Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4

[Nickman]

The lack of MMU is clearly a big problem for developers who make use of the tooling built around the MMU for debugging. Given the new custom instructions, this seems lacking to me - even if they have a developer core that is slower but has an MMU, and a fast core without. To me this feels more of a priority, but yeah, a lot of people are waiting on the FPU that has been promised.

I can understand people being a bit peeved that new custom instructions like their integer AMMX stuff have been done before a real FPU or MMU. On the other hand, these people are mostly doing it for not a lot, if they want to have some fun (likely hardware ALU blocks on the FPGA made wiring up AMMX a lot easier than doing a full FPU implementation) who am I to complain...

None of that takes away from the achievement of everyone involved in Vampire and the concept of replacing the Amiga CPU with an FPGA implementation initially. It feels like there is a lot more to come.

Think Gunnar said that a FPU takes like 15000LE and AMMX is less then 1000LE. Plus the foundation used in AMMX could be reused for a simpler FPU then the full 80bit apollo FPU that they have now.
And Gunnar and the rest of the team has on several occations said that buy the Vampire and only look at existing features not things that can or will come in the future. Dont think they have forced anyone to buy anything?

[Nickman]

Vampire 600 v2 and Vampire 500 V2+ is delivered with the Gold 2 version of the Apollo core.

What you get is a 100% 68k cpu that is:
-Fully Pipelined
-Superscalar
-Executes up to 4 instructions per clock cycle
-Two address calculation engines
-Two integer execution engines
-Market leading code density
-Optimal cache utilization
-Separate data and instruction caches, supporting concurrent fetch/read/write per clock cycle
-Automatic memory prefetching
-Memory stream detection
-Store buffer
-Branch prediction

also upgrades as
- New Special Purpose Register (including rich set of Performance counters)
- 64 Bit wide Register (Als Dn-Regs are 64 bit wide)
- Apollo has 16 Pointer Registers and 32 Data register it can use.
- These Registers can be used both with AMMX and with every normal instruction.
- AMMX
- MPU 'Memory Protection' Unit, that allows to detects and protects from Illegal Memory Access
- CPU counters

AMMX is the 68k version of the MMX instruction set from INTEL.
-Both MMX and AMMX allow to run SIMD instructions.
-Both support the same type of operations.
-Both allow to operate directly on Register or to use Memory as Input operand.
-AMMX enhanced MMX in such a way that if offers
a) 3 Operand operations
b) Does not limit the programmer to 8 Register but allows him to use up to 32 Registers.

[Nickman]

@Nickman
Thanks! Is this verified by the Apollo Team? I remember Gunnar saying that the GOLD 2 core has no 64-bit support.

http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=4¬e=223
http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=4¬e=758

Apollo was always 64-bit. But over time the support has improved and refined.

Maybe you are thinking of this?
Using such features APOLLO is able to accelerate and improve old existing 68k programs. Several of these "intelligent-rewrites" will be enabled in the next GOLD release of APOLLO.
from this post 18-jan 2016.
http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=4¬e=251

[Nickman]

You didn't answer my other question, so I wager this is an unofficial list compiled by you. If that's the case, kudos to you I hope they will add it to their website after it has been checked against the actual feature list. Then again, the V2+ will probably be EOL by that time

Well I didn't make the list from nothing. All I typed is from apollo-core.com and http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com

So depends on how you want define official.

[Nickman]

Sure, but we were told continually that the Apollo Core and Vampire are "two separate products", and we shouldn't expect the features listed there to be available on the Vampire. We are also told to buy the Vampire "for the features in currently has", yet no one can really tell which ones it has and which ones hasn't. Know what I mean?

Only thing missing from the full Apollo core is the FPU that i know of.
And that is what most "trolls" like to point out.

[Nickman]

By trolls, I assume you mean those that have software that requires a real fpu to shine.
You forgot about the lack of a Motorola compatible MMU, which means no BSD.

You talk about something completely different. (Most of this post is not directed at you personally Iggy and I sincerely apologize if you get offended)

What I answered and what "trolls" point out in this thread and other places comes from the fact that the FPU that Gunnar and Chris has is not included in the core made for Vampire V2, 500 and 600. So all features of Apollo is not in the Vampire cards. And that ALL information about apollo core on Apollo-core.com is not relevant to the vampire cards.

Because Gunnar said so..... Or did he.... Trolls scream YES. and the rest listen and use common sense.

Everything boils down to some people like to demand and force their beliefs on others.
Now that i think of it they remind me of religious fundamentalists in a lot of ways.

So. Asking and talking civilized about things you like to come in the future and listening to what the other side says and reflect on that answer vs screaming, spreading lies and trying to sabotage with false rumors is a lot better in my book.

The Apollo team have the code for a full FPU is a fact.
The Apollo team does not have that said code adapted for the Vampire cards.. also a fact.
The Apollo team has repeatedly said that they do not think a 68040/060 MMU clone is the way they will go.

Like always.
You want a full 68060 ? Then buy that.
You want/require an FPU. Buy a card with that.
You want/require an MMU. Buy a card with that.

If you on the other hand can live with the fact that today (2017-08-22) neither of these are in the core you get when you buy a Vampire card and you do not even know if it will ever come. Then buy a Vampire card.
It relay is that simple.

[Nickman]

Go online on irc and speak with flype.
http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=1¬e=2258