With OSNews really diving into the world of the Amiga as of late, with a review of AmigaOS 4.1 on ACube’s sam440ep and an upcoming review of MorphOS 2.3 on an Efika, it was kind of coincidental that we have a set of benchmarks comparing MorphOS 2.3 and AmigaOS 4.1 to one another, both running on the Pegasos II machine.
The benchmark looks atThis comparative is based on 20 groups of benchmarks including boot time, processor, 3D, USB, IDE hard disk, WarpOS emulation, 68k emulation, and more. It’s written entirely in Foreign (French this time around), so I had to combine my years of learning French in high school (compulsory in The Netherlands) with the powers of Google Translate to find out the results.
The tables with numbers are pretty self-explanatory, and the conclusion couldn’t be clearer: MorphOS 2.3 runs circles around AmigaOS 4.1 in almost every area. Especially when it comes to USB, MorphOS’ Poseidon stack is considerably faster than AmigaOS’ Sirion stack.
It is important to note, though, that AmigaOs 4.1 for the Pegasos II is still in its bets stage, so things can certainly improve once it moves out of beta. The test machine was a Pegasos II with a 1Ghz G4 processor, 1GB of RAM, an Ati Radeon 9250 video card with 128MB of RAM, and an ATA100 750GB hard drive.
The future of Amiga is truely MorphOS. Keep up the great work guys.
Wrong, it’s AROS or Anubis. Most of that benchmark relies on legacy or multiplatform, and the speed compared to the latest actually available hardware is beyond ridicule.
You are biased because being a long time MorphOS user (I did read your comments on MorphZone in the past), but that’s not easy to explain now. MorphOs is nicely optimized, but it needs a lot more than just that (like support alive platforms).
I hope MorphOS chooses the right direction, computing is starting to become boring and it needs a revolution like in the 80s and early 90s.
MorphOS being closed source is making it very hard to progress.
I think I’ll have to agree with you. MorphOS and OS4 both rely on a dead hardware platform. The future, for better or worse, is some form of Intel processor. The latest multi-core PPC chips are just too expensive to be the next step in Amiga evolution.
Some have said that ARM is the future and I hope they’re wrong. ARM is too much of a niche market and the Amiga community has gotten so accustomed to being a niche, that it seems they keep looking for new niches instead of going with solutions that have broader, brighter futures.
It looks as if AROS will be the winner if Hyperion and the MorphOS crew don’t wake up. AROS has matured quite a bit and soon it will have a more robust API that will rival OS4 and will most likely be compatible at the API level with OS4.
Edited 2009-08-11 18:50 UTC
I’m surprised at just how much faster Morphos is. For those who don’t read French, here’s a quick summary: Morphos outperforms AmigaOS 4.1 on most tests by 50 to 100 percent. The only test AmigaOS manages to win is disk performance and it only wins it by a tiny amount. In general these performance benefits hold across both PPC native code and emulated 68K code. Given that Morphos performs so much better than AmigaOS and is encumbered by none of the legal battles which engulf OS 4.x, I think the conclusion that Morphos is the future of PPC-based Amiga is a safe one to make.
Mass market appeal. Just see what that did to gaming.. Anyways, x86ers have AROS.
Edited 2009-08-11 22:43 UTC
PPC isn’t necessarily dead, but it’s relegated to niche platforms, mostly games consoles…
A modified console with keyboard/mouse plus possibility to use it with a TV would be good, that’s how the Amiga took off in the first place – plays games so the kids want it, has keyboard/mouse and can do real educational stuff too so the parents will buy it.
ARM is probably also a good choice, low power processors will benefit from a lightweight OS like amigaos.
You forgot servers the power 5 an power 6 are the best server processors in existence.
Perhaps. But don’t don’t expect IBM to be dropping Z/OS in favor of anything Amiga-related.
So? Even the server market, Power is a nice.
Remember, a historically important market of non-x86 processors, the HPC market, has now almost completely switched to x86. There is very little market left for non-x86. A bit in mainframe, a bit in high-end database, but that’s about it.
You don’t need to modify PS3
It is also has some A500 feel – you need to reboot console to play a game and then go back to OS =)
Let the MorphOS-Team finish the Mac Mini (maybe also ibook and powerbook (was shown already, but no release was confirmed yet)) port first. That will sustain urgent hardware supply for the next 2-5 years.
When the Mac ports have been completed it will be another question what comes next. But one step after another. And the next step is the release for the Mac Mini. I guess it will mark the most important step for MorphOS since the initial release for the first Pegasos. It will provide the chance to actually enhance the audience from a couple of hundered users to the couple of thousand users range.
World domination is within reach 😉
I completely agree about this, this is a good market for an Amiga niche product .. Forget about desktop computing as a main market .. Its just hardcore NG-Amigans who still see this as a possible niche .. Take heed NatAmi guys ! Make a gameconsole form factor available for the NatAmi 🙂 But ofcourse WITH keyboard and no limitations like what the Commodore CD32 crap ended up being 🙁 The CD32 might have been better if only Commodore didnt go bust ofcourse .. Availability of the expansion SX1 or what it was called might have been better then..
Edited 2009-08-12 23:27 UTC
Only an Amiga user would say computing needs a “revolution”
Has the internet really been that boring for you in the past 9 years? It just gets better and better for me.
Then look at what you can do with the latest generation of phones and tell me computing is boring. People are developing original apps for 3 or 4 phone platforms that use GPS, multitouch, accelerometer, compass and camera that hook up to the internet on wireless or 3G. The iPhone alone has a breadth and variety of games that takes me back to £1.99 budget games on 8-bit to the most original of Amiga titles.
