Hello All!

I'm a happy powerpc-user with fancy looking Mac Mini (clocked at 1.4 Ghz). Unfortunately, modern applications (decoding of HDTV content, for instance) requires more and more computing power so I faced the problem of deciding best way to upgrade my personal home computer.

After the first glance I rejected (anyway it's trivial and completely uninteresting) variant with modern, powerful and cheap x86 multicore CPUs and decided to find something powerpc-based.

Googling a little I found that there are some projects at a different stages of readiness:

* Old G5 PowerMacs (troubles with power consumption and heat, discontinued, some models cannot be extended with modern PCI-E cards)

* OSW/TetraPower 970MP (still nonexistent (?), overpriced due to very limited market demand (?))

* Reference platform for the future Amiga (?) workstation (see http://www.amiga.com/news/?art=28) - nonexsistent yet but they said that price will be satisfactory (time will show).

* PS3. Cell-based but with horribly limited amount of memory (256 megs, actually) and with restricted access to hardware.

* Xbox 360. 3-core powerpc but prevents running unsigned code - its the only shortcoming I found so far

* Sony promised to deliver Cell-based board to the market in a year or so but I can't find any reasons why it should not be overpriced (all Cell-based products has extremely high prices).

Summarising things:

* the most advanced and modern (and existing) powerpc platform for home desktop usage (silent, with good amount of memory, productive) is M$ Xbox 360! (If you'll be able to hack it a little). Looks like the Evil Empire created really good replacement for Mac Mini.

* the most advanced server/power user-workstation is oldskool PowerMac G5 but I can't find any reasons (instead of personal preferences) to choose it over x86_64 one (cheapest, modern, really open, productive) althugh TetraPower of mysterious future Amiga would be a good candidates for desktop system of Linux user.

After all there are some questions to Genesi team - that are your plans for TetraPower? If we don't consider marketing issues looks like it's a good candidate for those who really thinks different :)

some reading for you :

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/vi ... tetrapower

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/vi ... tetrapower

Amiga Inc are all talk. There is one man behind their hardware promises - the all singing, all dancing Adam Kowalczyk.