At href="http://www.amiga-news.de/archive/neussshow.s html you can find a small part of what his employer said:
Further he introduced Dean Brown (DKB) as Director of Hardware once more. Mr. Brown would be responsible for creating referenz hardware for interessted third-party developers to look about. A game handheld device would allready be finished, which was in use by Amiga internally to impress interessted parties with the features of the new operating environment. Based on a StrongARM with 250 Mips, a port for a Sony Memory Stick, and a coloured display this device might figure well - and it was finished after one week of development!
About the new Vice President of Engineering McEwen showed himself mysteryous. This man might not get introduced bevore the 10th of Juli, cause he still is employed by another company - "one that is large, and is in trouble, you know...", and with this words a gesture of tearing something apart....
Further on information about the performance characteristics of the Java[TM] Virtual Machine - which is, acording to Mr. McEwen 22 times faster in handling multimedia content than any other JVM does (!)
McEwen set clear too, that he wouldn't ask the Amiga Community for patience. The fact, that this show is happening, that the audience is pressing into this (admittedly too small) room would argument enough that Amiga users are patient - over 5 years, allready. But he continues to set clear, that he and his associates are working for the same number of month to fulfill those high expectations.
As a first evidence of success Mr. McEwen took Amiga's SDK to the show, which - as he stated emphatic - still would be very incomplete, and would target experienced developers in main. The end-users will still have to wait for a seizable product for some time. E.g. there still is no sound support, streaming support or 3D graphics support included with the SDK, which will follow later (e.g. 3D support after about 3 month).
In the case of the critical theme of marketing McEwen admited, he still didn't employe a VP of Marketing - he thinks first to develope a product that would worth a respective marketing would be more important, than making generous announcements which can't get fulfilled with the best Amiga tradition.
Next he talked about the original plans to provide a deverloper's box by combining hard and software together. Because of the Amiga user's negative replies to this, they made up their minds - which required a lot of changes an additional programs (e.g. installer scripts). Now the software of the SDK was released; the HW/SW developer's box would follow after about 2 weeks.
Amiga would target ""Ubiquity in Computing": mobile phones, PDAs, multimedia processor servers, a new desktop, a new game console, all of that with the same operating environment - something like that would never have been there.
Applications with this would be fully scalable. After a developer has decided were to put his applications, this one application could climb up the ",Food Chain" as high as it was wanted to. So, a game coded for a handheld would even run on a multiprocessor server. But on the other hand an application writen for a server wouldn't run on a mobile phone - or better to say - only very, very slow....
Processors allready supported by the operating environment would be PPC, M.core, X68, StrongARM, ARM, Sh/3,4,5, MIPS and a number of other CPUs, which they can't name (at this time), cause they are under NDAs with the manufacturers.
At the end Bill was talking about the JavaOne, a show that happend in San Francisco last week, and at which the Tao Group had a booth. The same demonstration shown here at the Amiga show there was running on a Sega DreamCast, on set-top-boxes, a StrongARM notebook, and a X86 computer. Only this was enough to magnetise the audience, and then they would have taken out a mobile phone on which a Pole Position clone could run, in spite of the low performance of 3,5 Mips. This would have been the same mobile phone which Scott McNeilly (Sun) had with him when he entered the stage at the CES in January, &qout;I've tolled you that once we will have Java[TM] running on such a device, once a day" - just, that it wasn't Sun's Java[TM] Virtual Machine running on that mobile phone....
And Linux wouldn't be the only operating system that would come into question as a host for the new Amiga. Other hosts would be Windows, WindowsNT, Linux, WindowsCE, QNX, and OS/9 (a market leading OS from Microware for set-top boxes). Host support for iTron, Epoc, VxWorks, and PalmOS would be in development, and close to be finished.
The cooperation between the Tao Group and Amiga Mr. McEwen illuminated in quite another way. It wasn't necessary that they would use only Tao's products. In fact they would have access to 50 developers at the Tao Group to create things needed by Amga.
Furthermore the BOOPSI libraries were portetd. This porting would be allready finished. They would now do testings and optimizations. The new scripting language (SHEEP) would also be finished during the next month - the rights for ARexx belong to a third-party manufacturer, and because of that they would develope another language. The catchword renderware was spoken, too. The new operating environment would be prepared even for this. .
And then Bill McEwen had a very special goody to offer: Once the single parts of the operating environment will be put together there will be the AmigaOne - a new multimedia desktop, developed and designed by Amiga, even if manufactured by thir-party manufacturers. McEwen didn't want to say more about that at that early stage, the way to go would still be very long.
