IBM posted information (alternative link here) on their Global Solutions Directory about the upcoming Pegasos 2. Read the “Functional Description” for the hardware specs.
IBM “Leaks” Pegasos2 Specs
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AGP 1x? Is it based on a server chipset?
I know Amigans still have Voodoo 3 and other older video cards but still…
I believe that should be interpreted as 1xAGP Slots.
I’m sure that it’s 4x AGP or higher.
> I’m sure that it’s 4x AGP or higher.
No from the conversation in the #morphos IRC channel it’s definately 1x AGP.
>There are multiple operating systems running today on the >Pegasos including Linux (Debian, SuSE, Mandrake, YDL, >Gentoo, Knoppix), BSD (Open, Free and Net), OpenBeOS and >QNX.
So the not-yet-even-in-alpha OpenBeOS gets a mention but MorphOS don’t.. too bad.
Yes it’s there. You just need to click on the More hyperlink.
Today’s graphics cards do not use the AGP bus to move texture data to the graphic core. The texures are stored inside the graphics card’s RAM. The only data that is transfered to the card are coordinates for the graphic core. For this task the current bus speed (AGPx1 = PCI66) is ok. This bus can transfer 266MB/s, which is about 40M coordinates for textured triangles. With a estimated size of 20 pixel per triangle you can draw 800M pixel/s on the screen. With a resolution of 1600×1200 this is about 400 frames per second. You will NOT find a monitor that is capable of doing this.
The initial idea of the AGP bus was to use the main memory for graphics RAM to save some cost. As today’s performance expections are going much behind the limit of this approach, the cards are using there own local memory.
The Pegasos II goes on sale 15 October at http://www.pegasosppc.com
Best regards,
Genesi
But, AGP *is* used to transfer vertex data and other things besides textures
For which it is most excellent…
who is behind this. Where did genesi get its funding from?
Is this part of the IBM attempt to take back the pc from wintel? Do these people have any chance to succeed? I hope so.
I’m probably being dense about this, but is this going to be for the PPC970?
So these are basically motherboards that are compatible with the older G4s, is that correct? Are there plans to make a non-apple G5 compatible board, or is the G5 an exclusive agreement between Apple and IBM? I like the G5, but I don’t like Apple.
Today’s graphics cards do not use the AGP bus to move texture data to the graphic core.
>>>>>>>>>
Nope. They still do this.
The texures are stored inside the graphics card’s RAM.
>>>>>>>>>>
And in AGP memory also.
The only data that is transfered to the card are coordinates for the graphic core.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Textures have to be uploaded, as well as shaders, lookup tables, command buffers, etc, in addition to vertex lists.
For this task the current bus speed (AGPx1 = PCI66) is ok. This bus can transfer 266MB/s, which is about 40M coordinates for textured triangles.
>>>>>>
Um, triangle coordinates are very large. Under normal conditions you need:
12 bytes for x, y, and z coordinates as floats
4 bytes for RGBA color components
12 bytes for x, y, and z normal coordinates
8 bytes for u and v texture coordinates
1 byte for the edge flag
So that’s 40 bytes (once padding is added) per vertex. At 266MB/sec, that’s ~20M triangles/sec if you manage to get *all* data uploaded as triangle strips (1 vertex per triangle) and much less if you don’t. Of course, this is simplistic, since nobody in their right mind would upload all this for every frame, but then again, we’re ignoring command buffers, textures, and tons of other state in this calculation.
With a estimated size of 20 pixel per triangle you can draw 800M pixel/s on the screen.
>>>>>>
That’s a large triangle. With good tessalation, you’re triangles should be smaller. Also, lots of cards today can attain > 800M pixels per second of fill rate.
With a resolution of 1600×1200 this is about 400 frames per second. You will NOT find a monitor that is capable of doing this.
