ave only tested motorstorm,very cool game,gets a big - cos singleplayer only.

This article was published in January, before people know troubles between AInc and Hyperion. Of course PS3 could run OS4 or MorphOS ... this does not means it can happen with the current situation.

To confirm the earlier note that PS3 would not carry the PS2 chip in Europe

Yes, that would be excellent for the long run. Having PPC based hardware like the PS3, and older Macs supported wouldn't be bad neither.

I guess some OS4 components will be easier to port to x86 that others (ExecSG and Petunia).

In the meantime it's IMO best to see 'OS4.0 Final' fully supported on the community's own PPC projects (such as the Sam) still under development and the classic PPC expansions. Maybe AmigaOS 4.1?

Have you thougt about the implications of the commercial game market for OS4. I see there being no need for OS4 titles when you can just boot PS3 ones.

SPE?s replaces the need for AltiVec unit

If os4 had multi-processor support: anything cell-based could be great.

I understand that games developers may not be too fond of the idea of having to learn new ways to write their software. But according to the article at least they do seem to believe that multithreaded software is the way forward.

Multithreading should not be confused with multitasking. Multithreading is the ability of an operating system to execute different parts of a program, called threads, simultaneously. The programmer must carefully design the program in such a way that all the threads can run at the same time without interfering with each other.

Multithreading is mainly useful in a multi-CPU environment. One OS which has been designed with multithreading in mind is BeOS. The initial BeBox prototypes had two AT&T Hobbit processors and three DSP's, later version came with two PowerPC 603 processors running clocked at 66MHz or 133Mhz.

Today single CPU solutions are dominant, thus multithreading isn't really that much of a benefit. Software developers who mainly write for single processor solutions don't like doing extra (time=money) work to get the most out of multithreading for other platforms. Games consoles usually only run one software title at a time, however a multi-media operating system generally executes many different programs which may all have various different tasks at a time.

AmigaOS4.1 should introduce multi-threading.

Mr Haglund described the current situation with Apple as a ?marriage break up?. He speculated Apple may be upset by IBM?s various new ?mistresses? (such as for example Sony, Toshiba and Nintendo). He also countered that, unlike what Apple seems to suggest in public, IBM is still leading in terms of the Watts/Performance ratio with regard to their processors compared to available x86 technology and he believes this will likely continue to be so for the foreseeable future. He also explained that the new Cell processor technology includes a simple yet highly clocked PPC compatible processing core, but for software to really take full advantage of the new Cell technology, software needs to be optimized for using the specialized SPEs. He compared the Cell to how the classic Amigas operated, as the more impressive Amiga software took full advantage of its specialized custom chips. He wasn?t only thinking about complex Playstation3 games taking advantage of such technology (for instance dealing with lots more complex and more quantitive collisions), but also with regard to possible desktop orientated usages, like for instance for enhancing the performance of multimedia software or for advanced spreadsheet calculations.