Since it is a few minutes after midnight, and tomorrow there will be another day of the show waiting I'll finish for now. This was only the first half of the presentation. I'll report about the other half tomorrow....
...part two
McEwen continued on OEMs and ISVs - the latter being companies willing to support Amiga, but unable to "take their eyes off" what they are doing for a living right now. Eleven such ISVs had given their source code to Amiga - free of charge, free to port.
Of course, the well-known partners of the Tao-Group were mentioned: Sun, Sony, Motorola, JVC and others. McEwen recommended reading the press release from the Tao site (about the certification of their Java machine) - Amiga is in dealings with all those companies mentioned.
Then, McEwen showed pictures of his former office, and of the new "Amiga World Headquarter". Five other companies were located there, building high-end electronics for other companies for demonstratiuon purposes - with Amiga being able to use their equipment for free.
Then, Bill McEwen started demonstrating the new OS, hosted under Red Hat Linux on a notebook. He stressed that there was no hardware acceleration involved (which, as said before, will follow in August). It is difficult to put into words, but we saw lightning-fast Java demos, some 2D games, the well-known Boing demo, some free moving Boing balls you could grab and shoot inot the air with the mouse, a unicode browser, 2D filters, the transparent "Clock" window (where you could grab a ball through the clock - everything running on top of Linux, without any flicker or slow-down. Well, not true, I saw it flickering: when McEwen was starting the OS a second time, in a different window, the first one froze for a split-second, to continue as fast and fluently as before, while McEwen started the same number of demos again in the second window.
The demo was very impressive given the early stage of development, the pictures only grab a small portion of it.
McEwen was unable to elaborate on further plans, but recommended an article in Byte magazine from 1994, linked from the Amiga homepage; some of these things would redefine Distributed Computing completely.
Towards the end, McEwen answered some questions. I recorded the whole presentation on tape, but some questions couldnt be heard over the background noise, and some answers made no sense without the questions. I transscribed what I could make sense of, and left out one or two sentences I could not make sense of. As soon as I get my hands on the right adapter cable, I will make a MP3 recording of the tape (which was recorded with permission from Mr. McEwen).
F: What about the classic OS? McEwen: We are using the pieces whereever it makes sense.
F: Will there be an emulation for it?< McEwen: We already have an emulator working. Testing is already done, we are now optimizing it so it runs very very fast. You guys know Brian King? You know where he works? He is a good man, Brian. Hes helping us. So were working to speed it up right now, its a little slow. So we are in the process of optimizing it.
McEwen: Before somebody asks, youre asking if Im gonna porting it to PPC. No. Ill tell you why. No matter who Ive spoken with, R.J. Mical, Carl Sassenrath, Alan Havemose, everyone of them has looked at this in the past. Its an 18-month to 24-month process, and all of them agree it will only be 80% complete. Because Id had to re-engineer the AGA chipset, Id have to re-engineer Agnus, Denise, all those things are tied directly to the OS. In fact the hardest thing for Havemose in building the 3.1 were all those bugs that were in those chips they have to account for. So right now it would be too costly for us to make the moves necessary to capitalize on the market, we need to move forward. It doesnt help me to be everywhere. It doesnt help me to build a scaleable operating system, which is what we need to be to win. Making just another system on a chip is not enough. We need to be able to go to Sony, go to Panasonic, go to all those guys and say "pick your chip".
F: (Schlecht zu verstehen, Frage über die Hardware-Anforderungen des SDK, ob es ein spezieller Prozessor sein muß.) McEwen: The SDK, if you are able to run Red Hat Linux you should be fine. We tested it on Red Hat and Corel. So you should be absolutely fine on that.
F: Will it also run on the Amiga? McEwen: Not right now, no. We dont have anything on the 68000. We are hoping to work with our other friends so when you got PPC, which we know Linux can run on there, we can run on top of that. And we will be able to run native, on those, on the PPC cards. Thats one of our biggest problems right now, youve got commitments from people delivering, and nothing is happening.
F: Do you plan to change the design of the interface? McEwen: It is designed with the flexibility similar to today so you can make it the way you want. There will be defaults, so an Amiga users might want to have Workbench as their default, but for other consumers, they might to want it different. You will have defaults with the flexibility to change it the way you want.
F: (nicht zu verstehen) McEwen: If you are running Linux on a PPC card within an Amiga, alright? We have not tested it yet, however the two manufacturers have tested it and said it can run.
