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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: DJS on December 17, 2004, 03:11:15 PM
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ELBOX COMPUTER is proud to announce its breath-taking new product for Amiga 1200 computers - DRAGON ColdFire. DRAGON is a ColdFire-based accelerator card combined with the PCI/AGP Expansion busboard.
With its DRAGON ColdFire development, Elbox brings to Amiga computers top performance of the latest Freescale's ColdFire V4e core based-processor, the successor of the 68k dynasty. DRAGON-equipped Amiga computers are ready to run most of the 68k Amiga programs/applications several times faster when compared against Amiga 1200 with the fastest 68060 accelerators.
'By combining many attractive features like the high-performance ColdFire processor, fast DDR memory, AGP graphics, powerful PCI 66MHz technology and comprehensive software support, DRAGON-equipped Amiga computers turn into modern, fast and extremely functional power machines,' said Maciek Binek, president and CEO of Elbox.
The DRAGON's mainboard and the DRAGON's ColdFire CPU card are designed on two separate circuit boards. With modular design, the DRAGON can be easily upgraded and configured to meet the needs of the most demanding Amiga users.
DRAGON Technical Specification:
• ColdFire MCF5475 processor (410MIPS) running at 266MHz
• Two sockets for DDR-266 SDRAM modules, support up to 1GByte of memory (1GB/s peak)
• One AGP slot (264MB/s peak access from the main processor)
• Five 66/33MHz, 32-bit PCI slots, PCI 2.2 compliant (264MB/s peak)
• 2MBytes of 32-bit Flash memory (containing upgradeable DRAGON firmware)
• Asynchronous design with fast access to Amiga 1200 motherboard hardware
• Multi-channels DMA support (PCI <-> PCI, PCI <-> DDR, PCI <-> AGP, PCI <-> A1200)
• Auto-Recharge Battery-backed Real Time Clock
• Four high-speed programmable serial (UART/USART/IRDA/modem) controllers (optional)
• One Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and two FastEthernet 100Mbps controllers (optional)
ColdFire processor:
The DRAGON ColdFire will initially be available with the fastest ColdFire MCF5475 processor in clock speed of 266MHz. MCF5475 features the V4e ColdFire core with MMU, dual precision FPU and EMAC. The 266MHz version of the ColdFire MCF5475 processor provides raw performance of 410MIPS.
Up to 1GB of DDR SDRAM:
The DRAGON comes with two DIMM slots for ultrafast DDR-266 SDRAM memory. This high-speed memory rushes data at up to 1GB/s throughput. It is over 25 times faster compared against the fastest A1200 accelerators available so far. As memory is scalable up to 1GB, you can add RAM to meet increasing demands of your applications and workflow.
AGP Graphic Slot:
The DRAGON comes with the 3.3V 66MHz AGP slot which supports up to 264MB/s data throughput. The following AGP graphics cards will be supported: Radeon 9700, Radeon 9500, Radeon 9200, Radeon 9000, Radeon 7500, Radeon 7000, Voodoo 5, Voodoo 4, Voodoo 3.
PCI Expansion Slots:
The DRAGON comes with five 66/33MHz, 32-bit PCI slots compliant with the PCI 2.2 specification. The DRAGON system can be configured with PCI 66MHz or PCI 33MHz expansion technology. All PCI slots provide DMA capability. The DRAGON's ColdFire processor has linear access to the 4GB PCI space.
Multi-channel DMA support:
DRAGON hardware provides Multi-channel DMA support. PCI bus master cards can provide DMA accesses to all DRAGON resources: the AGP card, DDR memory, other PCI cards and the Amiga 1200 motherboard space. DRAGON' PCI-to-DDR Direct Memory Access can reach up to 264MB/s throughput. This feature allows even the fastest mass storage PCI controllers to run at their top performance.
2MB of 32-bit Flash memory:
DRAGON includes 2 MBytes of the 32-bit extremely fast Flash memory. It includes factory-programmed DRAGON's boot firmware and diagnostic software. Flash ROM allows remapping of the Amiga Kickstart, as well.