>>>>>>
Of course, you’re forgetting overdraw. If fill-rate was so simple, we would have stopped when the RivaTNT hit 200 megapixels per second. Today, cards have 10x as much fillrate, and can’t drive a complex 1600×1200 scene at 100fps…
Hi Ryan, Genesi is funded by its employees/shareholders. Later this year Genesi will go public, but there is no red herring yet, because there are too many suitors…;-)
If you think today’s thread here is something wait for the next news!
Please check it out http://mdc.morphos.net/ in the meanwhile!
😀
On PPC hardware market you don’t have much to choose from. There are
real good reasons why Apple desings they own proprietary Bridge chips
for years.
At the best of my knowledge… Marvell Discovery II is only currently
available PPC Bridge chip to support DDR memory and MPX on fully
compliance. And it has coule other neat goodies like 2* PCI-X and
Gigabit ethernets.. So in the end.. Can’t have all.
FreeBSD does not run on PPC. (Darwin is not FreeBSD)
Surely the benefits of DDR is going to be limited by the
speed of the FSB?
For those wanting a non Mac PPC board that supports AGP 2x
should check out the AmigaONE board.
Why is IBM doing this?
Why program all over again if there is a solid base? A few years ago they wanted to port the BEST OS ever (OS/2) to the PowerPC platform.
Then they stopped the whole project. I don’t think that their chances now are greater than they were back in the mid-90’s.
Regarding the lack of support from IBM for SOHO users and especially ‘normal’ users, I am not going to trust them anymore.
Cheers
Felix
IBM is not doing this, it is Genesi.
The only thing IBM has to do with this machine is teh CPU’s right? They’re just suppliers of parts the 3rd party company needs to put together a computer!
Ofcourse they put this one their website to give the board a good name and free advertising, which, if it sells, works in IBMs favour!
correct me if im wrong!
http://www.yale.edu/pclt/PCHW/BUS.HTM
I think some cards only work at 2x or higher… or has that to do with the slot itself, since 2x has lower voltage than 1x?
I don’t think we should get wrapped up in statistic #11 when the important thing is the end user experience. I can speak to that, as can anyone who has tried Pegasos and MorphOS at the shows they have been doing (http://www.pegasosppc.com/community.php). The machine feels very fast, it boots fast, and programs launch fast. I can play DIVX and so on and the web-browsing experience is very responsive. So it doesn’t mean a lot to me when someone says “but at 1600 x 1200 resolution you might not get optimal performance from this 3D game that hasn’t been written yet” or “this really hurts the potential as a high-end 3D graphics workstation” because it is really not about those things. Pegasos is about a computer for regular people and recalls the era of “home computers.” So don’t fall into this trap of getting wrapped up in AGP whatever or the MegaHerz Myth “why don’t you have a 3 Ghz CPU?” because it is not about that, it is about the end user experience. Try and you’ll see.
Of course they do.
AGP 1x != AGP 1.0
“For those wanting a non Mac PPC board that supports AGP 2x”
AFAIK it is just AGP 1x. To my knowledge Articia doesnt support/cant handle 2x speed.
It is AGP 2x.
USB1.1, AGP x1 !!!??!?!
Of course there better are alternatives:
http://www.mini-itx.com/#story0241
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=866
Micro ITX form factor (170mmx170mm)
Gigabit and 10/100 ethernet on board
133MHz UDMA RAID IDE controller
USB 2.0 on board
IEEE 1394 (‘FireWire’) on board
2x AGP graphics on board with PAL/NTSC TV out
AC97 sound on board
1 x PCI33MHz slot (horizontal, via supplied riser card)
Cardbus slot for flash card support (diskless booting, applications, games slot etc)
Usual legacy PS/2, serial, parallel ports
On PPC hardware market you don’t have much to choose from. There are real good reasons why Apple designs they own proprietary Bridge chips for years.
At the best of my knowledge… Marvell Discovery II is only currently available PPC Bridge chip to support DDR memory and MPX on fully compliance. And it has couple other neat goodies like 2* PCI-X and Gigabit ethernet.. So in the end.. Can’t have all.
