Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)

[wawrzon]

@wawrzon, Any application that has failed for you because of accelerators ?

none i remember or would seriously care for.

So I think PCI is doable but don't forget that translation between PCI and Zorro may introduce bottlenecks. But why introduce any bus at all between the CPU-in-FPGA and the CPU-socket? KISS..

i think we are talking to almost drop zorro or at least zorro3, and have a direct pci interface next to amiga being interfaced by pci as well. no zorro bottleneck between cpu and pci anymore. i understand the zorro pci interface would be used to interface the remaining amiga hardware or whats left of zorro bus.

[wawrzon]

why nobody?
http://www.powerphenix.com/ctpci/english/overview.htm

if the designs are open could be used as reference.

[wawrzon]

A large enough FPGA like XC3S1600 as used in FPGA Arcade cost 68 USD at D-key. Currently it can be seen in the FPGA Arcade thread it can beat 68030 @ 20 MHz Amigas using a 16-byte cache (4.46 times A1200). With hope of 28 MHz.
Thread: http://www.amiga.org/forums/printthread.php?t=39806&pp=15&page=57
Sysinfo: http://www.yaqube.neostrada.pl/images/SysInfo28-16.gif

So XC3S1600 is more than enough and it has already been done.

The FPGA gives you any device you can imagine that can be expressed as binary gates.

I know VHDL is a bitch but so was assembler, C etc too. It's hard but the reward makes it worthwhile. The power is awesome.

yet they make the daughterboard with an 060 which proves its rather hard to beat it with fpga. with a emu accelerator we might achieve multiple of that speed probably at the fration of cost.

im not against pure fpga. in fact i support it too, but look, minimig is too low end to get much interest, fpgaarcade constantly delayed, natami abandoned, the rest just proof of concept doesnt give much to hold to. we need something radical. we have to be shameless(ly honest to ourselves). and also try to find a way of least resistance (least complicated work we have no ressources to do (fpga)). and this is why i think of x86 or arm as host and amigaboard as slave device on pci or the like is quite revolutionary.

[wawrzon]

perhaps it would be sensible to start multiple threads on amiga coding de according to dirrerent party of the approach and parts the project can be divided into, like:
1. fpga 68k implementation
2. arm/x86 68k emu
3. pci2amiga interface

the only thing is that the other site has probably not the traffic and attendance one of regular amiga sites has.

[wawrzon]

just at some point if and when basic decissions are taken, the thread will have to be split anyway, otherwise we will get lost.

[wawrzon]

Maybe "amiga hardware designs" should be a new subforum of the hardware discussion forum.

remember you will not get people like jens shoenfeld contributung to threads on this site. also the likes of toni wilen might help. if not amiga-coding.de then eab might be better place for brainstorming.

[wawrzon]

Sorry for throwing yet another diversion into the thread.

I don't think the PCI to Amiga warrants a separate thread unless someone makes tangible progress.

It's probably just an option for cpuXtoAmiga like FPGA 060 replacement is a subset of 680x0 accelerator.

pci2amiga, (one could distinguish a4000 030bus, zorro and a1000/500 expansion bus as slave) could be not neccessary with self made fpga board but might be a relief connecting any prefabricated device as master that would usually provide such an interface. having that interface technically working the other part would be to make the cpu of the host device take advantage of the interface. like 68k emulation on x86 to access the amiga chipset via pci.

im just trying to figure out how to modularize the project in order to divide it in a smaller easier doable parts dedicated to particular talents the contributors may have.

[wawrzon]

talking, talking, talking... i see heiroglyph has backed off here, so maybe he is up to something. ;P

[wawrzon]

@jimdrew:
if they are genuine. i suppose damand is there, if you count mikej, yaqube and their fpga arcade customers in.

@billt:
dont see much in there, but if there was, i likely couldnt tell;)

@frenchshark:
interesting, keep us posetd

@heiroglyph:
hows going! some progress?

[wawrzon]

I was told that these are all genuine parts, with the one supplier a bit desperate to unload all of them.  By the way, the going rate for all of the suppliers I found is about $50 per CPU.

i think this is about the price i paid for a rev 6 here in germany few years ago. might be mistaken though. anyway sounds reasonable.