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Amiga Allies With Red Hat
Mike Bouma writes "Amiga and Red Hat are working together to provide the foundation for exciting games and consumer content for the desktop, set-top-box, game console, and handheld market.
This announcement follows monts after the disclosure of Amiga`s relationship with the Corel Corporation.
The Amiga SDK can now also be bought at Redhat.com.
Also take a look at this review which includes benchmark comparisons of the Java performance of the Amiga SDK running hosted on Redhat 6.1 and native Linux Java implementations."
I guess this puts to rest these rumors of the "magic" Java implementation that was supposed to be multiple factors faster than anything around. It's faster than IE in some cases, but on balance, IE kicks its butt.
Now could someone explain to me why anyone would use Java as a primary development language rather than where it's useful -- an embedded controller language?
Caveat: If we had native-language compilers (NOT compilers that operate on the byte codes), we might have some reasonable Java speed. Unfortunately, no one seems to want to remove the JVM millstone around the neck of Java-the-language -- and at the same time remove the brain damage from the language (such as the lack of an unsigned type, my personal pet peeve).
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
It is funny/frightening how to see that *all* the companies that previously worked with Amiga faced serious problems (Commodore, Gateway, etc.).
Will RedHat confirm this obervation ?
For what I see there is nothing that spectacular in their SDK, except Amiga's name.
I hope RedHat investors will trust them, though it's only sounding like a superstition.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
In an nutshell, the new Amiga OS based on the Taos java vm does work, but Amiga could care less about its users and their target is embedded devices and set-top boxes, not desktop apps and games that might run on a home computer. As most of you know, the initial SDK selling for $100 runs on top of RedHat linux, and you can develop many types of apps with it, but, the licensing for such applications includes this:
AS SET FORTH IN SECTION 3 OF YOUR LICENSE AGREEMENT, IF YOU DISTRIBUTE ANY SOFTWARE CREATED USING THE AMIGA SOFTWARE, YOU MUST PAY AMIGA A QUARTERLY ROYALTY. YOU ARE ALSO REQUIRED TO PROVIDE AMIGA A REPORT OF YOUR DISTRIBUTION AND THE RIGHT TO AUDIT YOUR RECORDS. To review details relating to these obligations, including the royalty rate you are obligated to pay, you may click the "Previous" button below to review the License Agreement again.
No point in reading much further into the license or taking the time to try out the SDK. If you ordered one, ask for your money back. It is a complete waste of your time.
Further, the Taos vm does not include memory protection, which makes it no better than the old Amiga for desktop apps but might be acceptable for appliances which consist of an os and just one app where if the app crashes the system is unusable anyway.
Squid is quite pessimistic though he has posted here tonight in to put a more positive spin on things.
I say fuck 'em. If you are an old Amigoid as I am then transfer those creative energies to Linux. There are plenty of good, free SDK's for developing games and more are in the works. Of course Amiga is allying with RedHat because RedHat is very interested in the internet appliance market. But this does not mean that RedHat has any plans whatsoever to incude an Amiga OS or addon with its Linux disto. Redhat has no sch plans.
The spirit of the old Amiga lives on in Linux even though the name is not the same. You might also be interested to know that Amiga Inc. is vigorously prosecuting anyone who uses the Amiga logo (in its various forms) on a website but I feel they have no right to the trademark. A trademark is more than a name, and they cannot claim to own what a user community has a much more valid claim to by imparting value to the mark. Amiga Inc. has done nothing to honor and respect their trademark, but has instead insisted on once again screwing the community with hype, false promises and licensing that makes development of software by small operators and enthusiasts next to impossible.
I wasted many an hour playing this game. The Mech design I found worked best was a 100 ton mech with maxxed out armor, 3 medium lasers, 3 small lasers, jump jets, and about 20 heat sinks. You used it by running up to an enemy and just pounding the snot out of them. By staggering your weapons fire (instead of shooting them all at once) you could keep up a continuous hail of fire, one shot every second. Because of the very short recycle time of the small & med lasers, you could slag most mechs in the time it took for their main battery of weapons to recycle. With enough heat sinks you could shoot your lasers all day and not build any heat. I usually deployed one of these mechs in tandem with a lightly armored missle boat; with this combination, I could easily defeat units that out-massed mine by 3 or 4 times. Granted, this design wouldn't work in the BattleTech board game, but on the computer it was unbeatable.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Would anyone else find it incredibly hilarious to have a Linux box with a flashing red "GURU MEDITATION" box?
Dear my! What are those things coming out of her nose?
Spaceballs!
