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Author Topic: Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4  (Read 69263 times)

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Offline gregthecanuck

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Re: Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4
« on: August 04, 2017, 05:57:55 AM »
Quote from: QuikSanz;829051
Put a real MMU & FPU in it and I'll get one. Otherwise I pretty much have it all already covered.


It has an MMU, but it is an evolved design from previous chips. This has good/bad points. Bad point is it is not backwards compatible. Good point is it is a forward-looking design supporting MMU features (such as non-executable memory) that are not in previous MMU designs. Also has other bonuses that contribute to overall system performance.

Gunnar has taken a long-term view on where the design should be going forward and I agree completely with the decisions being made. I am no fanboy but this guy does know what he is doing. Some short-term pain for sure as the tools/utilities catch up with the new MMU.

The FPU side - short-term the team has recently delivered the "femu" software that allows *any* FPU-less Amiga to run programs requiring an FPU. Pretty cool. Is it as fast as a real FPU - heck no! Does it let a lot of new programs run - yes. How much of a hit the software FPU makes on performance depends a lot on the program. Also this software is very new (version 0.10 recently released) so in theory the speed could be improved going forward.

Long-term the plan is for an FPU to be there in the core. It is just a resource/priority issue (and maybe an available LE issue). At least for now there is a short-term solution.

For some people a hardware FPU is very important. I can understand that completely. For example I think Quake ran at like 2 or 3 FPS (instead of not running at all). In that case you just need to keep waiting for the feature to be implemented... only 2 more weeks... ;)

Cheers!
« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 06:01:29 AM by gregthecanuck »
 

Offline gregthecanuck

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Re: Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2017, 09:25:53 AM »
@QuikSanz -

The Apollo core does have an MMU implementation. However it is not backwards-compatible with previous Motorola designs.

It supports new features such as non-executable memory. This is pretty much an expectation of any modern MMU. The MMU has a "modern, forward-looking" design instead of being compatible with 20+ year old designs in the 68060 and earlier generations.

There are rumours the full FPU will make its debut in the V4 product but that is all they are at the moment. My understanding is the FPU took a back seat to getting the chipset reimplementation logic completed for the V4. An interim FPU emulator "femu" has released that works for all non-FPU Amigas. It does not run at the speed one would expect of a native FPU on a 100+ MHz 68060 but it allows programs to run that would otherwise fail.

Cheers!
« Last Edit: August 16, 2017, 09:32:49 AM by gregthecanuck »
 

Offline gregthecanuck

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Re: Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2017, 02:10:40 PM »
I believe it is also a dual-ported design. It also solves cache coherency issues present in older 68K generations... but don't quote me on that...  going by my conveyor-belt memory.
 

Offline gregthecanuck

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Re: Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2017, 02:11:31 AM »
Quote from: QuikSanz;829652
But my question is: can some missing stuff be dealt with by some programming (software).


Sure.

On the FPU - there is the 'femu' emulation software.

On the MMU - any tools or utilities that use MMU functionality would need an update to detect the 68080 MMU and call it correctly. However, as far as I know, the MMU has not been exposed to programmers at the point. The design may still be in flux...
 

Offline gregthecanuck

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Re: Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2017, 08:50:51 AM »
Quote from: QuikSanz;829664
One more time. There is FEMU emulation software and ZERO FPU on board.

There is MMU unknown software onboard. So MEMU? emulation possible?


I see where this is going. I am trying to give you what I understand to be the most up to date information. If this product isn't for you then there are other great accelerator products out there.