FastEthernet 100Mbps and Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (optional):
The DRAGON's MCF5475 processor has one built-in Hi-Speed USB 2.0 controller and two FastEthernet 100Mbps controllers. External ports for these controllers will be available on an optional module. Hardware-acceleration encryption (DES, 3DES, RC4, AES, MD5, SHA-1, RNG) is built into the processor. Dual-channel architecture permits single pass encryption and authentication.
High-Speed serial controllers (optional):
Up to four programmable serial controllers (PSCs), each with separate 512-byte receive and transmit FIFOs for UART, USART, modem, codec, and IrDA 1.1 interface, are built in the DRAGON's MCF5475 processor. External ports for these controllers will be available on an optional module.
Compatible Tower systems:
The DRAGON ColdFire busboard is designed to be used in the following tower systems: Mirage 1200, E/BOX 1200, Power Tower, Winner Tower and Infinitiv Tower. Besides, an Elbox custom-designed case for the DRAGON ColdFire system will be announced soon.
Supported AGP and PCI cards:
• Graphic cards (Radeon 9700, Radeon 9500, Radeon 9200, Radeon 9000, Radeon 7500, Radeon 7000, Voodoo 5, Voodoo 4, Voodoo 3)
• Sound cards (Sound Blaster 4.1 Digital, Sound Blaster 128 and cards based on the ForteMedia FM801 chipset--e.g. Terratec 512i Digital)
• Serial ATA controllers (SiI 3114 support in development)
• Spider Hi-Speed USB 2.0 controllers
• TV tuner cards (based on Bt848/849/878 and FUSION 878/879)
• Fast Ethernet 100Mbps cards (based on RTL8139 chipset)
• Ethernet 10Mbps cards (based on RTL8029 chipset)
Pricing and availability:
The DRAGON ColdFire is planned to be available by the end of January 2005 for a very attractive price, offering superior price/performance ratio. The suggested retail price is 349 EUR. (VAT excl.)
Registered owners of Elbox Mediator 1200 PCI busboards will receive a special incentive upgrade offer in January 2005.
If you have any questions related to the DRAGON ColdFire busboard, email them at dragon@elbox.com (http://mailto:dragon@elbox.com). Answers to most frequent inquiries will be published in FAQ section of the Elbox website (http://www.elbox.com).
DRAGON - The Dawn of the New Era
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Two sockets for DDR-266 SDRAM modules
erm.. maybe I'm stupid but does it have sdram or ddrm ram?
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I belive it when I see it.
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If this product makes it and is released.....
I will have to bring out my 1200 and get it ready.
Also for the ones who bag on it from ever being released, and it does come out....Sad day for them. :-D :-)
Ill wait and see if it ever makes it. :-)
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Sounds nice
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Forgive me for asking what is potentially a stupid question. What OS and utilities actually run on this card?
(I haven't really followed the coldfire story, sorry)
Wayne
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AmigaOS 3.9 and most of the utilities of the classic Amiga since coldfire is compatible with the 68k series.
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since coldfire is compatible with the 68k series
ColdFire is not compatible with the 68k series.
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maybe emulation here ? but it must be too clear code
=> i think we have one of new amiga :) old_amiga, amiga1 , pegasos, etc,etc, CF amiga now ?:)
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Poster: Piru Posted: 2004/12/17 12:31:18
ColdFire is not compatible with the 68k series.
Weren't the missing instruction sets added to the later model coldfires?
Dammy
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Most of them.
I think that it was only a handful that needed to be trapped.
There has been some lengthy discussions on this and Coldfire 68k JIT.
But whats the point?
I can get a UAE-pc-machine thats faster at systemfriendly 68k-programs for the same amount and this accelerator doesn´t fit in a desktop A1200.
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Can we see some links showing which instructions this particular Colfire mpu supports and does not support?
I would much rather run tight 680X0 code than PPC code. Have any of you seen the PPC instuction set? I got an PPC Assembly language book and was mortified. Yech- it was enough to make me reconsider the x86. I wonder how much bigger the core exec/kernel OS of the PPC version of AmigaOS is. Between 3.9 and 4.0 there shouldn't be many changes that would account for a much larger size, other than the PPC not being as code-efficient a chip as we were lead to believe. Fair warning: first person to talk about RISC gets slapped.