F: (nicht zu verstehen) McEwen: Not with the first build, no. Part of it is a tools issue, the tools needed to utilize it. We have two companies right now in the process of making an IDE specifically for us, so that wont be required in the future. Everything is not in here (SDK), we know that, and there are certaily things to change; however, we felt it important enough to get people to understand writing for VP and some changes. Chris Hinsley, who created this, as you know, is an Amiga gaming guy; and I think you will find, as most have found as they began to play with this, its extremly similar, in many ways as we write today. So it will be a very wuick curve, but there will be a curve. So we want it to get into peoples hands first, so they can begin working with it, utilize it, begin writing some applications, you know. Get familiar, so when we add the other components to it, you will be able to get moving much quicker.
F: (schlecht zu verstehen, eine weitere Frage zur Kompatibilität mit alten Anwendungen) McEwen: In fact we already have an emulator that is working. Its not in this build, since we are in optimization, yes. In fact were also looking into a hardware solution to do it.
F: Everything on the SDK is usable on an Amiga PPC? McEwen: Nonono. Whats on here is designed right now to work with Red Hat on an x86 platform or on Corel, ok? When its completed, and you have an executive OS running, everything is fine, it can run. Again, we havent tested it yet, according to third parties it can run on a PowerPC accelerator within an Amiga, as long as Linux is there. We havent tested it yet, so Im not telling you yes it can. We want to test it first. Weve got two machines in the house we are doing it on.
F: (schlecht zu verstehen, eine Frage über die zu erwartende Verfügbarkeit von Software für das neue System) McEwen: We have 131 applications already dedicated. F: Also games? McEwen: Most of them are games. There is a very large Indian company who does a lot of interactive games [...] they already commited to us and will be moving all their games over to Amiga. They have 63 games themselves, all of them for multiuser interactive gaming over the net.
F: (nicht zu verstehen) McEwen: Oh, oh, the multiple screens? Yeah, thats fine. What you see today from a visual perspective you still can get, ok? All the multiple layers, etcetera, thats still here, thats ok. Thats what you were asking, right?
Actually that quote was from devicetop.com and not from the newsgroups, it is either a typo Or maybe he is ill informed, which seems unlikely as an important Amiga employee.
He probably said that to cool down the excitement in within the Amiga community. Other communities won`t take the real figures seriously and ignore it as vaporware.
It is maybe better for them to wait untill the real speed tests and official announcements start bombing the news. As this would make a bigger impact.
The SDK v1.0 comes standard with a C/C++ Compiler, Java Compiler, VP Assembler, some GNU standard utilites, many demos and sources, etc. New languages are being worked on, that is very much a work in progress.
> The platform independence sounds interesting, but it's been beaten to death with Java already.
This efficient, superfast and low-bloat technology will allow Java to prosper.
> What about openness?
A Gary Peake quote: "We intend to open source a lot of things for open source programmers who wish to participate in our Dream. There is a tremendous amount of talent in the open source community who wants to work with us. We want their help as well. We intend to let them shine and show what they can do with as few restraints as possible, where we can. Open Source developers will pay no license fees, no certification fees, and will be treated with all the support we can give them for free. Any open source software, drivers, tools will be so designated when certified by us."
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!
It can be bought online from amazon.com or an authorized dealer. It`s 99$ and you will get free support and a nice manual and free updates as the OS advances.
> In any case, thanks for drawing attention to an interesting virtual machine. Diversity is a good thing.
Actually Sun currently busy advises all it clients to stop developing other JVMs and concentrate on this new technology instead.
QSSL (QNX) has made this decision some time ago. QSSL`s very competent coders were busy doing a good JVM implementation untill Tao showed them the light.
It is rather interesting that both Tao/Amiga and QSSL are members of a consortium called "The phoenx platform consortium" which goal is to produce a new Amiga-like operation system.
>He! I saw it with my own eyes! I tell you it is capable of running 3 versions of Quake and 2 versions of Doom simultaniously at full speed while hosted on Linux! Without an host (read Elate RTOS only) it will be even faster (up to two times as fast!)
I should add that this was done on a 500 mhz AMD K6-2. It used NO 3D hardware acceleration, all software!
As I thought you and others would probably doubt my words I searched the internet hard for evidence for my bold claims.It was difficult as it has been one of the best kept secrets.
Quote from ARM page "Because of the patented techniques, the intent JTE runs Java applications extremely quickly, more than 30 times faster than competitor's products."
He! I saw it with my own eyes! I tell you it is capable of running 3 versions of Quake and 2 versions of Doom simultaniously at full speed while hosted on Linux! Without an host (read Elate RTOS only) it will be even faster (up to two times as fast!)
> A faster interpreter does not help very much.