"Amiga and Red Hat are working together to provide the foundation for exciting games and consumer content for the desktop, set-top-box, game console, and handheld market."
In case anyone's wondering, this sentence is 35% buzzwords (9 buzzwords, 26 words total).
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
One issue I haven't seen discussed is that the Elate/Amiga virtual machine always pretends like the machine is little endian (Intel-style). This is accomplished by using some trickery for byte and short pointers. On big endian systems, before a load instruction is executed (for 8 & 16 bit fetches) the pointer values are xor'ed with a mask to make it appear like the cpu is little endian.
Because of this, the result is a larger executable and slower execution times for big endian system (i.e. pretty much any non-intel system). I talked to Chris at Tao about this and he says most of the time is hidden in the pipeline. But I say you are always going to have negative effects. Your instruction cache will get filled faster because of more instructions and in the case where the pipeline doesn't stall on a load you can use that extra slot to do something else. My question is, how much effect does this have? I have yet to see anyone release perfomance numbers Java or otherwise for Amiga on a big endian system. Or maybe no one cares about non-intel anymore??
A have a little more info on this at my homepage.
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-- Virtual Windows Project
Dr. Michael Cowpland accepts position at Redhat, overseeing the new transmeta-based Amiga.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
False, Bill McEwen already clarified this! Absolutely NO royalties have to be payed to Amiga. Only if you want your product marketed by Amiga you can sign a VOLUNTARY contract and pay ONLY 1,5$ per title SOLD. (When you sel nothing you pay NOTHING)
And the Logo and trademark stuff isn`t true either. But their lawyers did advise them to publicly state that anyone using the AMiga logo or trademarks needs premision for it from Amiga. But don`t worry they won`t bite you, and if you have a really inportant website a little notice below your website would be enough.
Tucker working with FORD???? You have to be joking!
Do you know anything about the Tucker? If you did, you would know that 49 of the 50 originals are still in drivable condition! In other words, these are cars that are built to last. In addition the prototype still exists.
BTW, you do know that those nifty disk brakes on your car/truck were invented by Tucker? You also know that Tucker's head designer went on to design the Dynasoar for NASA - a forerunner to the Space Shuttle? Padded dashes?
The list of innovations Tucker developed could go on and on - most of them were "appropriated" after Tucker's company went under (due to the big three, like Ford)...
The world lost a little freedom the day Tucker's company was forced under...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
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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.
Uh - I don't know that these are correctionsTao`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 was analysing the only set of statistics available - talk is cheap, and I don't see any hard facts here.
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:
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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.
This is true - benchmarks are bogus - <cynicism>but this does look rather evasive.</cynicism>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
The logic test is designed to test the VM's ability to spot redundant loops of code & optomize them away. The 1.2.2 VM has an okay score but by the sound of this, it is a lot worse at this kind of optomization than the JIT in 1.1.8. That sucks.
A look at the breakdown of the test results shows the Amiga kicking ass at the image test, and especially the string test, but not showing too well elsewhere. That's a shame.
In the second set of tests, IBM gives it a thorough beating, everywhere except for the image test: 7000 to 3300 overall
I wish them all the best, but methinks the 'blazing fast Java' claim is really a little premature.
cheers,
G
Hard to see how Amiga can rise above the rest of the crowd unless they come up with something spectacular; what with Intel, AMD and Transmeta staking out the processor / hardware end of town and Microsoft / MacOS / Linux (various flavors) staking out the OS end. Someone should remind Amiga that the world is a very different place to the 1980s ! Amiga had its opportunity to break new ground, but instead chose to cling to the past.
A fundamentally new OS with an emphasis on cross-platform binaries, the ability to multiprocess on non-homogenous CPUs, shipped as a "hosted" system running on another OS (at least for the time being). An Amiga with no hardware of its own, no custom chips to become obsolete in 18 months. A totally fresh start, no 68K code at all, except inside an emulation layer (probably UAE or a derivative).
Yep, I'm just feelin' the 1980s here...
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Let's see. Linux, Red Hat, Amiga, a gaming SDK, Corel, Java and vaporware. All in one item.
The only way to make it more ridiculous would be to somehow connect it to Pete Townshend and the next Star Wars movie.
In short, if you're going to host with Linux, and want some serious impact on the general public, there are plenty of distributions to choose from. Some are better choices than others, and the ubiquitous distro-flame-wars are proof of that. Why not go corporate... go well established... go RedHat. I'm sure RedHat has plenty more going for it than just slick PR, while your opinions of the actual distribution may vary.
--- [DrPsycho] Coping with reality since 1975.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975