History
In 1997, Phase5, an Amiga hardware manufacturer, launched their range of PowerPC (PPC) accelerators for the Amiga. Because AmigaOS was not yet PowerPC native, as a stopgap measure the PowerUP boards were dual-processor boards, incorporating the PPC and a 68K processor (68LC040, 68040 at 25 MHz or 68060 at 50 MHz). They carried the PowerUP kernel onboard in an EPROM, a similar kernel designed to allow AmigaOS applications to use both PPC and 68k applications through an API library called ppc.library. AmigaOS still required a 68K processor, while the PPC was in effect used as an extremely fast coprocessor that carried out specific instructions.
Unfortunately, this caused significant slowdown when the OS task switches between the 68K and PPC (a context switch), because CPU caches had to be flushed to maintain memory integrity. The more CPU switches occur in an application, the more the slowdown, often so seriously that it was pointless to use the PPC processor at all, being slower than the 68k native binary. The main workaround for this was simply to avoid as many 68k OS calls as possible, or to group them together, but it was difficult and time-consuming for developers to do this.
WarpOS was launched as a controversial alternative to Phase5's PowerUP kernel, but eventually became the most used and nominally the standard PPC kernel on AmigaOS.
Read more about this topic: Warp OS
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)