Rumski Forum - Amiga X1000

At the start of this journey, we posed the question 'what is X?' The answer is that X is many things. X is the Xena/XMOS chip, and the Xorro slot that accompanies it. X is the mystery CPU, and above all, X is the AmigaOne X1000, the new complete desktop computer system from A-EON.

It's almost 25 years since Commodore released the A1000 model that launched the line in the summer of 1985, and with the launch of the X1000 we will usher in a new beginning for the AmigaOS platform. Just as Commodore did with the A1000, we're aiming at the high-end first, with a powerful desktop computer aimed at the professional and serious hobbyist markets (although you won't have to wait until summer, and it should be a little cheaper!) The launch of the A1000 offered something new, and the X1000 will do the same. The world has moved on and custom chips no longer make much sense, but the X1000 offers a customisable chip as standard instead - 'Xena'.

Thanks to Xena and the Xorro interface, the X1000 offers extraordinary flexibility. We believe that with this easy gateway to the world of 'Software Defined Silicon' and a path to massive parallelism, the X1000 will once more make the AmigaOS platform the best choice for truly creative and unique applications. For custom hardware control from robotics to theatrical lighting, for hobbyist creativity, for hardware hacking and for a multitude of applications we haven't even imagined yet, the X1000 is a dream platform - and therein lies another meaning of 'X', the unknown. It is you, not us, who will define the future.

Of course that's far from all there is to the X1000. Even if you have no interest in the co-processor concept, the X1000 is by a large margin the most powerful and up-to-date platform for running AmigaOS. With a fast dual-core CPU and a full range of modern interfaces such as PCIe x16, SATA and USB 2.0, the already extremely responsive AmigaOS will at last have a truly high-end platform to run on. While AmigaOS has progressed massively over the last few years (and continues to develop more and more features at an impressive rate), the hardware to run it on has not kept pace. There was a time when we had great hardware as well as a great Operating System, and with the AmigaOne X1000, we can finally say that time is come again. While the entry level is currently well catered for by ACube's SAM motherboard, it is this return of AmigaOS to the high-end that truly ushers in a new beginning.

http://a-eon.com/6.html

AmigaOne X1000 Specs

* ATX Formfactor
* Dual-core PowerISA? v2.04+ CPU
* "Xena" XMOS XS1-L1 128 SDS
* 7.1 channel HD audio
* 4x DDR2 RAM slots
* 10x USB 2.0
* 1x Gigabit Ethernet
* 2x PCIe x16 slots (1x16 or 2x8)
* 2x PCIe x1 slots
* 1x Xorro slot
* 2x PCI legacy slots
* 2x RS232
* 4x SATA 2 connectors
* 1x IDE connector
* JTAG connector
* 1x Compact Flash

Quote:

Let's take a look at this XCore processor. It appears to be a very weak processor (400 MIPS) without floating point capability. It's instruction set appears more dense than MIPS, but not so dense as ARM. Probably it has computer power comparable to an ARM920, which is not a lot, so forget about powerfull accelerators or doing GPGPU things on it.

The nice thing about this Xcore processor is that it has hardware mutltithreading with Quality of Service. This makes the XCore awfully suitable for realtime applications.

Todays computers are extremely weak at real time tasks. There are a lot of chips in todays PC's that have the task to buffer data until the CPU has time to process them. For example, while a Commodore 64 can do RS232 rather easy in software, a PC needs UARTs to buffer the data until the CPU has time. Basically all I/O controllers in current PC's, from ethernet, SATA, USB whatever, they just buffer data until the CPU has time to process it.

I/O would be one strength of this chip, it could process data on many wires in realtime without the need for a complex I/O controller.

Another use would be in emulators: Current emulators of C64, Amiga, whatever, work asynchronously: The emulated video controller first generates frames, and when the time is right those are shown. A chip like this could do this in real time.

Sound is another topic that would be very well suited for this chip. Wavetable synthesis is almost impossible to do right in software, because you need large buffers to prevent sound interruptions, while you want to have those buffers as small as possible to respond quickly to sound events (if you push the trigger on your joystick, you want to hear the explosion immedeately, not half a second later). This Xcore would be capable to do software wavetable synthesis just as well as in hardware.

So looking at the big picture: You get very little extra compute power, but this Xcore solves something todays computers are not good at. In fact, while the classic Commodore Amigas didn't have a proper solution, they were quite good at realtime tasks.

I think Hyperion made an interresting choice, rather than focussing on raw computer power they are targetting an area that prevent modern computers from giving the "Amiga experience".

Wether they will succeed is another story, but for anyone interrested in computer architecture, this is at least an interresting development.