a golden age of Amiga

[wawrzon]

I know...

other asked similar questions again and again, myself i proposed something like that on a german hardware dedicated forum, with no outcome, only it was x86 at the time. arm mighht be simplker because of endianness, but there arent many people here around who could carry out such a project especially till commercial availabiliuty. the closest to what you propose is currently gba1000 with its i believe 100mhz 060 accel:
http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/

[Mrs Beanbag]

other asked similar questions again and again, myself i proposed something like that on a german hardware dedicated forum, with no outcome, only it was x86 at the time. arm mighht be simplker because of endianness, but there arent many people here around who could carry out such a project especially till commercial availabiliuty. the closest to what you propose is currently gba1000 with its i believe 100mhz 060 accel:
http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/

ARM is simpler for a great many reasons.  They're made for embedded use so they're relatively simpler to put on a board.  Software emulation isn't a problem.  Or at least it's not the first problem.  A simple ARM board with two CPUs that can run anything at all would be a good start.

I need to talk to some hardware people.  I'm on the Edinburgh tech scene and I know people do this kind of stuff.  Not Amiga stuff yet, but, well, I'll let you know how I get on.

That 060 board looks pretty cool, real 060s are quite expensive though, that would be a barrier there.

[wawrzon]

it is his private project, even though open and few people got similar system running. i think the 060 accel is even pretty more unique. of course 060 is not an ideal candidate, i suppose you are aware that there are two fpga 68k in the works, tg68 and natami 050, but either hardly having any application or not finished yet. arm accel might perhaps be interesting if you can pull anything like that.

[Khephren]

I don't think we will ever have another 'golden era' -that was, I guess, 86-94 in Europe.
We can have some nice hobbyists hardware and software.

We are going to have to move off 68x soon. Freescale appear to be phasing out a lot of the lower end chips, and the 040 and 060 parts are still at crazy prices. FPGA (or other) solution can't come fast enough me (in terms of accelerators for classic).

[Mrs Beanbag]

I don't think we will ever have another 'golden era' -that was, I guess, 86-94 in Europe.
We can have some nice hobbyists hardware and software.

We are going to have to move off 68x soon. Freescale appear to be phasing out a lot of the lower end chips, and the 040 and 060 parts are still at crazy prices. FPGA (or other) solution can't come fast enough me (in terms of accelerators for classic).

The successor to Freescale's Dragonball is i.MX series, which is an ARM based CPU, so I'd still consider this "linear development".  In other words, if I could do with with the freescale component it would still be "real amiga" spiritually, if that makes any sense to anyone.

ARM is the future of computing though, I'm sure of that.  x86 has to end sooner or later, it's too stupid to continue indefinitely.  Surprised it's lasted this long to be honest.

Still.  Now we can buy a Megadrive in a hand held device, not sure what the hardware is in one of these exactly but there must be a market for a similar Amiga product.

[matthey]

The successor to Freescale's Dragonball is i.MX series, which is an ARM based CPU, so I'd still consider this "linear development".  In other words, if I could do with with the freescale component it would still be "real amiga" spiritually, if that makes any sense to anyone.

Sorry, it doesn't make sense to me. Freescale could have abandoned the ColdFire Dragonball for various reasons probably related to small power efficient devices, customer wants/needs and cost. There are many aspects of ARM that make it easier to follow the crowd but then where is the creativity and originality? If you want simple and want to follow the crowd then buy an x86 and run UAE. I think an enhanced 68k (with ColdFire and other improvements) still has possibilities because I think it can offer better code density than ARM with Thumb 2 while being easier to program and more powerful (although not as energy efficient). It was dropped and is still delegated to the cellar for pure marketing reasons while it is proven technology (68060) that can be improved and scaled up with today's technology. The Natami fpga 68k+ CPU should be as fast as the last 68k processors and it would be possible to burn ~500MHz processors that would provide enough power to do most of today's computing needs.

ARM is the future of computing though, I'm sure of that.  x86 has to end sooner or later, it's too stupid to continue indefinitely.  Surprised it's lasted this long to be honest.