Regarding the chip-set, that is incorrect. The latest Power4 servers don’t use IBM chip-sets but Broadcom, aka, “ServerWorks” chip sets.
Regarding PowerPC G4, it has a theoretical maximum FSB of 200Mhz, however, I don’t see any reason *WHY* they (Apple/IBM/Motorola) can’t push it up in speed. The problem with Motorola is that their focus is low power, low heat dispersion, Apple on the other hand is not really too concern with heat or power consumption because for all intensive purposes, we’re using it on a desktop.
The G4+, which is what is being used now that appear as 1Ghz plus, I would like to see something happen with the direction of the PowerPC in Apples low end hardware, either a move to the G5 or a revamp, led by IBM, of the G4 architecture so that it can scale beyond what we see today.
However, on the other hand, one could argue that Apple may bring the G5 chip down to their desktop range once the 3Ghz G5 is released, and thus with the added chip production capacity of IBM, Apple could make some ground in terms of performance.
For me, I am not too fussed about the speed of my machine. I moved from a Pentium III 550Mhz to an Apple eMac 1Ghz (with 512MB memory) and am a very happy convert. I don’t do high end graphics, I don’t play games and I don’t do much in the way of video related work.
I programme in Java, write documents, occasionally use Corel Graphics Suite (Draw 11, Photo-Paint, Trace 11 and RAVE 2) surf the internet, and occasionally chat. IMHO, I really don’t need that so-called “extra power” that is hyped by Dell/HP or what ever vendor buys an ad in the local rags.
I think this is the case for the vast majority of people. Sure, there is a niche market for people who want the latest, greatest and fastest machine BUT the vast majority are quite happy not having the fastest, bleeding edge machine. Most people just want to use their computer and know that everything that occurs on the machine is predictable.
>Why program all over again if there is a solid base?
>A few years ago they wanted to port the BEST OS ever
> (OS/2) to the PowerPC platform.
IBM killed their OS/2 project due to internal Dilbert-zone-esque problems, not due to a lack of technological prowess.
Damien
Doh! Sorry, that comment was by me, not Nate 😉
Damien
We believe the PowerPC should and can offer serious benefits, not just to our installed base but anyone. Unfortunately, if you had been through what we have been through in the past year and a half, good chipsets are still few and far between. Given those numbers, CPU grades presently available, DVI’s limitations and the bottlenecks of GPUs themselves, we are confident that users won’t see one bit of difference. If you’re not convinced, wait for the benchmarks, and if *that* does not do it for you, we will see what we can do for Pegasos III with the next Marvell northbridge. We feel commitment from IBM and see huge shifts in the market toward Linux. We are hoping to ride the Linux wave a bit. In the meanwhile, if we can get a few smart folks involved by doing things like this to. We will to promote the Pegasos.
http://odc.pegasosppc.com/
Note: We know we have to tune the terms of use, but we are just promoting the idea for now. We would be happy to support sites like this not only for OpenBSD, but frankly any new OS looking for a hardware home. Can you say BeBoxII? We intend to be on the leading edge of IBM’s PowerPC evolution and we are hoping to bring along a number of solid development communities.
The focus should be on WHAT you can do with your computer. Bringing convenience and ease of use to the mass market anytime, anywhere is the ONLY way a small company can even have glimmer of hope against the “dark side.” Technical discussions are great, but in the end game it giving people what they want that counts.
May the force be with us! We know we need it! 🙂
R&B
Genesi
Looking at the genesi homepage… the accents on some of the vowels… the stylish leather shoes.. wait a minute — these are europeans!!
This is a very appealing product. A new OS on the PowerPC platform, competing directly with the unnamed monopoly. I like the looks of it.
One bit of advice: The PegasosPPC website looks like its aimed at the AOL-using masses (ie. lots of “high impact” advertising adjectives). Perhaps you believe that these folks are your customers. Dunno. My opinion though is that they aren’t, and the site seems a little gushing and offensive to me (just my opinion).
