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OS/2 - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: RobertM on 2010.05.10, 22:03:41

Title: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: RobertM on 2010.05.10, 22:03:41
Hey all,

I've been reading more and more about various vendors who were stupid enough to believe Microsoft's promises of Windows 7 being able to run on the newest tablet similar to HP's Slate and others.

I've been thinking, with the extensibility of the WPS, capabilities of Firefox, upcoming Flash, and eCS's minimal resource requirements, wouldnt it make a good option?

Yes, I know there are other things that would need to be addressed (WPS extensions, Flash being released, an updated Java, multitouch drivers, Telco wireless support (ie: 3G, etc)) - but to me it seems a great new market without a tremendous amount of work - assuming that work to get it running on the CPUs wasnt that extensive.

It seems more hardware manufacturers are looking for Windows 7 alternatives for Atom and ARM based tablets... What do you all think?
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.10, 22:32:37
OS/2 needs to be useful in a tablet application. That means touch screen, Wifi, bluetooth, HD video playback, hardware accel, etc.

We have barely any of that.
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: RobertM on 2010.05.10, 22:38:56
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.10, 22:32:37
OS/2 needs to be useful in a tablet application. That means touch screen, Wifi, bluetooth, HD video playback, hardware accel, etc.

We have barely any of that.

Hmmm... I mentioned all of those but HD video playback - which isnt a must on all of these non-HD ARM/ATOM based tablets, and bluetooth (which I forgot - but isnt a must on a tablet... on a smartphone, yes).

As for hardware acceleration, it would be video drivers primarily... and regardless, without it eCS will still outperform Windows 7 on a 1GHz CPU with 1GB of RAM.

As for the rest... there are always all those Linux and Android drivers that may be a starting point.
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.10, 22:46:46
I don't see a point to be honest. The license cost of eCS is incredibly high, if people want to type word documents they will need a FURTHER license for OpenOffice, etc.

Plus, lets be real here. Do you see any chance of a bluetooth stack, touchscreen driver, updated Java being done in a timely manner? What about a NDSI-wrapper port? GenMac has a pretty poor success rate to be honest.

I don't mean to be negative here, but I don't see this as the market for eCS. Anything that doesn't require modern connectivity and any sort of multimedia prowess/web prowess is what I think eCS has pidgenholded itself into. Basically, server and production applications.
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: cytan on 2010.05.11, 00:24:25
Although I think it is a good idea, I don't think Mensys has the resources to pull this off. The only player that can do this is IBM.

cytan
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: RobertM on 2010.05.11, 00:50:18
Quote from: cytan on 2010.05.11, 00:24:25
Although I think it is a good idea, I don't think Mensys has the resources to pull this off. The only player that can do this is IBM.

cytan

Ah yes... and I have been wondering what IBM and/or IBM/Mensys are considering for some of their large clients like Pep~:<=_+__+_ one of the ones I happen to know about... because, if that company's and other's desires are met... IBM and/or Mensys may be in a better situation to actually pull this off...
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.11, 00:53:28
Rob, do you know if IBM has the kernel sources and whatnot to port to ARM? From what I understand, its compltely different than X86 and everything we have would have to be recompiled (Apps/drivers/etc).

Or am I net getting this correct? Thankfully Atom is just a weak-ass x86 intel chip with SSE so its not a big departure and runs fine already. ARM sounds tricky..
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: RobertM on 2010.05.11, 00:57:38
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.11, 00:53:28
Rob, do you know if IBM has the kernel sources and whatnot to port to ARM? From what I understand, its compltely different than X86 and everything we have would have to be recompiled (Apps/drivers/etc).

Or am I net getting this correct? Thankfully Atom is just a weak-ass x86 intel chip with SSE so its not a big departure and runs fine already. ARM sounds tricky..

Check your PM box. :)
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: mobybrick on 2010.05.11, 11:19:50
Single-core Atom's might work... but our ACPI solution doesn't yet work any dual-core Atom board that I've been able to find, even genuine Intel ones. Over a year ago I logged a ticket on the ACPI svn system, but no progress.

Dual-core Atoms will usually hang at startup or shutdown.

Moby.

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.11, 00:53:28
Thankfully Atom is just a weak-ass x86 intel chip with SSE so its not a big departure and runs fine already. ARM sounds tricky..
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.11, 18:41:39
I had no idea of this Moby. Is this for any dual-core chip or just the Atom for whatever reason?

Have you tried the latest testcase/debug ACPI builds from the Betazone? I no longer have access to such things unfortunately :(
Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: Robert Deed on 2010.05.14, 06:04:35
Quote from: RobertM on 2010.05.10, 22:03:41
Hey all,

I've been reading more and more about various vendors who were stupid enough to believe Microsoft's promises of Windows 7 being able to run on the newest tablet similar to HP's Slate and others.

I've been thinking, with the extensibility of the WPS, capabilities of Firefox, upcoming Flash, and eCS's minimal resource requirements, wouldnt it make a good option?

Yes, I know there are other things that would need to be addressed (WPS extensions, Flash being released, an updated Java, multitouch drivers, Telco wireless support (ie: 3G, etc)) - but to me it seems a great new market without a tremendous amount of work - assuming that work to get it running on the CPUs wasnt that extensive.

It seems more hardware manufacturers are looking for Windows 7 alternatives for Atom and ARM based tablets... What do you all think?

I would love to see an ARM port of OS/2, hell I'd like to see any actual development when it comes to OS/2 however it would be a complete recompile of the entire OS, and features such as TCPIP and such may well need to be coded from scratch for it (assuming IBM removed all the ARM code from the BSDi code).  Obviously the Atom is a much more attainable target since it is X86, and would just need some work on our ACPI to make it play nice.  However, the biggest problem with the performance of nettops and netbooks isn't Windows7/WinXP it is the poor performance of these processors to begin with.  While the OS booting and general performance should be better running OS/2 I doubt that you're going to see good performance with firefox, openoffice or the other apps which would inevitably need to be run in order for these to be useable computers. 

We really need HARDWARE accelerated video drivers for 2d and video acceleration (3d would be nice but I am not going to hold my breath), though most netbooks/nettops have horrible video chipsets and we don't have a good media player at this point..

Other then that.. bring it!  lol

Title: Re: With horrendous performance of Windows 7 on ATOM/ARM tablets, what about OS/2?
Post by: Saijin_Naib on 2010.05.14, 06:53:39
VIA has the source code for their 2D/3D display drivers available. I think we should target that.

Failing that, we need to take a look at the HaikuOS VESA driver. That thing completely SHREDS Panorama in every way. I believe it is also a good deal faster than the Vista/7 VESA and Linux VESA drivers.