On the desktop, sync everything up to the net and access it from your phone or computer at work, you can stream endless music with Spotify, edit video and record music without a Video Toaster, video chat with people the other side of the world, and it’s all free.
I’m having a blast, but you stick to the Amigan mantra “Remember when computing was fun?” if you like.
I’m actually a GNU/Linux user (Archlinux specifically).
I never have been an “amigan”, just discovered it in late 90s and liked many things of it. It can be considered as “retro” by that time, anyway it’s a platform with people obsessed in making it alive even if losing too much fuel lately.
Most that you consider it so funny is nothing more than gimmicks or toys.
What’s so interesting about multitouch? It’s an interesting feature for some stuff, but not much more. Same as accelerometer and camera. GPS is nice to being widespreaded, but existed long time ago.
About games on iPhone, I totally disagree with you. Most games are showelware crap, clones or selling retro again (iPhSoft uses ScummVM so they do too few programming effort rather than disabling parts of it and some minimal changes). Apple is not so good at App Store politics and the platform is not so open, unless you jailbreak it and use alternatives like Cydia. I prefer open platforms by default instead, able to install mhatever you want without DRM or other restrictions.
It’s free as in beer or food, but not always as in freedom. Spotify is another server-based platform, most videochat are propietary protocols. The syncing stuff is not so transparent unless you use certain platforms, but I have my own geeky method so not care of it. About video editing, it’s OK but most appss are slow as hell or quite bad.
There are good things, but most of them make you to be attached to certain platform or corporation. They are not so impressive, just lots of hype that gets forgotten when the next “cool stuff” happens.
Multitouch is a small but genuine step forward in user-interfaces. The mouse has been around unchanged for decades, so let’s not dismiss a step forward that actually works.
You’re being a bit of a luddite – none of this is a gimmick or a toy unless you specifically want to use it as such. What’s interesting is the combination of all these things, with mobile internet at decent speeds on a powerful device with a good developer API that fits in your pocket.
Augmented reality apps are just around the corner. For education, they could show you how a ruined castle looked 1000 years ago, overlayed on your camera. I’m in the museum sector and this stuff is really exciting to me from an interpretation point of view.
They could overlay ratings and review links on all the restaurants on a street. They could be used for new types of collaborative gaming. This requires GPS, compass, camera, decent resolution screens and a mobile internet connection. When did you stop being interested in technology?
The Monkey Island port featured both a retro mode and a modernised mode with updated sound, graphics and voices. It came out for PC and consoles too. It’s a great game – who cares? I only know of 2 other ScummVM games on the platform right now.
If these are ‘shovelware crap’, then that makes the 8-bit games I enjoy so much shovelware crap too. It certainly makes DS and Wii games shovelware crap, because they often share a similar ethos but at many times the price. I’d have to argue that 95% of the generic first person shooters and racing games on other platforms are shovelware crap. Some of us like immediacy and originality in our games. I’d prefer to pick up and play an addictive little 59p game like Harbour Master than spend my life on World of Warcraft because I don’t have the time or patience as I get older. Not everyone is “hardcore”
This is totally off-topic. I doubt an Amiga user would care, seeing as AmigaOS was and is a proprietary platform. Taking Spotify as an example – it’s just like commercial radio. Do you warn radio listeners that the DJ may be getting paid and that the station door has a lock on it?
I’m of the belief that while open-source is a wonderful thing and I use Linux, Haiku, AROS and other things regularly. But closed-source often produces innovation and great leaps forward. It strikes me that either you’re too much of an old curmudgeon to embrace anything new or you’re too much of an open-source hard-liner (hence you telling me you use ArchLinux apropos of nothing) to accept that good idea flow both ways, and all these advances made by commercial companies’ will enrich open-source in the long run.
Edited 2009-08-13 10:03 UTC
So was the Amiga but maybe that explains why it died.
That’s revisionism based on the situation in 2009. Reading up on Commodore’s appalling mismanagement will divest you of that theory!
Turn on your sarcasm detector.
Sorry – I’ll put it on a higher setting…
I’m all for really alternative OSes (as in not nix variants) but seeing two obscure ones battling over an outdated platform we can’t even get…
At least most of us might one day be able to run something like Haiku or ReactOS on an older PC; but I really wonder what keeps MorphOS or AmigaOS developers going. I’m not saying they should stop, I’m just curious is all.
Why do people insist upon listening to the music that was on the radio back when they were 18… for the rest of their lives? (Even forcing it upon their hapless guests, or customers in any retail stores they might own.) I’ve always wondered about that. And I’ll bet that the answer relates to your question, as well.
Edited 2009-08-11 20:03 UTC
itch <— scratch
Actually, your argument would make sense if people listening to old music were still doing so using their eight tracks.
I can listen to music while coding something other people will use
But if I were a musician, what would be the motivation of releasing something only on vinyl? I think that’s a more appropriate analogy.
It could be nice to have a similar benchmark with a native version of AROS in a moderm x86
Rather pointless since amigaos and morphos were tested against rather ancient g3 based boards, you can expect aros to perform better.
The g3 is really slow nowadays compared to modern processors even modern arms run circles around it.
It was tested on a g4 board. If that matters anyone. Probably not.
Actually, it rather does. The G4 is sort of the high water mark of consumer-oriented PowerPC design: clock for clock it outperformed both the G3 before it and the G5 after it (which is actually one reason why the G5 had such heat problems: they needed to be run faster than they really should have been in order to show significant performance improvements over the G4)