ARM will do well in the low end device market where energy efficiency matters. They are getting faster too, but I think x86 will be able to hold them off on the high end. The x86 is not the same architecture it originally was. It has it's baggage but so does ARM which has gone through 3 architecture changes itself to arrive at an efficient CISC style encoding much like the 68k had all along.

Still.  Now we can buy a Megadrive in a hand held device, not sure what the hardware is in one of these exactly but there must be a market for a similar Amiga product.

Probably an all in one (68k + custom chips) burned chip from an fpga just like could be done for the Natami when done. We need Amiga users to support what we have and consolidate development efforts.

[Mrs Beanbag]

There are many aspects of ARM that make it easier to follow the crowd but then where is the creativity and originality? If you want simple and want to follow the crowd then buy an x86 and run UAE.  I think an enhanced 68k (with ColdFire and other improvements) still has possibilities because I think it can offer better code density than ARM with Thumb 2 while being easier to program and more powerful (although not as energy efficient). It was dropped and is still delegated to the cellar for pure marketing reasons while it is proven technology (68060) that can be improved and scaled up with today's technology. The Natami fpga 68k+ CPU should be as fast as the last 68k processors and it would be possible to burn ~500MHz processors that would provide enough power to do most of today's computing needs.

x86 over my dead body!  I'm as big a fan of 68k as anyone but let's face it, there is never going to be a 68k CPU in the mainstream market ever again; blame marketing all you want, but this is a fact.  The Natami project is awesome but their 68k CPU, in an FPGA or otherwise is always going to be an enthusiast product, with a price tag to match, and there's nothing wrong with that but it's not what I'm aiming for.  If you care about code density though, x86 wins, because it's still an 8-bit instruction set at heart so it can encode some instructions in a single byte, whereas 68k instructions are 16 bit and therefore always multiples of two bytes.

UAE again solves an entirely different problem.  We can do that already of course on existing hardware but having to load it up on another operating system just isn't the same.  It relegates it to the lower social class of historical curiosity.  Emulation isn't living, only reliving.  It has no future, only a past.

ARM will do well in the low end device market where energy efficiency matters. They are getting faster too, but I think x86 will be able to hold them off on the high end.

x86 will still be around for a few more years at the top end but it won't hold on forever.  Heat dissipation is already becoming an unmanageable problem in high performance systems.  Whereas ARM is already being investigated for servers, and Nvidia are going to be pushing it for mainstream desktop/laptop use.  AMD and Intel don't just supply top-end CPUs, once their mid-range and server markets fall away they're going to find their premium products much more difficult to keep competitive.

We need Amiga users to support what we have and consolidate development efforts.

This much I agree with, and I will say, I fully support Natami in their endeavours, and I'd buy one if they were available already, but to be honest I think their project might just be a little too ambitious, which is perhaps why it's taking them so long.  They have made work for themselves with their philosophy, they really are doing things the hard way and hats off to them.  I have no intention of trying to compete with them, it just solves a different problem as far as I'm concerned.

But let's not forget what else we already have in the community, AROS's new Kickstart and 68k JIT for ARM CPU's could come in very handy for the scheme I have in mind.

[bloodline]

How about getting AROS working properly on the Raspberry Pi and working on an integrated 68K JIT for ARM?

+1

[wawrzon]

@Mrs Beanbag
interesting thoughts i must admit.
what concerns aros though i must mention that afaik it only runs hosted, and it is also envisioned to run hosted on pi at least initially. unfortunatelly, it looks like the arm developer is backing off due to lack of time, so..

[Mrs Beanbag]

well my first concern isn't performance so any 68k emulator I can get to compile for ARM will do to begin with.  Should be possible to pull UAE to bits to get something running.  Can get ARM chips of up to 1GHz for less than £50!  Chipset emulation could be done with a lot less.  I need to speak to some hardware folks first.