If the ColdFire supports most of the common 680X0 instructions (and addressing modes) and the net effect is that it runs several times faster than a 68060, then i'm interested. I'd rather run my tiny and tight Amiga 68K code mostly-natively than run it interpretively on some PPC box with an emulator and Amiga sticker slapped on (or run some bloated PPC C code).
What's even more troubling is the off-the-shelf card approach we see for the video-graphics subsystems on the new "Amigas" or Amiga-like contenders. Why have none of them thought to include a module to add elegant Amiga videographic features to the gfx cards they plan to slap in? (They have, it just requires more resources than the splintered efforts have. Where is Richard Branson when you need him?) Sure the new cards can be 3D bit bangers, but we still need real hardware Sprites, multiple playfields, real collision-detection, an Amiga instruction-compatible copper (it's trivially simple), genlocking, etc. If the core AGA features (or an extension) could be overlaid with existing AGP gfx systems, that would be very good indeed. In effect mixing the current AGP cards with something that's still very Amiga-like (gee, and MMU for AGA register redirect would be nice for compatibility).
If only we had all pooled our money some 5 years ago to fund Mick Tinker and Jeri Ellsworth to work together on that one subsystem. Then these new Amiga-wannabe machines would be more than just PPC boxes with AmigaOS and Amiga hardware emulators.
In any event, depending on the price, I'd be very interested. And could you cram this and an A1200 moboard into an A500 case?
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My twopenneth...I would quite like this to be true but I don't entirely trust a company that has a website where you can still order a Shark PPC and they will take your money. Now they post this on their website. If it is vapor it makes me very angry that they have so little morals they play with us in this way. I'm prepared to be proved wrong but come Feb 2005 and if there is no sign of it Elbox will receive a second black mark in my book. But if it is real well they kept it under their belt until it was ready which is quite admirable I suppose.
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can load ppc software using the coldfire.library or only enables the 680x0 emulation?
What AmigaOS work with this new hardware? OS3.9 or OS4?
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3.9
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> Fair warning: first person to talk about RISC gets slapped.
You asked the question and then refused to listen to the answer!
RISC is exactly what it says -- a REDUCED instruction set -- if the instructions aren't in the processor, then they need to be in the running process (hence programs are larger).
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I'll be curious to see what the "kids" have to say about the price (since $500 is WAY too much for a MOTHERBOARD -- $350 ought to be WAY too much for an accelerator!)
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RISC is going to end up as a new CISC. :lol:
Isn´t this how all designs work whether programs, cars or cpus?
"We are going to make it slim and elegant" then along comes some other buggers and adds a lot off "useful" functions to improve things. :-P
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I would much rather run tight 680X0 code than PPC code.
Yes, sure... especially since the bloated PPC code runs at a multiple of the speed of the tight 68k code...
I wonder how much bigger the core exec/kernel OS of the PPC version of AmigaOS is
Exec V50 is written in C, while the original exec was written in 68k assembly... This makes for a lot more difference than 68k vs. PPC code...
If you need to know, the current Exec code is about 300 KB. Of course, a big chunk of this is the emulator (about 50 K). The original exec was some 20 K of code.
Between 3.9 and 4.0 there shouldn't be many changes that would account for a much larger size, other than the PPC not being as code-efficient a chip as we were lead to believe.
What a nonsense.
Fair warning: first person to talk about RISC gets slapped.
Just goes to show that you don't have a clue about what you're talking.
What's even more troubling is the off-the-shelf card approach we see for the video-graphics subsystems on the new "Amigas" or Amiga-like contenders.
LOL, now that was a good one...
Shawn, is that you ? :-D
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Weren't the missing instruction sets added to the later model coldfires?
Some, but tons are still missing.
There's some old doc (http://www.iki.fi/sintonen/coldfire-v4-m68k.txt) I wrote about this.
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can load ppc software using the coldfire.library
What coldfire.library? What's this?
Anyway, ColdFire is not PPC CPU, so that should answer your question.
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Have any of you seen the PPC instuction set?
The PowerPC is design with a fixed-width instruction set. That makes instruction fetching and decoding much easier than on the 680x0. The direct consequence is that there are 1.4 Ghz PowerPC CPU's while the 68060 topped at around 100 Mhz. That's a factor 14, mind you.
