Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4

[kolla]

But who would buy a Vampire if it came with a core that is slower, but fully replicates existing 040 or 060?

[LoadWB]

But who would buy a Vampire if it came with a core that is slower, but fully replicates existing 040 or 060?

But what if it had SATA ports?

[Iggy]

But who would buy a Vampire if it came with a core that is slower, but fully replicates existing 040 or 060?

Umm...I would. :rtfm:

But what if it had SATA ports?

Oh shut up, Butters.

[kolla]

The FFS certainly does not use the FPU. It goes through the utility.library for some 64bit math, though. The Guru is a line-F trap, though the long arithmetic is in line 4. Hard to say what goes wrong there.

Right. If I find time I may set up a card with whole lot of FFS and trash them on purpose, see if I can find some pattern in the behaviour. For now I use PFS3.

[kolla]

Umm...I would. :rtfm:

Yeah, same here. Then I would want Vampire for all my systems instead of just goofing around with it on a couple.

[gertsy]

If you are going to insult us, get it right. You spelled bigot wrong.

IMO the label bigot is a bit of a self fulfilling term. By action or by insinuation. You can either do nasty things(negative) or nice things(positive). That makes it really simple but also very difficult.

Back on topic.  Bit keen on the standalone.  Be good if you could kit it to work in an existing Amiga with keyboard.

[QuikSanz]

IMO the label bigot is a bit of a self fulfilling term. By action or by insinuation. You can either do nasty things(negative) or nice things(positive). That makes it really simple but also very difficult.

Back on topic.  Bit keen on the standalone.  Be good if you could kit it to work in an existing Amiga with keyboard.

+1

A floppy port would be nice for replacing an old MB though.

[kolla]

+1

A floppy port would be nice for replacing an old MB though.

Silly question: what prevents USB floppy drive?

[QuikSanz]

USB floppy that reads Amiga disks? Didn't know one was ever made.

[Acill]

Will cores for those of us with the V2 500+ still get core updates I hope? Kinda bummed that I have two 500 versions now, but thats life.

[Djole]

Will cores for those of us with the V2 500+ still get core updates I hope? Kinda bummed that I have two 500 versions now, but thats life.

Gunnar has stated v2 users will still receive updates so you dont need to worry for now....

[Iggy]

Yeah, same here. Then I would want Vampire for all my systems instead of just goofing around with it on a couple.

That has been kind of the point we've been making, and I don't know about you, but I feel like I've been butting my head against a wall.
'Sounds like a good idea, if compatibility with standard fpu and mmu operations is incorporated into the design'.

I still don't see why that is an unreasonable request.

[Hattig]

Yes, without and FPU some software is affected, but the FEMU will allow software that uses the FPU, but is not dependent upon it being performant, to run whereas it wouldn't before. There isn't a lot of this software as far as I know - most should have used the AmigaOS IEEE libraries which would have abstracted the problem of FPU-availability away.

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.

[kolla]

There isn't a lot of this software as far as I know - most should have used the AmigaOS IEEE libraries which would have abstracted the problem of FPU-availability away.

It's an interesting experiment to remove the math libraries, and see how much stops working.

[psxphill]

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...

Gunnar may not be making much money now, but he has always been clear that he wants to market his softcore to the embedded market and that he makes decisions based on that rather than every single piece of 30 year old Amiga software. It's in his interest to appeal to the type of people who will evangelise his core.

The friction comes in because there are enough people who will be happy to see vampire as an expensive whdload card, with the added promise of the Amiga having completely new development that will make it viable against PC's. They fight off anyone who tries to get FPU/MMU on the table because they are scared that it will upset Gunnar. Who sees this support and has no reason to expand his base, because it's enough.

Which cuts out software that would actually quite cool to run. Because it's closed source, because of the embedded licensing, then Gunnar is able to exert whatever control he wants.

Hopefully someone else will produce a core for the vampire that does appeal to me.

[jj]

Gunnar may not be making much money now, but he has always been clear that he wants to market his softcore to the embedded market and that he makes decisions based on that rather than every single piece of 30 year old Amiga software. It's in his interest to appeal to the type of people who will evangelise his core.

The friction comes in because there are enough people who will be happy to see vampire as an expensive whdload card, with the added promise of the Amiga having completely new development that will make it viable against PC's. They fight off anyone who tries to get FPU/MMU on the table because they are scared that it will upset Gunnar. Who sees this support and has no reason to expand his base, because it's enough.

Which cuts out software that would actually quite cool to run. Because it's closed source, because of the embedded licensing, then Gunnar is able to exert whatever control he wants.

Hopefully someone else will produce a core for the vampire that does appeal to me.

 is the speed all about the core or is some of the underlying fgpa.  Could minimig or one of the others be converted to run on this hardware ?
 
 Do any of them have MMU/FPU ?