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Amiga Inc. Files Multiprocessing Patent
Pappy writes " It looks as if Amiga Inc's development wing has filed a patent involving a very unique Multiprocessing scheme, in which groups of processors are thrown into 'Clusters', as well as coming up with a interesting Bus-Arbitration scheme for Multiple Processor groups. Check out the patent online. " Given this, the political movements with Linux, and the recent silence, I'm inclined to think of the Tom Waits song: "What's he doing in there?"
I truely pity the poor, pathetic specimens clinging to this anciant and archaic technology.
Not all of us rabidly spout Amiga advocacy to anyone unfortunate enough to be within shouting distance. Not all of us are kidding ourselves that the current Amiga technology is anything other than "archaic". Not all of us care that the Amiga Classic is, to all intents and purposes, "dead".
We use Amigas because we like them. They're not the latest and greatest. They have clock speeds measured in tens of megahertz, not hundreds. Their OS is a little creaky and a little unstable. So what? They're fun, and charming, and friendly, and a little eccentric. Just like their users :-)
We're not doing you any harm. So why do you, and others like you, insist on calling us names?
The Amiga may be vapour ware, only time will tell. But since Amiga's already run on PowerPC chips your concept of the Amiga state of the art is wildly inaccurate. Not that you should let reality get in the way of your posturing.
There are a lot of valid points that can be made about the viability of the Amiga in the long run. Similar cases on differing points can be made for the BeOS, Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, MacOS, MacOS X, FreeBSD and Linux. If you'd have mentioned the reluctance of development houses to port software to anything but Windows you'd have a point. If you'd have mentioned the high costs of manufacturing a new niche player in the hardware arena you'd have a point. However, your position can best be summarized by:
Have you ever had a relative who laid on his deathbed for years and years and refused to just keel over and die?
Those are braindead posturers. Boy I wish they'd just roll over and die already...
"The Amiga may be vapour ware, only time will tell"
...
That's funny, I guess we can say that about ALL vapourware, right?
If I may quote Monty Python:
Praline: Look matey (picks up Amiga) this computer wouldn't go voom if I put four thousand volts through it. It's bleeding demised.
Shopkeeper: It's not. It's pining.
Praline: It's not pining, it's passed on. This computer is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late computer. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-computer!
Shopkeeper: Well I'd better replace it then.
Praline:(to camera)If you want to get anything done in this country you've got to complain till you're blue in the mouth.
Shopkeeper: Sorry guv', we're right out a Amigas.
Praline: I see. I see. I get the picture.
Shopkeeper: I've got a Pentium III.
Praline: Does it run AmigaOS?
Shopkeeper: Not really, no.
Praline: Well, it's scarcely a replacement, then is it?
J.
Check out the claims of the patent. Especially claim number three, which reads: "the CPUs are all Intel® Pentium® Pro processors.".
Amiga won't get my money if they go Intel, that's for sure. Then it's phase5 g4 box with qnx and linux for me.
Collas, are you listening?
This patent is very, very old.
The main opinion in the Amiga-community
is, that Amiga Inc. filed the patent for
another company, also bought by Gateway2000
in 1997. See comp.sys.amiga.misc for details.
Joerg Dietrich
There seem to be a few problems with this patent as far as prior art. For example, the clustering idea has been around since at least the 80's (the Carnegie Mellon CM* project, for example). Maybe they had a different scheme for arbitration, though. Many of the more advanced PCI architectures might qualify, however. There are compact PCI boards that have more than 1 processor. If a system had more than one of these cards in a system, it could fall under this patent (PCI arbiters sometimes use round robin schemes as mentioned in the patent).
Overall, I'd say it's interesting, but hardly novel, but I do look forward to seeing mainstream devices with this architecture.