Between 3.9 and 4.0 there shouldn't be many changes that would account for a much larger size, other than the PPC not being as code-efficient a chip as we were lead to believe.
Apart from a virtual memory system, lots of new functions, a complete 68k emulator, and being written in C instead of assembler...
If the ColdFire supports most of the common 680X0 instructions (and addressing modes) and the net effect is that it runs several times faster than a 68060, then i'm interested
Only that a PPC is several times faster than several times 68060... Oh well.
What's even more troubling is the off-the-shelf card approach we see for the video-graphics subsystems on the new "Amigas" or Amiga-like contenders. Why have none of them thought to include a module to add elegant Amiga videographic features to the gfx cards they plan to slap in?
LOL! That was a good one, really :-)
What "elegant Amiga videographic feature" are you referring to? The 8 bitplanes maximum? The bandwidth requirements that make chip ram access almost impossible with high-res modes? Planar displays that require you to split a single pixel across 8 bits? The ability to run 8 bit video modes only?
If the core AGA features (or an extension) could be overlaid with existing AGP gfx systems, that would be very good indeed.
"Core AGA features" are as outdated as they come. Hardware sprites? They are so limited that I hardly know a game that would ever have used them except for the mouse pointer (but then, the Radeon can have a true-color mouse pointer).
If only we had all pooled our money some 5 years ago to fund Mick Tinker and Jeri Ellsworth to work together on that one subsystem. Then these new Amiga-wannabe machines would be more than just PPC boxes with AmigaOS and Amiga hardware emulators
No offence to these undoubtedly very talented people, but do you honestly believe that a handful of people could at all beat multi-billion dollar companies like nVidia or ATI or Matrox?
And could you cram this and an A1200 moboard into an A500 case?
At 266 MHz I'd wager to say you'd run into a heat problem. Also, I have my doubts that a standard A1200 power supply can handle that, especially if it has an AGP slot and you would want to put one of those dispiseful ATI Radeon's into it (after you grow tired of HAM8, that is ;-) )
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the coldfire.library is for enable all coldfire datas/caches & emulated missing instructions found on 680x0 (68060.library do this too for enable all without this library, 060 work bad and slow). I think oli_hd have this library for the coldfusion project. 68040.library dummy -> 68060.library dummy -> coldfire.library
=)
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Boing: I got an PPC Assembly language book and was mortified.
Why the hell do you WANT to code in assembly?! All RISC CPUs have arcane instruction sets because we have compilers.
The world is moving to things like Java and PHP, my friend. The age of assembly is over. Deal with it.
Boing: Why have none of them thought to include a module to add elegant Amiga videographic features to the gfx cards they plan to slap in?
Foot the bill if you want a custom chip made.
Also, bitplanes are useless for most things these days. You'd be using brand new chunky modes for everything, and thus the whole old blitter architecture would have to be tossed out. What is there to salvage?
"Elegant" is a relative thing. The Amiga was elegant back when most things ran with 16-32 colors. Today things are different, and the Amiga architecture (and OS) is anything but elegant and flexible enough for today's tasks.
Rogue: Hardware sprites?
Actually, I'd like to see that, again. Having graphics independent of the refresh rate of your monitor is a very, very handly thing to rid your games and stuff from flicker.
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Hardware sprites? They are so limited that I hardly know a game that would ever have used them except for the mouse pointer
They were used a lot in the good/best games. Mostly for the player sprite. But also for player bullets, score display and sometimes even for additional parallax layer. In Battle Squadron for example the (max.) two player sprites plus all the bullets shot by them plus the score display was all done with hw sprites. Some of these games
(others incl. Turrican 3, Lionheart, Shadow of the Beast) would have looked terrible if there had not been hw sprites. Because with hw parallax scrolling you (on OCS/ECS) only had 7 real colors in the foreground and 8 real colors in the background.
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I'd love to see one of these for the A4000 so I could jam it into my spare A4000D. It won't replace my A4000T/PCI/PPC machine though and I'm not going to do another A1200T project... there's a reason I'm selling my A1200T/Zorro/PPC machine. The A1200 (original desctop) mod project I have is all I need on that front. :)
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erm.. maybe I'm stupid but does it have sdram or ddrm ram?
