AmigaOne Latest
IBM have also taken an interest. Now I've heard IBM mentioned from various sources within the community and that intrigues and excites me, because they're a big company with a lot of contacts and the fact Amiga is causing a stir with them is great. In my not so humble opinion of course. The fact that Alan has confirmed, in his recent speech at AmiGBG 2003, that Eyetech are working with IBM on other designs can only be seen as a good thing - broadening the market and introducing some new tech and new partnerships everyone can benefit from.
So what are Eyetech planning? Well, on the high end of things, you're looking at a MicroATX motherboard aimed at the server market. While the PowerPC is currently losing the clock speed war (but we know it's not about the MHz/GHz right?), it makes up for it with lower power consumption, cleaner design and more performance than an equivalently clocked x86 chip. Lower power consumption equals less heat - cheaper to run and less space intensive due to the lower cooling requirements. So we're looking at large scale server operations that could benefit from the reduced space and energy bills i.e. big motherboard orders. I'm also thinking this benefits the home server market too - cheaper to run, cooler, quieter than standard PC hardware. Since it's AmigaOS 4 compatible, this puts another machine option into the hands of the everyday person - and hopefully the benefits of mass production will reduce the costs considerably.
On the other end of the scale is the SE lite. Targeted at the markets for set top boxes, consoles, consumer appliances and other embedded systems, this has a similarly huge potential with the right backing. At a low cost and with OS4 stored on ROM, this puts the Amiga right in the heart of a number of applications. Eyetech are already claiming that this will be the machine to put the Amiga back into those high street stores and, ultimately, people's homes. It's like an A500 or A1200, filling a gap between games console and PC that has never really been adequately plugged. Sure companies like Apple, Sony and even Microsoft have spotted the gap, but they've never made more than a token effort to exploit the gap. An amazing oversight in this day and age - but guess who solved it first time around and who could easily fix
Latest Articles