[trydowave]

The golden age of the Amiga was 1991 for me. That’s the year I brought Turrican 2. The age when the Amiga first wowed me was 1989 and Shadow of the Beast. To be honest. For a new golden age the Amiga would have to do the same thing that the 1000 did, totally revolutionise the gaming/computing world like it did back in 85'.
If the Amiga wasn’t the best then it wouldn't have sold. And it’s the reason why it slowly died out when the console/pc market came in. But. It was king, for many years. New amigas just don't cut it. They can't even match a mid entry PC let alone the latest gen consoles and the best PC gear money can buy.
Not to mention the fact that software is developed and marketed so different nowadays. I'm happy to stick with the old Amiga. Even though it’s currently in pieces in my spare room
Just my two cents.

[matthey]

If you care about code density though, x86 wins, because it's still an 8-bit instruction set at heart so it can encode some instructions in a single byte, whereas 68k instructions are 16 bit and therefore always multiples of two bytes.

The x86 has variable length instructions from hell that make up for the short instructions. The average code density of x86 is better than most RISC encodings but a ways behind 68k and Thumb 2 ARM which both use 16 bit instruction encodings. The 64 bit x86 is a little worse yet at code density. I think the 68k can be improved 5-10% in code density over the 68020 or ColdFire with the additions the Natami is likely to add without significantly increasing the complexity of the decoder. Those little ARM devices have good battery life but are dogs and x86 devices are fast but chew through the batteries. An enhanced 68k could hit the sweet spot between. We know how little of memory and storage an Amiga needs to be useful.

x86 will still be around for a few more years at the top end but it won't hold on forever.  Heat dissipation is already becoming an unmanageable problem in high performance systems.  Whereas ARM is already being investigated for servers, and Nvidia are going to be pushing it for mainstream desktop/laptop use.  AMD and Intel don't just supply top-end CPUs, once their mid-range and server markets fall away they're going to find their premium products much more difficult to keep competitive.

Servers generally need to access lots of memory and 64 bit x86 makes sense there. Yea, it generates a little more heat but crank up ARM to that processing power with 64 bits and I wouldn't expect a huge difference. PowerPC was supposed to be able to dethrone x86 due to it's more efficient and superior design but it didn't happen. IBM has take the PowerPC to the max but it's advantages don't seem to be enough to pay the cost differential in most cases.

But let's not forget what else we already have in the community, AROS's new Kickstart and 68k JIT for ARM CPU's could come in very handy for the scheme I have in mind.

The fpga Arcade chose fpga CPU emulation over ARM CPU emulation. It would be interesting to see how a faster ARM could emulate the 68k.

... For a new golden age the Amiga would have to do the same thing that the 1000 did, totally revolutionise the gaming/computing world like it did back in 85'.

It's very difficult and expensive to revolutionize the gaming/computing world anymore. Another golden age for me would be a very affordable for everyone Amiga in 1 chip (68k CPU, custom chips, 3D) with backward compatibility. Think Natami produced in enough quantity to approach the Raspberry pi price. Say $100 U.S. with the expansion the Natami has. It is possible with enough quantity.

[Mrs Beanbag]

We know how little of memory and storage an Amiga needs to be useful.

Hell yeah but that's not just the CPU...

Servers generally need to access lots of memory and 64 bit x86 makes sense there. Yea, it generates a little more heat but crank up ARM to that processing power with 64 bits and I wouldn't expect a huge difference.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/redstone-moonshot-arm-server-data-center,13884.html">tell it to HP

PowerPC was supposed to be able to dethrone x86 due to it's more efficient and superior design but it didn't happen. IBM has take the PowerPC to the max but it's advantages don't seem to be enough to pay the cost differential in most cases.

All market forces, I'm afraid.  It takes a lot to dethrone x86 because of its position, not because of any technical advantages intrinsic to the design.

It's very difficult and expensive to revolutionize the gaming/computing world anymore. Another golden age for me would be a very affordable for everyone Amiga in 1 chip (68k CPU, custom chips, 3D) with backward compatibility.

Indeed and I don't know what that revolution would be.  Amiga revolutionised the home computer world with its high quality graphics and sound, while PCs were still green screen beeping number crunches.  These days PC and console graphics and sound are so good I don't even see the point of them getting any better.  We need radically new concept of computer...

Think Natami produced in enough quantity to approach the Raspberry pi price. Say $100 U.S. with the expansion the Natami has. It is possible with enough quantity.