It is not an interpreter.(The JVM was totally rewritten in VP code) It uses some new translating technique. VP code is very compact and the translation happens in loadtime. The code is mostly smaller than the native code into which it will be translated! The translation is so fast that it can translate the code faster than it can be read for an harddrive.
> Java is ahead of its time in a way, since it is not dependent on specific instruction sets.
Sun has done a good job. But Tao is the real expert at this. In 1992 an Amiga assemble Games writter erected a new company upon his great new idea of an hardware independent OS. 8 years later his company is ready to revolutionize the computing industry.
This is exactly what this new technolgy solves! It`s by far the smallest and fastest JVM available. It is truly a breakthrough technology. Amazing it still isn`t all over slashdot... As all geeks should want to know.
Get an Amiga SDK (Redhat 6.1 recommended but it seems to work on any Linux distribution) and see for yourself. Note that VP assembler code is even faster while maintaining portability!
More importantly this technology goes even further than solely applications. Device drivers, kernel, etc are completely written in VP code!
This is also the only technology allowing SMP with different CPUs types.
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
I have seen this technology at work with my own eyes! Trust me, it will change the computing industry as we know it!
There is still much to be done though, but the foundation is there and it`s the most amazing and exciting OS development I have seen in the last ten years!
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.
Although this may sound similar the end result will be completely different.
With Transmeta you will be solely dependent on their chip, as with Amiga/Tao`s RTOS you can choose any CPU you like. For example a SMP systems that uses both x86 and PPC chips. Elate is the only OS that supports Heterogenous Multiprocessing!
All developers who bought Amiga`s SDK (Software developers kit) or developer`s machine will be able to get free support for the Elate based Amie RTOS here .
LOL How many different types of programs can you imagine to program for a pre-1985 DOS?
No Games, Graphical Programs, GUI Programs, etc that`s the type of stuff for the creative mind and potential PD and Shareware developer. That`s why it took of the way it did. With some marketing it would have been a breakthrough not only on the technical side.
> the last thing one needs on a mobile is an OS to emulate another OS
What the hell are you talking about? Who said anything about emulation? An early version of the OS is already used in some cool Motorola phones. On these phoses you can actually do multimedia. But this is only the beginning, everyone here will be impressed for sure.:)
> Besides the fact that that's a huge exaggeration, so what?
When it some to the OS it isn`t an exaggeration!
If you could buy a computer for $500 with a 100 mhz processor that offers the same performance as a $2000 600 mhz computer. Which would you buy?
> What exactly "less" are modern operating systems doing exactly?
In the present for every MB the OS expands less features are being added. That`s because OS developers have become lazy and don`t care to optimise things. If a program doesn`t run fast enough the see a faster processor and even more memory as the only solution:/
> But you don't seem to be able to define exactly what this new platform is going to do for the average user.
The user will have more freedom of choice. When a new processor is being released they can switch to it without leaving their software behind. It will also give true processor rivalry as now their performances can be compared easily. Image you could take all your software from your obsolete x86 architecture with you onto a totally redesigned processor like MAJC, G4, etc.
> They do everything the Amiga did, and far, far more (let's not even talk about protected or virtual memory).
What far, far more? The only thing that "modern" OSes do what AmigaOS doesn`t is MP. VP can be added but it totally unnecessary as AmigaOS is very efficient with it`s memory. Classic Amigas can still do cool things compared to Linux, MacOS and windows like displaying mutiple resolutions and color depths within one screen, shared libraries, PRE-EMPTIVE multitasking, instant booting, etc.
> One thing I will guarantee you is the days of writing an OS completely in assembly are over (although, parts are certainly still assembly).
Well the foundation for the new Amiga platform is!:)
Why post a reply to every message I write and say it`s bullshit? You are truly a pathetic anonymous coward. At least try to respond with an insightful statement or opinion.:(
> What is it about modern OSs that you dislike so much?
They are bigger while they can do less. Size is very important it does not only save you harddrive space but also make things work much faster. That`s why an 50 mhz 68060 powered Amiga running AmigaOS feels faster than a 600 mhz PIII running Windows.
Amiga software was often written in pure assembler code allowing amazing speeds! I don`t mind people developing games purely in C code but the OS has to be booted each and every time so it should be as fast as possible!
Also Amiga will be targetting very small mobile appliances which don`t have much memory and super fast processors. Imagine playing games like online multiplayer quake at full speed on your mobile phone.
Slashdot Mirror
At href="http://www.amiga-news.de/archive/neussshow.s html you can find a small part of what his employer said:
Further he introduced Dean Brown (DKB) as Director of Hardware once more. Mr. Brown would be responsible for creating referenz hardware for interessted third-party developers to look about. A game handheld device would allready be finished, which was in use by Amiga internally to impress interessted parties with the features of the new operating environment. Based on a StrongARM with 250 Mips, a port for a Sony Memory Stick, and a coloured display this device might figure well - and it was finished after one week of development!