Average computer users will just keep on using MS until they see a better deal right in front of them at CompUSA — and even then probably won’t be interested on their own. The way to begin to succeed is to focus on the geek-appeal-factor. Keep it short, simple, and direct, and be very developer-centic and developer-friendly. That’s how Be Inc got legions (in alt-os geek numbers anyway) of devoted followers.
Right on the front page should be links to a MorphOS developer FAQ (what you call “Quick Help”, most folks call a FAQ) with direct links to sample code using the MorphOS API.
*Then*, when you’ve secured that front, you can think of going back to trying to appeal to everyone else, if that’s what you’re trying to do. At that point, your dev community would be producing cool apps and recommending you to their friends/family/professors (if you treated them right). Then you might stand a chance.
Good Luck.
Hi,
“Of course there better are alternatives[…]”
Question is: Better alternative for WHAT ?
To answer this question you should have a look at what market(s) is(are) targeting Genesi. Personnally, I still don’t have any clue. Reading all their statements, it seems they want to target everything and anything…
Regards,
Leo.
This looks awesome, I am all for a computer that gets the job done. I can’t afford an apple and MorphOS looks sweet. Plus the fact that linux works on this thing is a plus too. My friend is getting a test machine in a couple of days and by the looks of it I am going to get one as soon as they are available. Much appreciated.
Well, there are Dilberts in every industry, and every company. Some, however, are known to have a severe problem with that sort of thing.
Stephen M mentions the AmigaONE mini-itx, thought the specs seems quite ok the only bad thing is Amiga incs current economical situation and the fact that they don’t do that much to gain any momentum or support the developers, something genesi does very well. It’s also sad the development of AmigaOS4 has taken alsmost 4 years now and it’s still buggy, slow and crash a lot, thought that is supposed to get fixed in the near months. The OS is made by Hyperion and not Amiga inc thought so that’s a good thing in my eyes, atleast if they got some insurrance they can keep on developing the os even if amiga inc dies. It should also be noted that Amiga inc haven’t been developing the AmigaOS4 for all the time since they first ignored it and only wanted to make the AmigaDE. Anyway, I think the days for AmigaOS is counted, sure it was a great OS, but it’s a little to much behind nowadays, a completely new os would have been a better idea. Like the old project with gateway-amiga together with QNX neutrino. To bad it didn’t took of (probably because gateway had to hype linux a little + rumour about microsoft wanted to raise the price for oem windows licenses). Anyway, I have no confidence at all in the current Amiga Inc owners, even if eyetech and hyperion might do their part quite well.
JohnG said “The way to begin to succeed is to focus on the geek-appeal-factor. Keep it short, simple, and direct, and be very developer-centic and developer-friendly. That’s how Be Inc got legions (in alt-os geek numbers anyway) of devoted followers.”
That’s exactly what genesi does, they support phoenix, http://www.phinixi.com/ and have actually given away Pegasos beta-tester motherboards to intrested developers. Everyone which was member of phoenix got a better price on the Pegasos, they can upgrade to the Pegasos2 with a G4 for only 200 euro and their old Pegasos systems will be sold to intrested people for the small price of 99 euros. The owners BBRV often post in amiga community forums and keep us up to date and they have also started a site for developers on http://mdc.morphos.net/
So far BBRV and genesi have done EVERYTHING right imho and shows a great commitment to their developers. They also offer a superbundle for free to Pegasos owners which is full or demoversions of various software which works as both a hands on for users aswell as advertisment for the developers.
Fact is the one thing you really NOT can complain on is developer and community support, of which both are great.
I like the strategy. this sounds like something straight from the innovators dilemna.
Basic business computing does not need 3.2 gHz pentium fours burning as much power as they do. They don’t need overbloated MS operating systems.
There is a chance now to offer devices that are lower speed and use a smaller OS or even just an OS with good response at the right (low) price. Low price is not just hardware it means getting rid of MS which increases the room for hardware.
