mvdhoning:
Apple dumped PowerPC over two years ago. And it was
probably the best marketing-move they've done since
Mac OS X. They sell much more machines and you get
several times the power for the same price. And the
same, or better, battery-time.

My MacBook with Core2Duo 2.16 GHz and 13.3" screen
gives me almost 4h 30 mins with WiFi enabled.

My PowerBook 12" G4 1.5 GHz gave me around 4h with
a brand-new battery from the Apple Battery Recall.

Do I have to say how many times faster my MacBook is?

----

Zylesea
I guess the PowerPC has nothing to offer in the embedded
arena that ARM doesn't?

----

So, which market are we going to push for PowerPC?
Are we unique in any way at all? Or are all the
technology inside PowerPC either copied from ARM
or competitors took our ideas and surpassed us?

Well, chips like the MX31 have advantages in their field (in fact after eading the MX31 fac sheet I was quite impressed, haven't looked to ARM for a while before). The ARM core is quite a rocker. That's for sure and not new.
But the ppc offers processors from the ~500 MIPS area to high end processors which ARM does not offer (ARM ends in the middle range). You get ppc from low end such as the e300 to e600 and the Power family plus its derivates (970, the xbox chip, Cell, etc.).
Problem I see is, the Power alliance is not strong and the advantages are not used. Thus for a device like the Efika, indeed e.g. the MX31 would have fitted as well (exept for MorphOS avaialability).
But add to the Efika the PegasosII and still the option of a PegasosIII and the ppc shows its benefits. Unfortunately the PegasosIII is not likely to come...

It won't be "boring" much longer...

THTF-Genesi

Is there any one interested in picking up the EFIKA-Book from Geoffrey?

R&B :)

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

i do. I can start working on it in early october if Geoffrey agrees, but i hope he may change his mind.

Where the hell did you hear that!?

_________________
Matt Sealey

Higher performance at lower clock speeds. But slightly higher power consumption to go with it, unfortunately.

If you consider a 400MHz ARM clocks around 500 MIPS (not including XScale/Wireless MMX etc.) sometimes with a dodgy FPU (and even then most embedded ARM are softfloat), but maybe takes half a watt of power even at full speed, it is a useful chip in any device.

However the current spread of high-end ARM chips (600MHz in the iPhone etc.) are performance comparable and as power hungry as the MPC5200B ever was.

We think the MPC5121E is as relevant in a mobile device as an ARM with the same PowerVR graphics (Freescale even sell one).
There isn't much unique except higher performance - PowerPC is generally a little more rounded a design, and has less corners cut. ARM is very quirky sometimes - like MIPS, a lot of the things you take for granted on PowerPC or x86, need to be handled in software like alignment of values in memory.

PowerPC offers a 'thin' instruction set (VLE on the e200) like ARM Thumb, it offers a much better vector unit (AltiVec vs.. Wireless MMX and SSE??) and in general a greater application compatibility across chips. It basically SCALES much better. You do not see ARM-powered servers, or even desktops. Power goes from.. the very lowest to the very best server mainframe. And even some of the very lowest run in the very best supercomputer.

How can you say that Power is not suitable for mobile devices or could not displace ARM? Well, the only problem could possibly come from a vast library of ARM devices and the code associated with them. A lot of effort went into supporting ARM as the defacto small device chipset in routers, mobile phones, PDAs. But when you consider all of these are moving to use Linux, the processor does NOT matter anymore. The same code running on ARM Linux can be recompiled for PowerPC Linux - and it'll run faster.

_________________
Matt Sealey

AURA. BBRV have mentioned it in conjunction with Efika2 .

_________________
I <3 tiny computers.

That's not a 'new' firmware, at least it's still Open Firmware, it just has some new technology and improvements and abstractions. The next step up from the "HAL" Bill has always talked about.

_________________
Matt Sealey

not in hell actually ;-)

maybe here ?

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/vi ... w+firmware
maybe i understood this wrong ?


EDIT :
alright !

Hi all !

My first post was a bit rude...
I want to appologize for that, especially to Genesi, which I always had good relationship with... Sorry pals !

The thing is that I got bored during the holidays. Don't really know why, but mainly because of MorphOS 2.0 which still has not shown up and I was quite disapointed the Efika 1 was stopped... Hope Efika2 will come soon. My biggest disapointement being the PegIII not being released. I know Genesi did the best for that and I won't blame them as they are doing a lot of funny computers.
Anyway, I'm going to make a big (definitive or not ?) pause to the Efika book's updates, but who knows, maybe I will change my mind in a few months...

i can take care of it in the meanwhile if you want.
PM me.

@SSQ: Feel free to add any new articles / updates to the current doc if you are interested.
I can continue to take care of the web updates on efika.org domain.
I will send you details by email (don't have it with me right now)...

You have done well over a long time. Thank you.

Let's see what happens with the EFIKA....;-)

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com