SciTech Software Inc. and Hyperion Entertainment VOF announced that they have enterered into a strategic partnership which will see SciTech’s SNAP technology integrated into AmigaOS 4.x which is currently under development by Hyperion for PPC based systems.
SciTech Software to Add Graphic Power to AmigaOS 4
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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didn’t they already sign a deal with the tao group for this?
This is AmigaOS4, which has nothing to do with the Tao technology.
Tao’s ‘intent’ system is used for the Amiga Digital Environment, which in short is a hardware agnostic OS on the binary level. AmigaOS4 is meant to be run on AmigaOne and other PowerPC powered hardware. AmigaDE runs on PDAs, cellphones and other desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux and a few others currently and soon also AmigaOS4).
> didn’t they already sign a deal with the tao group for
> this?
Yes, but Amiga owns two different technologies.
1) AmigaOS4 – An advanced new PPC desktop operating system based on the original AmigaOS. This OS is designed to be light weight, almost instant booting, highly customizable and should offer a very good performance. This OS could also be targeted at certain embedded devices, including for instance STBs or WebTablets.
2) AmigaDE and derivatives – Tao’s intent is at the heart of this technology and therefor is platform independent. Intent is a full OS itself, and can run without a host operating system, like it currently does on the PocketCosmo in Japan.
http://www.stormloader.com/amiga/cosmo.htm
Or this technology can run as a player or transparent on top of an host operating system. The kernel is written in a Virtual Processor language and programs can be written in C, C++, Java or VP and still be platform independent. The AmigaDE will later get integrated into AmigaOS4.x as well.
These AmigaDE technologies are initially targeted mainly at PDAs and Smartphones.
With the advancements with OS4 and Amiga DE, Amiga will dominate the PC scene once again. At the rate they’re going, Amiga should kick ass in 20-30 years 🙁
This leads me to think that OS4 is not as far along as expected. They’re just now starting with the graphics drivers?
Considering that the AmigaOS just went from supporting a small handful of cards to now being in a position to support virtually any graphics card on the market (a giant step) I see absolutely no issues in respect to a lack of progress. Look for the ass kicking to begin sooner than you think.
@ SmallStepForMan
> With the advancements with OS4 and Amiga DE, Amiga
> will dominate the PC scene once again. At the rate
> they’re going, Amiga should kick ass in 20-30 years 🙁
AmigaOS4 is progressing well and some new AmigaDE products will soon enter the mainstream shops as well. However, note that the AmigaOS4 team wants to deliver us a quality product and that they don’t have the same resources available to them as the industry giants. But even such huge giants suffer delays.
@ LamboMan
> This leads me to think that OS4 is not as far along
> as expected. They’re just now starting with the
> graphics drivers?
LOL, of course not. If Apple would today announce such a partnership, this would not mean “they’re just now starting with the graphics drivers”.
Finally my spirit can rest. Amiga is in good hands now.
I would guess that if apple announced a similar deal with SciTech which allowed apple customers to use “virtually” any common off the shelf graphics card, that the world would be eager to applaud the wise move.
On Mac, no one care anymore for anything beside ATI and Nvidia. So, no one would applaud such announcement. There’s no need for any driver beside for ATI and NVidia hardware.
I forgot, the Matrox Parhelia (or whatever its name) will beat everybody else! Sure…
…you have a GeForce4 4200 8x.
SciTech does a great job, considering what they have to work with. I hope this deal gives them the resources they need. I’d really like them to support my GeForce4 4200 8x (the 4x is supported).
In all fairness, NVidia seems to do their very best to thumb their nose at SciTech. It doesn’t make sense to me (supporting SciTech would sell more video cards). If I’d known, I’d have purchased ATI (or maybe Matrox).
My only question is, how does the SNAP architecture fit in with Picasso96? Will P96 just be thrown out?
Yeah, that’s my first question too.
Ben Hemans answer to this question on http://www.ann.lu:
Posted by Ben Hermans/Hyperion (134.58.253.129) on 18-Feb-2003 22:12:12
SNAP will be used as a monitor driver for P96.
The P96 API is not ditched in any way.
As Ben Hermans/Hyperion said:
“SciTech will take care of porting SNAP to Linux PPC, we will take care of having SNAP run as a monitor driver for P96.”
Regards,
Onno
Not to rain on the parade or anything, but have to consider that SNAP is just 2D driver support only. So, you might be able to view on your GeForce4 Ti, but you can’t play 3D games till Hyperion makes a Warp3D driver for it. So it’s a half-solution.
In addition, there are many dead or dying off chipsets on the list. When’s the last time you saw a Number9 video chip being offered for sale in a new card?
In addition, there are many dead or dying off chipsets on the list. When’s the last time you saw a Number9 video chip being offered for sale in a new card?
We’re Amiga users, we haven’t seen a new card since the Cybervision PPC, which used a Permedia.
Besides, I stopped playing games when they went 3D, so 3D acceleration is of no consequence to poor little me. =)
SciTech’s SNAP technology is a big deal, especially for the AmigaOS4 team which is also trying to target the embedded market. Also there is in my opinion nothing wrong with offering alot of choice.
With regard to 3D solutions, SciTech and Hyperion will cooperate. And as almost everyone within the Amiga community knows, there is no other Amiga company as competent with regard to 3D technologies as Hyperion, so don’t worry so much.
Anyway Nathaniel, I am almost certain that if exactly the same announcement was made with regard to Genesi, the company with which you cooperate, you would have made a very big deal out of it. Or am I wrong?
[i]”In addition, there are many dead or dying off chipsets on the list. When’s the last time you saw a Number9 video chip being offered for sale in a new card?”</1>
Cheers for remembering Number9 – I actually liked their HW back in the day – if for no other reason than the boot msg, “here comes the sun”. (agh the good’ol days:) However, back to your point… while it is true that we support a lot of oldies we also support the latest graphics HW from ATI (including the 9700 pro), nVidia, Matrox and the rest.
Perhaps a whole discussion point could be made from “iggy drougge” suggestion to drop support for all but the latest HW – how about Eugenia is it worth a new discussion topic?
darn those close tags:)
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2003-02-00202-EN.html