@Raziel
No, Altivec allows certain kinds of operations to work on many items of data simultaneously. So called SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data). It is very handy for processing/decoding sound, images & video.

But programs need to be designed & compiled with Altivec in mind.

@Mitch
Cool, that Hyperion can go ahead with OS4 hadn't occured to me :)))))))))))

But what does this mean to Amiga Inc's plans (if they are true) to bring out OS4 on ACK's hardware?...

@ssolie
All he was saying is that Amiga Inc will be supplying the proof that Genesi need, if they wish to persue the matter further...

@Mitch who said Quote:
What if OS4 did have value as a living product? Wouldn't it then make sense for Amiga Inc to want it badly? Not for selling to our small community, but for another market segment altogether?

Unless there is evidence for it, I won't believe that Amiga Inc paid Hyperion to port OS4 to the IBM Artic (PDA) reference platform as just some kind of tactical manuver against Hyperion. Not to mention that I can't see how that would work anyway, since it just gave Hyperion extra cash (which AI knew they were lacking) or indebited Amiga Inc to Hyperion even more.

As I've said before on AW.net, Amiga Inc seem to want to use OS4 as some kind of PDA-like OS. This is actually an incredibly smart thing to do, because there is a sizable consumer market starting to appear for an Internet/Email/etc tablet device - look no further than Palm's recently announced Foleo, not to mention Nokia's N800 (and the older 770). Of course, OS4 would need a bit of extra work to compete with these devices, but I guess that's why Amiga Inc want control of OS4...

Perhaps Amiga Inc want OS4, precisely because AmigaAnywhere (in it's current form) has failed to live-up to their expectations? OS4 is the only thing they have left.

edit: The last person I expected to be painting a rosy(ish) picture of Amiga Inc was me! But some of the recent documents released to the court forced me to change my mind. (Perhaps it will change again, because we still have very little real information to go on, but at the moment the above is my best guess as to the motivations of Amiga Inc.)

@GregS
If you want a time machine, try asking SpaceDruid! But I'm not sure if he's registered here?

P.S. My personal preference is not JIT or your solution, but a more higher-level kind of JIT that some have called "dynamic compilation". But while we are stuck with awful languages like C/C++, there's precious little chance of that. Scripting languages are the only alternative (to C/C++) that get's taken seriously, and nobody there seems to care about their awful (interpreted) performance. (Well, except for OCAML, which is apparently faster than C/C++, but it's a functional language, and no-one takes them seriously either.)

@goody
The problem with REBOL being an OS, is that REBOL programs are still interpreted, rather than (JIT) compiled. This means that computation heavy programs are not really feasible (e.g. decompressing a music stream (such as MP3 or OGG) on the fly).

Carl has a partial solution with REBOL v3, by way of a portable assembler, but your not going to want to use that for more than tiny sections of code that get used heavily.

I assume the main reason for avoiding JIT (so far) is that it is simply a hell of a lot of work for one single CPU, and REBOL is all about being portable. So maybe it'll happen eventually, if REBOL become popular enough to justify it. Or perhaps Carl should just port REBOL to the Java VM, and let it do the hard JIT work

@TSK
If Amiga Inc DID release a "mini laptop" similar to the Nokia 770 (as they want to), I think that might convince quite a few people to come back!

Similarly, if ACube DID release a port of OS4 for existing (PPC based) Mac Minis, then that is a HUGE potential market (compared to how many Amigans we have left). And remember that many Mac users are ex Amigans.

So it might still turn-out alright, but the court battle better move pretty quickly.

@joerg
You have to remember that there is a lot of legal posturing going on between Amiga Inc & Hyperion! I think & hope that once a decision is reached on the ownership of OS4, then both sides will start acting reasonably again.

But until then both sides want to ensure that they get the best deal in court