Re:AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition: Now Shipping to Dealers
by makomk on Saturday December 20, 2014 @05:18AM
(#8776305)
The "Xena" co-processor is just an off-the-shelf XMOS XCore microcontroller interfaced to the CPU somehow. I've got a development board for one of their chips kicking around somewhere, though obviously without the CPU interface. It's only "software defined silicon" in the sense that it gives you very powerful ways of implementing custom I/O; it's not that fast at any compute tasks compared to a modern PC. There also doesn't appear to be anyone who's done anything with this, and the official prototyping board for connecting stuff to it is very expensive too: http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php... (several times the price of a standalone XCore board). Oh, and apparently the toolchain required to compile code for "Xena" doesn't even run on Amiga or PowerPC, but that's not terribly surprising.
Re:AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition: Now Shipping to Dealers
by vidarh on Saturday December 20, 2014 @05:04AM
(#8776285)
I'm one of the people who think the Xena is a great thing to have on the X1000, but they're not a "killer feature" unless/until someone comes up with some cool projects for it. You can buy XCore USB kits for ~$100 I think.
It's great to have it on there as an extra "bonus", because it's cheap (maybe $10 of the cost of the machine) and something different, but that's what it is.
From the blurb: 'Capable of eight concurrent real-time threads with shared memory space, at up to 500 MIPS, Xena gives the X1000 a very flexible, very expandable co-processor. The uses are endless; control hardware, DSP functions, robotics, display - even SID chip and console emulators.'
Link: http://www.a-eon.com/index.php?page=nemo
(It reminds me of the 'Geek port' on the BeBox.)
If the number of Amiga developers reaches critical mass, an emergent 'killer app' could yet make this a compelling platform.