Market research for new PowerPC system

I will say that if someone came out with a video game console with similar specs to the xbox 360, ps3 or even the Wii and it was open so that anyone can develop software for it...that would be a good idea.

Why is there no "Amiga 500" anymore? A lot of games came out for it and it was great for developers because they didn't have to worry about 5 zillion PC configurations.

None of those game consoles I mentioned are x86 based either.

Well, the difference is that cars all use the same tyres, the same fuel, and park at the same place...

What if VW needed different tyres, made for this brand, and special fuel, made for the car... And that you could only find it in special places ?

Would there be a use for that ?

GM/VW could be compared with Dell/Apple... different machines, but all use the same tyres, fuel,... and no one cares how it works in the inside...

yeah if you're not going all in with the game console (no hw 3d, etc) then your best bet is with the ARM. So instead of return of Amiga, we'll have the return of the Acorn Risc pc!

I've worked on large AIX machines and embedded PPC Linux projects over the years and I really don't see any advantage to PPC on the desktop. PPC has a huge advantage over x86 on high end SMP and High Performance Computing although that gap is getting smaller. PPC also has advantages in the game console market with custom vector engines (Cell) and a huge company IBM profiting. PPC desktops had their chance in '94 with the IBM Power Personal Division which was huge disaster financially. Apple chose PPC at that time when IBM expected PPC desktops with OS/2 as the dominate long term desktop. Apple kept PPC as long as they did just to be different.

With all that said PPC is great for embedded projects, custom ASICs (ie. all those routers from Cisco). I would love to have a PPC desktop, but the mighty dollar (or Euro) is a huge factor here. The netbook will be tough market for PPC with competition from Atom and ARM. Without an IBM or Apple driving PPC on the desktop, there will be no demand. Sorry to be so pessimistic, but it's the facts. There will always be a hobbyist which we all are, but don't expect to actually make a profit.

I loved the PPC platform back in the old days, remember running Linux on my trusty old iMac, but I think that is now history. Personally I do not have any desktops in my house anymore, just laptops.

I share the view of others about ARM. What I really would love is a tiny 10" laptop, with ARM cpu, around 10 hrs battery life, running Haiku on it! :)

Imho for desktops PPC might still have a go (e.g., with Haiku), but I tend to believe that it will be always more expensive than an x86 platform, due to production volumes. :(

PowerPC had its chance in the late 90's, but I believe that it missed it's opportunity to establish a larger market share for itself. It's still doing fine on the game console front, and might make a good breadbox for media center prototypes. However, these days the geek and media darling is ARM. If I was looking to prototype a media center board (or a new game console), I'd be more inclined to go the ARM route. That's just my un-informed opinion.

Good luck in your venture. It's great to see independants adding variety into the market place. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the visionary underdogs.

OK, couple of tips to help you.
1) Forget about posting to x86 sites like Haiku-OS. Users on x86 websites generally care about x86 hardware. You get next to no one caring about using PowerPC.
2) Focus on sites that support or use PowerPC hardware, ie: AmigaOS, MorphOS, Apple PowerPC sites, etc.

There may still be a big enough niche market for PowerPC hardware. It'll be interesting to see what happens with AmigaOS & MorphOS in the future. They will have to support x86 and/or ARM if they want to increase their userbase.

You may have a little competition from LimePC but they currently focus on the low end PowerPC systems.
http://www.limepc.com

Your customers will be fairly hardcore, current PowerPC users. Those currently using and enjoying AmigaOS and/or MorphOS. They're the ones willing to spend big $$$ to continue using mid to high end PowerPC systems.

As for ARM architecture, I was saying you could become a reseller ( retail level ). It would be impossible to design & manufacturer an ARM system and compete against the big players. You're in Greece and could be one of the first to sell ( very low cost, compact ) ARM based systems to retail customers there or even wholesale to computer stores.

Lots going on with ARM & smartbooks making it very exciting.
1) 2Ghz speed & multi-core ( upto 8 cores ) being tested for the future, 2) low power & heat, 3) long battery life ( about 8 hours on netbook ), 4) Flash acceleration ( on Nvidia's Tegra chipset ) and 5) Very lightweight, compact & portable 6) low price ( less expensive than x86 or PPC )

edit: added in 6)

@ markos
Yes, Haiku is focused on x86 but with coming ARM hardware they will add support for this architecture too I believe by R1 ( or R2 at latest ). Actually, I read that Genesi is giving one Haiku developer an ARM desktop. Way more excitement about ARM than PPC and will have lots of ARM netbooks/desktops/nettops coming out in following months but I will wait for Nvidia's Tegra II before looking at getting one.

Wish you the best for success whether PPC or ARM. If you go into manufacturing ARM systems you'll have lots of competition to go up against.

Nobody buys a computer to run an OS. You buy a computer to run applications.

Haiku, for the foreseeable future, is going to be a hobbyist's OS. There are few apps available right now, although I hear lots of people saying they are working on something. In fact, I'm working on something myself.

But most of those people will have just one dedicated machine to play around with Haiku. Hobbyists, remember? And it will likely be x86. So the best one can hope for is that the Haiku devs will provide cross-compilation abilities and the repositories will be littered with apps saying "cross-compiled for PPC - I don't have a PPC machine to test this on." Shaky, very shaky. I remember this from the BeOS days.

Sorry, but Haiku has too much that still needs doing to worry about alternative architectures. Tell us what PPC can do that x86 never will and that may change. ARM has low power consumption. What have you got? Diversity for diversity's sake is not enough of an argument.

markos said, "x86 is powerful but hungry for power (Atom performance wise is worse than a MPC8640D that I intend to use, and also uses more power),"

Yes, but my Atom motherboard cost me just under $100 US shipped ( with on-board video, sound & lan ). :-) Most computer users only look at performance, price, available OS/software and care little about power usage. Your biggest hurdle is price and why Genesi left PPC. When you start going above 667Mhz on PPC it starts to get pricey quickly with very few willing to pay for PPC hardware at high prices. High prices is killing off PPC.

Next, mostly those still buying PPC are doing it to run AmigaOS and/or MorphOS as primary OSes. So, to get them to buy PPC means supporting these two OSes for sure.

Finally, many current PPC users want newer PPC systems with 1.5+ Ghz CPU ( or 1 Ghz dual core ) to take the plunge and buy. They're not happy with the current 400-800 Mhz PPC systems. In the works is a MorphOS port for PPC MacMini ( these had 1.25-1.5 Ghz CPUs ) and it'll run MacOS X too which I believe is a better deal ( by getting one used ). Hopefully it works out for you. Regards,