DDR is a type of SDRAM.
Fair warning: first person to talk about RISC gets slapped.
Just goes to show that you don't have a clue about what you're talking.
I think his point however is that PPC's often have nearly as many (or more) instructions as their x86 counterparts, hence making the "RISC" moniker a bit silly. Anyways "CISC" and "RISC" (as an "absolute" label) are bad ways to define modern processors, unless you're a glutton for market-speak...
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MCF5475 Features
V4e ColdFire core with MMU, dual precision FPU and EMAC - delivering up to 410 (Dhrystone 2.1) MIPS at 266 MHz
32 KB I-Cache, 32 KB D-Cache
32 KB on-chip system SRAM
Four 32-bit timers, two 32-bit slice timers, one watchdog timer
Hardware-acceleration encryption (DES, 3DES, RC4, AES, MD5, SHA-1, RNG)
32-bit 133 MHz DDR/SDR-SDRAM Controller
1.5V core, 2.5V DDR, 3.3V I/O voltages
Connectivity Functionality:
Two 10/100 Fast Ethernet Controllers (FECs)
USB 2.0 high speed device with integrated PHY
32-bit v2.2 PCI interface; 33/66 MHz; five external masters
DSPI - SPI with DMA capability
I2C interface
16-channel DMA controller
I wonder which 68K instructions are missing and how often they are used? Nice specs though.
EDIT - from the manual.
The ColdFire instruction set is a simplified version of the M68000 instruction set. The removed instructions include BCD, bit field, logical rotate, decrement and branch, and integer multiply with a 64-bit result.
How often are these used?
The manual does note many differences with the 68000 but also gives additions and tips on how to use the missing CPU/FPU instructions.
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We'll see if Dragon comes out. I say it does look very attractive, however we'll all have to see it to believe it. :-)
It would be a cool expansion to own, as far as classic hardware expansions go, however who knows how compatible the on-board ColdFire CPU would be... ? :-?
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I dont know much about cpus but PulsatingQuasar was the only one that had a really cool and usefull post :)
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I'm beginning to speculate here but this 32 KB on-chip system SRAM could be used for software to add the missing 68K instructions. I don't know if it's possible but it would in theory be a nice place to do that.
I saw several places in the manual where they talked about the differences between the 68K and the Coldfire and how to do things alternatively when porting source to the coldfire.
Maybe the developer kit from Freescale had allready source to implement all the missing functions of the 68K as a service to industrial companies looking for a quick fix to replace their old 68K stuff. I mean, the 68K might still be in use in the industry.
For an anounced date of january this hardware must actually be already finished. It's real release data would then be dependent on the delivery in quantaties of that coldfire.
Keeping an eye out for this hardware.
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Hmmm....read somewhat more through the documentation.
10.2.3.6 Supervisor/User Stack Pointers
To isolate supervisor and user modes, CF4e implements two A7 register stack pointers, one
for supervisor mode and one for user mode. Two former M680x0 privileged instructions to
load and store the user stack pointer are restored in the instruction set architecture.
and
The FPU programming model is like that in the
MC68060 microprocessor. {but is 64-bit instead of 80-bit. I don't know what that means when you want to run MC68K code}
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any know if is compatible with the blizzards ppcs? for execute the ppc soft under workbench 3.9 with the 68k disabled and running the coldfire on os 3.9? example: load the os 3.9 with the dragon and play quakewarpos on a window using my 603.
cheers =)
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Elbox don't have the greatest track history of delivering the goods do they ?
Wonder why they still advertise the SharkPPC on their site ? It's been what 3 years now ?
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@DaNi
Well, with the BlizzardPPC you loose a lot of time with context switching. So depending on how much CPU time is lost with adding the missing bits to the Coldfire I won't be suprised if it runs the 68K version of Quake 2 faster.
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Wonder why they still advertise the SharkPPC on their site ? It's been what 3 years now ?
It's been > 5 years.
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There is already a mailing list if someone wants to join: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dragon-coldfire/
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Well.... we have March now. Just wondering if anybody has already seen anything of the Dragon yet (and I mean the body of it, or at least its tail, not the hot warm vapour coming from its mouth :-D ?