About the new Vice President of Engineering McEwen showed himself mysteryous. This man might not get introduced bevore the 10th of Juli, cause he still is employed by another company - "one that is large, and is in trouble, you know...", and with this words a gesture of tearing something apart....
Further on information about the performance characteristics of the Java[TM] Virtual Machine - which is, acording to Mr. McEwen 22 times faster in handling multimedia content than any other JVM does (!)
McEwen set clear too, that he wouldn't ask the Amiga Community for patience. The fact, that this show is happening, that the audience is pressing into this (admittedly too small) room would argument enough that Amiga users are patient - over 5 years, allready. But he continues to set clear, that he and his associates are working for the same number of month to fulfill those high expectations.
As a first evidence of success Mr. McEwen took Amiga's SDK to the show, which - as he stated emphatic - still would be very incomplete, and would target experienced developers in main. The end-users will still have to wait for a seizable product for some time. E.g. there still is no sound support, streaming support or 3D graphics support included with the SDK, which will follow later (e.g. 3D support after about 3 month).
In the case of the critical theme of marketing McEwen admited, he still didn't employe a VP of Marketing - he thinks first to develope a product that would worth a respective marketing would be more important, than making generous announcements which can't get fulfilled with the best Amiga tradition.
Next he talked about the original plans to provide a deverloper's box by combining hard and software together. Because of the Amiga user's negative replies to this, they made up their minds - which required a lot of changes an additional programs (e.g. installer scripts). Now the software of the SDK was released; the HW/SW developer's box would follow after about 2 weeks.
Amiga would target ""Ubiquity in Computing": mobile phones, PDAs, multimedia processor servers, a new desktop, a new game console, all of that with the same operating environment - something like that would never have been there.
Applications with this would be fully scalable. After a developer has decided were to put his applications, this one application could climb up the ",Food Chain" as high as it was wanted to. So, a game coded for a handheld would even run on a multiprocessor server. But on the other hand an application writen for a server wouldn't run on a mobile phone - or better to say - only very, very slow....
Processors allready supported by the operating environment would be PPC, M.core, X68, StrongARM, ARM, Sh/3,4,5, MIPS and a number of other CPUs, which they can't name (at this time), cause they are under NDAs with the manufacturers.
At the end Bill was talking about the JavaOne, a show that happend in San Francisco last week, and at which the Tao Group had a booth. The same demonstration shown here at the Amiga show there was running on a Sega DreamCast, on set-top-boxes, a StrongARM notebook, and a X86 computer. Only this was enough to magnetise the audience, and then they would have taken out a mobile phone on which a Pole Position clone could run, in spite of the low performance of 3,5 Mips. This would have been the same mobile phone which Scott McNeilly (Sun) had with him when he entered the stage at the CES in January, &qout;I've tolled you that once we will have Java[TM] running on such a device, once a day" - just, that it wasn't Sun's Java[TM] Virtual Machine running on that mobile phone....
And Linux wouldn't be the only operating system that would come into question as a host for the new Amiga. Other hosts would be Windows, WindowsNT, Linux, WindowsCE, QNX, and OS/9 (a market leading OS from Microware for set-top boxes). Host support for iTron, Epoc, VxWorks, and PalmOS would be in development, and close to be finished.
The cooperation between the Tao Group and Amiga Mr. McEwen illuminated in quite another way. It wasn't necessary that they would use only Tao's products. In fact they would have access to 50 developers at the Tao Group to create things needed by Amga.
Furthermore the BOOPSI libraries were portetd. This porting would be allready finished. They would now do testings and optimizations. The new scripting language (SHEEP) would also be finished during the next month - the rights for ARexx belong to a third-party manufacturer, and because of that they would develope another language. The catchword renderware was spoken, too. The new operating environment would be prepared even for this. .
And then Bill McEwen had a very special goody to offer: Once the single parts of the operating environment will be put together there will be the AmigaOne - a new multimedia desktop, developed and designed by Amiga, even if manufactured by thir-party manufacturers. McEwen didn't want to say more about that at that early stage, the way to go would still be very long.
Since it is a few minutes after midnight, and tomorrow there will be another day of the show waiting I'll finish for now. This was only the first half of the presentation. I'll report about the other half tomorrow....
...part two
McEwen continued on OEMs and ISVs - the latter being companies willing to support Amiga, but unable to "take their eyes off" what they are doing for a living right now. Eleven such ISVs had given their source code to Amiga - free of charge, free to port.
