The cpu looks like an early 90s one... Passively cooled, not even cool ribbons on it...

Same cpu was to be found in the Motif Series...



They really need to up yheir game, maybe some top end ARM processor next time, they arent expensive at all, and are dozens of times more powerfull

The Tyros is an Acorn Computer :-) Suddenly I want one..hehe

The MPU is a Risc based 32bit, 333mhz Hitachi SuperH core engine which means Yamaha are writing their software in C/C++

Its an off the shelf chip from Renesas and you can find similar devices in everything from mobile phones to set top boxes and cars which is probably why he came across a Mazda part. It supports USB 2 and 24 bit TFT LCD.

I'd expect the chip appears in lots of Yamaha keyboards because once you have a hardware platform that works the software becomes the major on going cost.

They will upgrade the chip to newer and faster versions but the software and hardware reengineering required to change to a completely new chip would be significant and expensive. They may get forced that way if the chip gets dropped but if Yamaha are a major customer it might be cheaper for them to fund development and continued production rather than changing chipsets even though the amount of CPU power you get these days for little cost is amazing.

Thanks mate... this indeed seems plausible, as these processors indeed are built for embeded multimedia hardware and have many RISC based features to advance processing...

SuperH Processors

However compared to intel or even ARM structure they are something of the last century, RISC based CPU architectures (like Sparc and PowerPC)never really where a force to be reconned with in the 21th century, because it pretty much reached its max potential by the end of the 1990's. It got abandoned by all Major players like SUN and Aplle, because it could not compete with modern day processor architecture.

The only RisC processor that survived and currently is going very strong is the ARM processor, becuase they added some CISC additions to their structure, as well as Intel did add some RISC instruction sets to their CISC architecture.

Anway, the current architecture and speed and performance of these processors can be compared with the speed of an intel pentium 2. however the infrastructure and bus systemm has been updated to be compliant with todays devices like USB. memmory speed is 800 MB/s where as the speed of an intel core i7 is more like 10 to 20 GB/s. even its cache memmory access is slower then average DDR3 ram.

I think thats also the reason why Yamaha has not really updated the Motif range since the Motif XS in 2007. Sure they added the Motif XF, which is essentially a Motif XF with more (Rom) and flash memmory support(very slow) but its in the state of the Tyros..


Currently Yamaha is at the point they need to adapt new technollogy to keep up, and that means addapting all their current software ( Based on Montavista Linux with direct hardcoded C code) to either an ARM or intel environment. And thats taking them time, because their actuall development organisation is not big enough to pull this off fast enough.

Tyros and Yamaha Linux

I am pretty sure they wanted to show a new Workstation this years winter NAMM, but they didnt make it. maybe summer NAMM or later this year, who knows. We will also know by then where the Tyros line is going after the 5.

In the end i think its incredible what they did with the Tyros 5 with such old hardware, it really shows that there are some oldfashioned efficient programming skills at work at Yamaha. In the end i can only say respect to those people, as for sure the Tyros 5 is pulling everything possible out of the hardware.

My guess is that Yamaha won't make any hardware changes unless they are absolutely forced to do so.

My 25 years of experience in industry working in an area controlled by technology showed me that big business only makes changes when a better profit can be made. A good example of this is Yamaha's transacoustic piano...radical new technology but at three to four times the cost of a Tyros.

With the non-announcement of a Pa3x successor at Messe, do you think Korg might be facing a similar hurdle? That is, if Korg uses Older hardware of the same type as Yamaha. I imagine Korg doesn't have quite the R&D capability, in terms of funding, that Yamaha does.

Korg already has a more advanced system in the Kronos Workstation which could be transferred to a new arranger, thus reducing the R & D costs.

Bill

Korg italy does....

Yet Korg Japan have allready taken that hurdle... Sadly it seems both departments almost work sepperately.. There is a lot of god things like DNC that are in the synth engine of the Pa3x that didnt yet make it into the HD1 engine of Kronos...

Pa3x hardware is comparable with Yamahas
Kronos is build with modern PC haddware (tough the very low end)