Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) is on the wishlist of AmigaOS users for quite some time now, and while progress has been made, we’re still not there yet.
To explain the progress, let us first look at the concept, and then point to where we are in the whole.
AmigaOS developer Thomas Frieden goes in-depth in the work currently under way to bring SMP to AmigaOS.
Mostly old stuff sadly.
What’s old exactly?
AmigaOS.
So what? It’s faster and nicer than a lot of “modern” OSes!! Remember when computing was fun?
I have a SAM440EP and It’s amazing the things AmigaOS 4.1FE can do with a sub-700mhz CPU and 512mb of RAM… and It looks so freakin good!!!
I’m not saying that We have to replace our Linux boxes with AmigaOS (AmigaOS lacks a ton of serious kernel features, I’m not stupid)… but hey, I think Linux distros should take a look to Amiga world and take a lot of things from there (simplicity, slickness, usability, ecc).
I know I will be modded down like hell… but I love AmigaOS4 so much!!
Sorry haters!
That article really emphasizes how primitive AmigaOS is. Unfortunately, no microcomputer OS from the 80s ever really got proper SMP – MacOS and Windows programs from back then run through elaborate compatibility layers on modern systems that only outwardly resemble their ancestors. AmigaOS (and AROS on x86_64 and ARM) might have to do something similar to switch to a proper SMP+protected memory configuration that modern machines demand.
That someone enjoys AmigaOS does not change the fact that it is a really reaaally old and outdated system.
In the big scheme of things, this news item basically amounts to an announcement, by a (supposedly) bankrupt company, about their 1980s OS possibly entering the 1990s sometime after 2015. But to each their own, I guess…
I agree it’s out-dated now, but saying “entering the 90s” is rewriting history. It does a disservice to a very capable OS. Was SMP a requirement for most people in the 90s? BeOS was lovely, but it only arrived in second-half of the decade and most non-techie people won’t have heard of it.
Even at the start of 2000, not everyone was on NT and OS X hadn’t been released yet. MacOS 9.1 and Windows ME hadn’t been released yet for that matter!
Edited 2015-02-27 09:15 UTC
Multiprocessing, on consumer microcomputer platforms, was one of the defining technical/marketing challenges of the state of the art in software in the 90s (and a given afterwards).
AmigaOS to you may seem like a very capable OS, and that’s OK, but that does not change the fact that it is really really outdated. If your argument is that Amiga, in 2015, is only as outdated as the two most outdated (commercial) microcomputer OS kernels from 1999, then you’re sort strengthening the point regarding Amiga’s technological lagging…
No, I think you are the one who misunderstood.
He was simply saying that it is not true to say that it is entering the 90s, when the first comparable home OSs appeared in the mid90s. Multiprocessing was a big thing for businesses, that’s true. But for the home computers, it was still about getting preemptive multitasking as default.
He was not arguing that it is modern, he readily admitted that it is not. It is a fact that the OS is outdated. Yet, I would say it is capable in a sense, because many people can still use it for your everyday tasks with a 30 year old kernel(and I talk about the 3.x line, it is amazing what you can do with that, even if it was released in 92)
Well, I feel you also misunderstood my post, so that makes us even, or odd, or whatever.
Anyhoo, in the 90s SMP on microcomputer platforms was one of the defining buzzwords/state of the art issues in OS design/technologies. That Amiga is starting to explore that functionality well after 2015 (if ever) kind of highlights the technical retardation of the platform. Really, not a hard concept to grasp. Alas, you may continue to be obtuse for the sake of being obtuse all you want…
Like I said, it is just the ‘believers’ whom do not admit that it is an outdated system.
The point here is not to catch up with modern tech, it is more like how much you can pimp the old ride.
Or else they would rewrite the kernel and break compatibility and add some kind of compatibility layer via some kind of emulation, if they want to get something modern. But they don’t do this obviously for various reasons. Maybe one is that there is Linux for that purpose, maybe because this is fun for them, but maybe they are just plain stupid(which I hope is not the case)
No hate here. I AGREE with you totally. Alot of the “modern” OSes could learn a thing or two from AMIGA and also from the original BeOS. (Remember the performance on BeOS? ) And oh yes, I DO remember when computing was fun.
This news. The rewrite of the kernel was presented already in 2013 (same blog). The concept of SMP and it’s problems also the same year. This article describes it in more detail, but it’s mostly telling the reader how SMP works, what problems they have with Amiga API and how they _plan_ to fix it. The article also admits that it’s far from finished.
So I don’t see what the real news is here. It’s an interesting read, but not news.
You already get multitasking bliss at 7.16Mhz. Two 7.16Mhz chips would be insane!!!11! <– sarcastic, or maybe not.
I own an Amiga X1000 and it’s seems so few mainstream places ever mention them, It’s great to visit sites that do.
I really hope Amiga OS development continues as I really enjoy using that OS, It honestly wouldn’t take much for me to switch to the Amiga as my main computer again.
Many thinks that AmigaOS is outdated in 2015. Too many thinks of Amiga as if its from 1985 still. Too many only thinks of Amiga as a gaming machine like Amiga 500. Too many don’t have a clue about what AmigaOS is and how it still lives in 2015..
Well, let me start to say:
– Community!
– Creativity!
– Speed!
– Multitasking!
AmigaOS got all of this. More than any other system out there. The community might be small, but its an effective and good one. You could say that thanks to Internet, Amiga have survived. But what kind of life is this being an Amiga user in 2015? Its harrasment from PC users mostly which have no clue about Amiga and its present and past history. Each time PC users writes something negative about Amiga in any of the PC forums,.. its like turning on the fire for Amigans. All of the surviving Amigans like me uses too much energy trying to convince and try to tell how much more modern Amiga is these days. Even sites like OSAlert and Slashdot tries to help the platform with news, but still there is this negativity everywhere Amigans are. It is a form of racism as in most cases it turns more personal than a discussion with facts. It is sad and I wish that someone could change this, because all we Amigans wants is to be respected for the operating systems that we do love and use everyday. AmigaOS is not outdated compared to Windows or OSX. This is only on your minds! I am using my AmigaOS systems everyday for surfing, for writing this text and for doing my job, paying my bills thru my netbank+++
We Amigans never wants to force anyone to use AmigaOS. But all of the PC users with negative words about AmigaOS should try it instead of just following others.
I use Windows and OSX also together with AmigaOS and MorphOS.
I use AmigaOS 3x regularly on my A2000 and A1200’s, but to suggest that everyone should buy outdated, slow, overpriced, going nowhere PPC hardware to try it is silly!
Who in their right mind is going to spend 3k Euro on a X1000 when the same money will buy the most advanced PC known to man? I love AmigaOS and always have/will, but I won’t buy in to outdated/overpriced hardware to run the latest iteration, no chance!
You dont need to buy an X1000. There is Amiga motherboards made by Acube. MorphOS which an AmigaOS 4.x competitor runs on PowerPC Macs which isn’t expensive to get. So saying that Amigascene is expensive is a bit wrong. Yes.. X1000 is way too expensive. I agree on that.