Of course, the well-known partners of the Tao-Group were mentioned: Sun, Sony, Motorola, JVC and others. McEwen recommended reading the press release from the Tao site (about the certification of their Java machine) - Amiga is in dealings with all those companies mentioned.
Then, McEwen showed pictures of his former office, and of the new "Amiga World Headquarter". Five other companies were located there, building high-end electronics for other companies for demonstratiuon purposes - with Amiga being able to use their equipment for free.
Then, Bill McEwen started demonstrating the new OS, hosted under Red Hat Linux on a notebook. He stressed that there was no hardware acceleration involved (which, as said before, will follow in August). It is difficult to put into words, but we saw lightning-fast Java demos, some 2D games, the well-known Boing demo, some free moving Boing balls you could grab and shoot inot the air with the mouse, a unicode browser, 2D filters, the transparent "Clock" window (where you could grab a ball through the clock - everything running on top of Linux, without any flicker or slow-down. Well, not true, I saw it flickering: when McEwen was starting the OS a second time, in a different window, the first one froze for a split-second, to continue as fast and fluently as before, while McEwen started the same number of demos again in the second window.
The demo was very impressive given the early stage of development, the pictures only grab a small portion of it.
McEwen was unable to elaborate on further plans, but recommended an article in Byte magazine from 1994, linked from the Amiga homepage; some of these things would redefine Distributed Computing completely.
Towards the end, McEwen answered some questions. I recorded the whole presentation on tape, but some questions couldnt be heard over the background noise, and some answers made no sense without the questions. I transscribed what I could make sense of, and left out one or two sentences I could not make sense of. As soon as I get my hands on the right adapter cable, I will make a MP3 recording of the tape (which was recorded with permission from Mr. McEwen).
F: What about the classic OS?
McEwen: We are using the pieces whereever it makes sense.
F: Will there be an emulation for it?<
McEwen: We already have an emulator working. Testing is already done, we are now optimizing it so it runs very very fast. You guys know Brian King? You know where he works? He is a good man, Brian. Hes helping us. So were working to speed it up right now, its a little slow. So we are in the process of optimizing it.
McEwen: Before somebody asks, youre asking if Im gonna porting it to PPC. No. Ill tell you why. No matter who Ive spoken with, R.J. Mical, Carl Sassenrath, Alan Havemose, everyone of them has looked at this in the past. Its an 18-month to 24-month process, and all of them agree it will only be 80% complete. Because Id had to re-engineer the AGA chipset, Id have to re-engineer Agnus, Denise, all those things are tied directly to the OS. In fact the hardest thing for Havemose in building the 3.1 were all those bugs that were in those chips they have to account for. So right now it would be too costly for us to make the moves necessary to capitalize on the market, we need to move forward. It doesnt help me to be everywhere. It doesnt help me to build a scaleable operating system, which is what we need to be to win. Making just another system on a chip is not enough. We need to be able to go to Sony, go to Panasonic, go to all those guys and say "pick your chip".
F: (Schlecht zu verstehen, Frage über die Hardware-Anforderungen des SDK, ob es ein spezieller Prozessor sein muß.)
McEwen: The SDK, if you are able to run Red Hat Linux you should be fine. We tested it on Red Hat and Corel. So you should be absolutely fine on that.
F: Will it also run on the Amiga?
McEwen: Not right now, no. We dont have anything on the 68000. We are hoping to work with our other friends so when you got PPC, which we know Linux can run on there, we can run on top of that. And we will be able to run native, on those, on the PPC cards. Thats one of our biggest problems right now, youve got commitments from people delivering, and nothing is happening.
F: Do you plan to change the design of the interface?
McEwen: It is designed with the flexibility similar to today so you can make it the way you want. There will be defaults, so an Amiga users might want to have Workbench as their default, but for other consumers, they might to want it different. You will have defaults with the flexibility to change it the way you want.
F: (nicht zu verstehen) McEwen: If you are running Linux on a PPC card within an Amiga, alright? We have not tested it yet, however the two manufacturers have tested it and said it can run.
F: (nicht zu verstehen)
McEwen: Not with the first build, no. Part of it is a tools issue, the tools needed to utilize it. We have two companies right now in the process of making an IDE specifically for us, so that wont be required in the future. Everything is not in here (SDK), we know that, and there are certaily things to change; however, we felt it important enough to get people to understand writing for VP and some changes. Chris Hinsley, who created this, as you know, is an Amiga gaming guy; and I think you will find, as most have found as they began to play with this, its extremly similar, in many ways as we write today. So it will be a very wuick curve, but there will be a curve. So we want it to get into peoples hands first, so they can begin working with it, utilize it, begin writing some applications, you know. Get familiar, so when we add the other components to it, you will be able to get moving much quicker.
