Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4

[magnetic]

Looks like the 1200 version is at the bottom of the release list, which is disappointing. A lot of A1200 users have waited patiently while A500/600/2000 owners have enjoyed their new hardware. At this rate it looks like the 1200 version won't arrive until sometime next year.

Do you have any idea how much work is involved in doing the a1200 version? Already the current versions still need work on software compatibility and its been years of programming!

Congrats to Vampire team on new version!

[magnetic]

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!

FPU is extremely important as is MMU for running real legacy apps. Not all of us just have amigas to play whdload and .mods! This is the main problem for me with vampire it cant really replace real accelerators for using serious applications that need MMU and /or FPU

[magnetic]

Thanks Mag,
I've been saying that for awhile, but the users focused on gaming don't seem to think its important.
One application I can think of is NetBSD, which simply won't run without an MMU (a Motorola compatible MMU, guys).
And a lot of applications make use of floating point calls.
This is not a minor issue, its a serious flaw for anyone that wants to do more than play around, and its freakin' irritating that the fanboys keep fluffing it off.

iggy most ppl here that use classics basically just use them for gaming not much else.... i have classics more for video stuff (genlocks) and music (midi) and weird gfx. So i need mmu and fpu

[magnetic]

I wish the Vampire project got more back to the roots of the project where it was for a kick ass 68k accelerator. Now it seems they are going towards a new platform, which is cool and fun and all, and some of it looks impressive ( i saw acill's a2k running new core looks cool) but for me if you want a newish amiga platform we already have NG for that. For me its ALL about legacy compatibility thats the only reason I still run classics.

I think focus should be on compatibility and fixing bugs and not towards a whole new platform.

[magnetic]

Neither have shipped yet. Vampire production has always struggled to meet demand, Jens has had more success (but he's not perfect).

Time will tell.

Lol Vampire is a hobby project with little funding. Individual Computers (jens s.) is a real company with tooling and facilities not even comparable.

[magnetic]

I feel bad for Kipper, this bad production must have been truly soul crushing.

It crushed his finances from the sound of it thats terrible. Though im not sure why the company doesnt refund the money for a bad prodcution......

[magnetic]

Yeah and? Who of us would react any differently if we put in a lot of time and energy into a project only to have someone sledge our work. Sure Gunnar goes on a bit about his core, but you know what? I would to if I worked on something that I was proud of. OK so the Apollo core doesn't have an FPU or MMU. So what! It's highly unlikely that it will continue to be this way indefinitely.

So what? lol. The whole point of running a classic amiga, at least to me, is legacy classic compatibility and MMU and FPU is important for this..