on for example Linux. However the announcements so far just states that the developer boxes will run the os hosted (just to speedup development).

Read the technical section, it's a bit hyped up but basically everything on the site is true, it's not vapour.

Elate FAQ

The Elate RTOS

The Amiga OS is hardly dead, it's still being actively developed, in two main streams:

1. a next-gen distributed architecture based on the Tao VM (think of it as a language-agnostic generalised VM a bit like Java, but that can run on real hardware too).

2. the "classic" Amiga OS was extended to PowerPC with WarpOS (no relation to OS/2) microkernel. This allowed the user community to use more modern hardware, such as G3 accelerators, and 3D gfx cards.

The Amiga OS design, in the form of AROS - the "Amiga Research OS", which recently received blessing from Amiga itself, also lives on.

For more amiga info, go to www.amiga.org

Then there are lots of next-gen AmigaOS replacements occurring, some of them are actually making headway now, such as AROS. Other interesting ideas include trying to get the Linux Mac emulator (than runs on Linuxed Macs) to run on PPC enabled Amigas... That would be fun. Amigas have a wealth of OS's available to them, OpenBSD is the latest, others include Linux, NetBSD, QNX (well, it must run on the hardware, but it won't be released for a while I am sure), AmigaOS (never!) and probably a lot more.

Interestingly, the next-gen Amiga OS was going to be called Aqua - until Apple released their new UI. The Amiga has had a pretty rough year, even by the Amigas standards! Hoefully Tao will improve the fortunes, and maybe they should take a gander at OpenAL as their sound system. Sony also have relationships with Tao...

Java is bondage+discipline OO. C++, like Perl, or Fortan 95, does not force you to write OO code, but you can if you want to.

To be honest, I think people overestimate C++'s complexity. If you read the C++ programming language by Stroustrup, it is actually quite a clear and logical, if terse, language. The STL is quite cool.

Heck, even if you read Herb Schildt's books, he makes a reasonable job of explaining it (as an aside, although I don't recommend you learn C++ from Schildt's books, I do find them useful (gasp!) as a concise _reference_, which is how he intended most of them - you always hear people slating them as a learning tool, but that's silly - they're reference books...)

Personally, I don't like java (too restrictive), but I do like the VM idea, and would much rather there was greater proliferation of language-agnostic virtual machines, such as the Tao Group/Amiga VM (which desperately needs a GPL clone, btw)

I think the biggest thing holding back Java is Sun. If IBM were to push through an independent Java (-workalike) _standard_, possibly with an LGPL reference implementation, Java would be everywhere in a matter of months.

I still don't think it would take over from C++ completely though - C++ is simply more powerful.

I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over them [Amigas], much less why they're still relevant to any of us

The Amiga is relevant because it has always had a powerful-but-easy-to-use design philosphy. Linux/Unix is powerful, but can it ever be easy to use (for Joe L. User)? I know, people are working on it, but Linux's hardcore-nerd roots make it very challenging. And Windows of course is easy to use, if you want to do easy things, but difficult if you want to do powerful things. So, there is a big opportunity here, don't you think?

Certainly Amiga has had many abortive attempts at rebirth since Commodore went under many years ago, but the latest attempt looks to me like a winner. Here is a press release from jan 8:

Amiga Incorporated has entered into a strategic relationship with Tao Group for the New Amiga

These guys who bought Amiga have some very interesting ideas to do with an Object Oriented Operating Environment; and the underlying OS, Elate from Tao, looks very interesting too. Some highlights of Elate:

• real time (important for multimedia)
• object based from the ground up
• easy porting to new platforms (just one part of it needs ``just a few weeks to be written'' for a new platform).
• hardware independant executables
• can run hosted in another OS, so it can get on peoples computers by stealth (Be seems to be doing this too). If they like it, they can install it natively.

More info on Elate can be found at www.tao-group.com.

But it's still very early days, so don't get too excited just yet.