Yeah but we'll never get that quantity if it is only of interest to die-hard fans.  But there is a demand in the world at large for a cheap computer that's competent at games like a console, works out of the box without mucking about with drivers, but also with an operating system that you can use to browse the web, write docs, draw graphics, compose music etc.. just from a software side of things, I am sick that these days I have to pay £400 for cubase or photoshop!  (Well I don't because I use Gimp on Linux but you know...)

XBox 360 runs on a PowerPC chip by the way.

[Ral-Clan]

Hi:

@tribz
I do have a plan !!!

My plan is to create nice animated cartoons -like Eric Shwartz-using my
amazing amiga computer. And not only to enrich the amiga scene, but also
to show what amigas can do (able to create great amiga cartoons only using
the amiga and the moviesetter animation software).
I am also planning to make new amiga games using AmosProfessional
but including beautiful graphics made in lightwave 3d.
That's my personal plan  
But you can help me immensely if you also become dedicated to create
new amiga animations, games, and music. etc etc whichever is your skill.
Cheers !!!

Rednova

Hi Rednova,

Good Luck, you've been talking about it for a while now so I look forward to seeing what you can produce.

[Bundi]

I think the strength of the amiga was that a unified platform (ECS through AGA didn't vary that much, nor 68000 to 68060) was very affordable, "Open" in as much as the RKMs were publicly available for the same price as any other text book. No NDA, no £professional-only per annum developer subscription and the platform as a whole, audio+graphics+cpu+operating-system simply couldn't be beaten on price (I consider amiga-in-keyboards) and was hard to beat even without considering price between it's first appearance to Commodores eventual demise.

To compete on the same front now is impossible considering the budgets of NVidia, ATI, Soundblaster e.t.c. and the markup any firm has to pay when buying in small volume. The efficiency of AmigaOS is irrelevant on the desktop now that you can buy a 2.8GHz sempron with 1mb cache new for £28.38 (The first place I looked.) Better to have memory protection, 64bit e.t.c.

To compete on an open, developer-friendly platform front is to compete with linux which is a losing battle. To compete in making a nice friendly commercial linux/bsd available on an artificially constrained platform is to compete with Apple and Google which is plainly ridiculous. (Hello Commodore-USA)

About the only way I can see for "Amiga" / AmigaOS to find a niche again, outside of those of us who continue to use it simply because we love it like our first car that does about 20 miles a year but is still sitting in a lock-up somewhere, would be to provide best in class developer environment, available for a month to six weeks disposable income for some new up and coming technology and then pray that you can license bits of it out and enable those who buy into your environment to do the same.

About the only prospect I can see of an opportunity to do that is with FPGA development. If I understand the following paper correctly, technology is emerging that allows software to define the silicon on which it runs, dynamically(ish), while running. ( I can't claim to truly understand the paper)

How much more amazing would the demoscene be if the coders could redefine the silicon, with the limits of the fpga, dynamically to benefit whatever effect they felt like showing off?

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~tbecker/papers/iee06.pdf

And that ties in more with Natami / AROS than it does with anyone who holds any old Commodore or Amiga IP. Even then I assume there would be a £BIG expenditure necessary to provide a modern development environment and quality documentation and I think we can safely assume that there are commercial entities positioning themselves to fill that space already.

Maybe I'm just dreaming of seeing a demoscene resurgence. For the purposes of full disclosure I should say that I've never coded a line of asm in my life, except maybe at school, so there is a good chance that I'm havering.

Now that I've reread my post I realise I may have drank too much coffee today. :furious:

I apologize to anyone who feels that I have wasted their time with this unusually lengthy post.

B.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Yes, a computer with some FPGAs on board that could be reconfigured on the fly through the OS could lead to some very interesting projects...

Tonight I've been looking into hardware/realtime raytracing.  Of course we all remember The Juggler.  Raytracing was what made Amiga's name!

So I'm now wondering just how many ARM coprocessors we could pack on one board... forget GPUs, maybe a stack of CPU/FPGA pairs could do all sorts of crazy things.