A G3 or G4 running at 500 MHz with a slim OS (though linux is not generally “slim”) will do fine on most business functions. The only thing still keeping MS in the game is the compatibility issue and their installed base. Those issues will be difficult to get by but MS’s own pricing and security problems are providing the impetus in the market to go to other platforms (os and/or cpu).
> […] we will see what we can do for Pegasos III with the
> next Marvell northbridge.
Please ditch the proprietary firmware for Pegasos III! Given a choice between two boards with otherwise similar specs (one a Pegasos, another an Amiga-branded one), one with proprietary firmware, another with FS/OSS firmware, why would I decide in favour of the former? Pragmatism? No. Idealism? Most certainly no.
Imagine what one can do with hackable firmware. The possibilities are truly mind-boggling…
As it is, a Pegasos board is not an option for me. I’ll always decide in favour of a U-Boot-equipped Amiga-branded board.
I’d like more options.
Incorrect. According to the link:
“Genesi’s engineers have created an open hardware platform based on the CHRP motherboard standard for the PowerPC and selected Open Firmware so that many operating systems can work easily on the Pegasos platform.”
Open Firmware Description:
http://www.firmworks.com/open_firmware/literature/open-fw.pdf
So in actual fact, the PPC platform being sold by this company is more open standards aware/compliant that the PC. Or better yet, go the full monty and buy a SPARC solution, from the CPU to the Firmware, completely openstandards compliant.
On and even after much fan-fare, Intel still hasn’t pushed EFI to a standards body or made it available on their IA32 motherboards.
Obviously IBM would greatly benefit by having a popular new platform based on their PPC chips. And they seem to have recently become aggressive in pushing it again.
IBM has been known to invest venture capital in companies which are developing and marketing technologies which are complimentory or strategicly beneficial to them. (They invested in the fledgling Red Hat.)
Can we expect to hear of an IBM investment in Genesi, or some kind of strategic alliance in the near future?
Seems to me they’d have an interest in giving you a push.
Yeah, I know you probably can’t answer that. But, hey, you don’t know if you don’t ask. 😉
Looks like a promising platform. I’ll probably pick one up myself when they become available again. Good job!
> Incorrect.
Well, show me the source code then! In actual fact, you can’t, because it’s proprietary.
You said that Open Firmware is proprietary. If it was proprietary, it wouldn’t be available as a specification. Proprietary does not mean non-open source. Proprietary means a technology that has not been standardise by an industry standards body.
The correct term would be that the Open Firmware used in the motherboard is implemented in a proprietary form. Just as one says that Solaris is a proprietary implementation of the UNIX 98 standard.
That is the correct terminology, not the pro-GPL rubbish people push that because something is non-opensource, obviously it must be proprietary.
> You said that Open Firmware is proprietary.
No, I didn’t. I said that the firmware on the Pegasos is proprietary, by which I mean the implementation.
Proprietary or non-proprietary specification, the more important thing is a free (non-proprietary) implementation. A proprietary implementation of a non-proprietary specification, like on the Pegasos, is of little use to me.
> If it was proprietary, it wouldn’t be available as a
> specification. Proprietary does not mean non-open source.
Sure it does, too.
> Proprietary means a technology that has not been
> standardise by an industry standards body.
Yes, that too, though standardisation is not sufficient to guarantee non-proprietary technology (e.g., witness the proliferation of patent encumbered “standards”).
> The correct term would be that the Open Firmware used in
> the motherboard is implemented in a proprietary form. Just
> as one says that Solaris is a proprietary implementation
> of the UNIX 98 standard.
That we can agree on.
> That is the correct terminology, not the pro-GPL rubbish
> people push that because something is non-opensource,
> obviously it must be proprietary.
The “pro-GPL rubbish” that people push is correct, too, and I wouldn’t call it rubbish.
To be “proprietary” is about being owned, nothing more and nothing less. FS/OSS does not have owners, hence it is non-proprietary.