F: (schlecht zu verstehen, eine weitere Frage zur Kompatibilität mit alten Anwendungen)
McEwen: In fact we already have an emulator that is working. Its not in this build, since we are in optimization, yes. In fact were also looking into a hardware solution to do it.
F: Everything on the SDK is usable on an Amiga PPC?
McEwen: Nonono. Whats on here is designed right now to work with Red Hat on an x86 platform or on Corel, ok? When its completed, and you have an executive OS running, everything is fine, it can run. Again, we havent tested it yet, according to third parties it can run on a PowerPC accelerator within an Amiga, as long as Linux is there. We havent tested it yet, so Im not telling you yes it can. We want to test it first. Weve got two machines in the house we are doing it on.
F: (schlecht zu verstehen, eine Frage über die zu erwartende Verfügbarkeit von Software für das neue System)
McEwen: We have 131 applications already dedicated.
F: Also games?
McEwen: Most of them are games. There is a very large Indian company who does a lot of interactive games [...] they already commited to us and will be moving all their games over to Amiga. They have 63 games themselves, all of them for multiuser interactive gaming over the net.
F: (nicht zu verstehen) McEwen: Oh, oh, the multiple screens? Yeah, thats fine. What you see today from a visual perspective you still can get, ok? All the multiple layers, etcetera, thats still here, thats ok. Thats what you were asking, right?
Just read Tao`s own PDF stuff!! Gary is a good guy but made a mistake somehow.
Actually that quote was from devicetop.com and not from the newsgroups, it is either a typo Or maybe he is ill informed, which seems unlikely as an important Amiga employee.
Trust me!!!! I have seen it!
> it's 22% faster, not 22x faster.
He probably said that to cool down the excitement in within the Amiga community. Other communities won`t take the real figures seriously and ignore it as vaporware.
It is maybe better for them to wait untill the real speed tests and official announcements start bombing the news. As this would make a bigger impact.
> Does it have a solid FORTRAN compiler , though?
The SDK v1.0 comes standard with a C/C++ Compiler, Java Compiler, VP Assembler, some GNU standard utilites, many demos and sources, etc. New languages are being worked on, that is very much a work in progress.
> The platform independence sounds interesting, but it's been beaten to death with Java already.
This efficient, superfast and low-bloat technology will allow Java to prosper.
> What about openness?
A Gary Peake quote: "We intend to open source a lot of things for open source programmers who wish to participate in our Dream. There is a tremendous amount of talent in the open source community who wants to work with us. We want their help as well. We intend to let them shine and show what they can do with as few restraints as possible, where we can. Open Source developers will pay no license fees, no certification fees, and will be treated with all the support we can give them for free. Any open source software, drivers, tools will be so designated when certified by us."
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!
It can be bought online from amazon.com or an authorized dealer. It`s 99$ and you will get free support and a nice manual and free updates as the OS advances.
> In any case, thanks for drawing attention to an interesting virtual machine. Diversity is a good thing.
Actually Sun currently busy advises all it clients to stop developing other JVMs and concentrate on this new technology instead.
QSSL (QNX) has made this decision some time ago. QSSL`s very competent coders were busy doing a good JVM implementation untill Tao showed them the light.
Read their announcement.
It is rather interesting that both Tao/Amiga and QSSL are members of a consortium called "The phoenx platform consortium" which goal is to produce a new Amiga-like operation system.
>He! I saw it with my own eyes! I tell you it is capable of running 3 versions of Quake and 2 versions of Doom simultaniously at full speed while hosted on Linux! Without an host (read Elate RTOS only) it will be even faster (up to two times as fast!)
I should add that this was done on a 500 mhz AMD K6-2. It used NO 3D hardware acceleration, all software!
As I thought you and others would probably doubt my words I searched the internet hard for evidence for my bold claims.It was difficult as it has been one of the best kept secrets.
Quote from ARM page "Because of the patented techniques, the intent JTE runs Java applications extremely quickly, more than 30 times faster than competitor's products."
> Don't believe everything they tell you.
He! I saw it with my own eyes! I tell you it is capable of running 3 versions of Quake and 2 versions of Doom simultaniously at full speed while hosted on Linux! Without an host (read Elate RTOS only) it will be even faster (up to two times as fast!)
> A faster interpreter does not help very much.
It is not an interpreter.(The JVM was totally rewritten in VP code) It uses some new translating technique. VP code is very compact and the translation happens in loadtime. The code is mostly smaller than the native code into which it will be translated! The translation is so fast that it can translate the code faster than it can be read for an harddrive.
> Java is ahead of its time in a way, since it is not dependent on specific instruction sets.
Sun has done a good job. But Tao is the real expert at this. In 1992 an Amiga assemble Games writter erected a new company upon his great new idea of an hardware independent OS. 8 years later his company is ready to revolutionize the computing industry.
Read this interesting article from 1994.
This is exactly what this new technolgy solves! It`s by far the smallest and fastest JVM available. It is truly a breakthrough technology. Amazing it still isn`t all over slashdot... As all geeks should want to know.
Get an Amiga SDK (Redhat 6.1 recommended but it seems to work on any Linux distribution) and see for yourself. Note that VP assembler code is even faster while maintaining portability!
More importantly this technology goes even further than solely applications. Device drivers, kernel, etc are completely written in VP code!
This is also the only technology allowing SMP with different CPUs types.
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
Just wait and see!
I have seen this technology at work with my own eyes! Trust me, it will change the computing industry as we know it!
There is still much to be done though, but the foundation is there and it`s the most amazing and exciting OS development I have seen in the last ten years!
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?
Although this may sound similar the end result will be completely different.
With Transmeta you will be solely dependent on their chip, as with Amiga/Tao`s RTOS you can choose any CPU you like. For example a SMP systems that uses both x86 and PPC chips. Elate is the only OS that supports Heterogenous Multiprocessing!
And Sony and Motorola are big investers in the Amiga and Tao Group company. :)
All developers who bought Amiga`s SDK (Software developers kit) or developer`s machine will be able to get free support for the Elate based Amie RTOS here .
Their Java engine is already available for QNX though! Look here. :)
Maybe interesting for you to know is that Sony is one of the major funders of this new RTOS.
LOL How many different types of programs can you imagine to program for a pre-1985 DOS?
No Games, Graphical Programs, GUI Programs, etc that`s the type of stuff for the creative mind and potential PD and Shareware developer. That`s why it took of the way it did. With some marketing it would have been a breakthrough not only on the technical side.
> the last thing one needs on a mobile is an OS to emulate another OS
:)
What the hell are you talking about? Who said anything about emulation? An early version of the OS is already used in some cool Motorola phones. On these phoses you can actually do multimedia. But this is only the beginning, everyone here will be impressed for sure.
> Besides the fact that that's a huge exaggeration, so what?
:/
:)
When it some to the OS it isn`t an exaggeration!
If you could buy a computer for $500 with a 100 mhz processor that offers the same performance as a $2000 600 mhz computer. Which would you buy?
> What exactly "less" are modern operating systems doing exactly?
In the present for every MB the OS expands less features are being added. That`s because OS developers have become lazy and don`t care to optimise things. If a program doesn`t run fast enough the see a faster processor and even more memory as the only solution
> But you don't seem to be able to define exactly what this new platform is going to do for the average user.
The user will have more freedom of choice. When a new processor is being released they can switch to it without leaving their software behind. It will also give true processor rivalry as now their performances can be compared easily. Image you could take all your software from your obsolete x86 architecture with you onto a totally redesigned processor like MAJC, G4, etc.
> They do everything the Amiga did, and far, far more (let's not even talk about protected or virtual memory).
What far, far more? The only thing that "modern" OSes do what AmigaOS doesn`t is MP. VP can be added but it totally unnecessary as AmigaOS is very efficient with it`s memory. Classic Amigas can still do cool things compared to Linux, MacOS and windows like displaying mutiple resolutions and color depths within one screen, shared libraries, PRE-EMPTIVE multitasking, instant booting, etc.
> One thing I will guarantee you is the days of writing an OS completely in assembly are over (although, parts are certainly still assembly).
Well the foundation for the new Amiga platform is!
Why post a reply to every message I write and say it`s bullshit? You are truly a pathetic anonymous coward. At least try to respond with an insightful statement or opinion. :(
> What is it about modern OSs that you dislike so much?
They are bigger while they can do less. Size is very important it does not only save you harddrive space but also make things work much faster. That`s why an 50 mhz 68060 powered Amiga running AmigaOS feels faster than a 600 mhz PIII running Windows.
Amiga software was often written in pure assembler code allowing amazing speeds! I don`t mind people developing games purely in C code but the OS has to be booted each and every time so it should be as fast as possible!
Also Amiga will be targetting very small mobile appliances which don`t have much memory and super fast processors. Imagine playing games like online multiplayer quake at full speed on your mobile phone.