To be “proprietary” is about being owned, nothing more and nothing less. FS/OSS does not have owners, hence it is non-proprietary.
FS/OSS does have owners. The people who submit code to a GPL project can exercise their RIGHTS over the project. If a license is to be changed, the contributors have to be contacted and asked if they agree.
Mozilla a while back wanted to add another license, all the contributing parties had to be contacted and asked whether they agreed to it, hence the reason why it took so long.
You have fallen for the typical Microsoft lies, that is, if you submit GPL code, you lose all rights, which is patently false at every level.
Legally, yes. Thank you for pointing that out. I stand corrected. However, (copylefted) FS/OSS uses the legal foundation of copyright only to ensure that /effectively/ it has no owners, in the sense that none of its users enjoys rights that others do not (a traditional attribute of ownership).
Copyright is simply the interface to the current legal system, a compatibility layer that ensures that (copylefted) FS/OSS /effectively/ (but not in a legal sense) has no owners.
But we are getting OT. What I’m really after is a response (from BBRV) to my original plea for FS/OSS firmware on the Pegasos… 🙂
Sorry, I forgot to quote you. I was responding to your claim that “FS/OSS does have owners.”
Legally, yes. Thank you for pointing that out. I stand corrected. However, (copylefted) FS/OSS uses the legal foundation of copyright only to ensure that /effectively/ it has no owners, in the sense that none of its users enjoys rights that others do not (a traditional attribute of ownership).
Copyright is simply the interface to the current legal system, a compatibility layer that ensures that (copylefted) FS/OSS /effectively/ (but not in a legal sense) has no owners.
But we are getting OT. What I’m really after is a response (from BBRV) to my original plea for FS/OSS firmware on the Pegasos… 🙂
Ahh, I see what you mean. Yeap, they have rights over the code they have contributed but not over the whole project hence one could argue that if everyone agrees to a license change except one person, they could remove all the contributions of the original code and simply replace it with clean code.
So you do not run an Intel or AMD CPU because their BIOS is not OSS?
> So you do not run an Intel or AMD CPU because their BIOS
> is not OSS?
Unfortunately, my box does indeed run a proprietary BIOS. My choices were limited at the time of my latest upgrade. They still are, but now at least I have the AmigaOne and (soon I hope) the AmigaOne Lite boards to choose from.
In particular the latter board looks compelling. With any luck, the Radeon GPU on it will be supported already by the DRI, and I’ll be able to switch from Gentoo on x86 to Gentoo on PPC with little disruption. Pure free software bliss! 🙂
Well, let me put it this way.
If you write a piece of software and release it under the terms of the GPL (a copyleft free software licence), then, legally, you own it (you hold the copyright on it) [*]. However, the fact that you own it in the legal sense is just a technicality, a requirement imposed on you to ensure that the software does not have, and never will have, owners in all other (more important) senses. You, like all other users of the software, have the same rights, the same freedoms (to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software, respectively).
The software, effectively, has no owners.
[*] In the absence of software patents that is. In the presence of software patents, there is no guarantee that you own the software that you yourself write. That is why we must fight to abolish them (in the US and Japan) or ensure that they remain illegal (in Europe).
Suit yourself, but I’d rather an open board which happens to have a proprietory implimentation of an open standard than a proprietory board that runs an open implimentation of a proprietory standard.
“””tephen M mentions the AmigaONE mini-itx, thought the specs seems quite ok the only bad thing is Amiga incs current economical situation and the fact that they don’t do that much to gain any momentum or support the developers, something genesi does very well. It’s also sad the development of AmigaOS4 has taken alsmost 4 years now and it’s still buggy, slow and crash a lot, thought that is supposed to get fixed in the near months”””
Hyperion have only been working on Aos4 for nearly 2 years.
Im sure that even Amiga.inc has not even been around for 4 years so how could Aos4 have taken 4 years.
Actually AInc (originally Amino) is now 4 years old as of last August.
my name is eug too
hi