APOLLO 68080 is now HYPER-THREADING enabled

[Iggy]

That's no more hilarious than having multi-core PPC CPU's to run OS4.  How many years ago has it been that OS4 users were promised SMP?  Roughly 10 years if my memory serves me correctly.  AROS x86 has made great strides of late as far as SMP goes, so I expect hyper-threading support to make its way into the 68K version soon.

I'd actually agree with you here, its not at all hilarious.
There is absolutely no reason what so ever that 68K software could not advance toward the use of SMP.
And the features being incorporated into the Apollo core will offer much of the utility that is missing from older cpus like the 68K family.
If legacy compatibility can be retained, while modernizing the processor, I'm all for it.

Given the slow progression of OS4, if that community isn't careful, it may find that the legacy community has caught up to them by the time they are ready to release OS4.2.

Now THAT would be hilarious. 68K continuing to be developed, while PPC go by the wayside. And instead of OS4.2 or OS5, AROS becomes the platform of choice for Amigans.

It COULD happen, so I for one, thank Steven for making the post.

[Iggy]

I just think it's hilarious that "Software for this is coming!" vs software already written for a known quantity (FPU), and him saying "Ohhh there's nothing important that uses the FPU" despite 3d artists, and people who like to play 3d games like Quake and variants.  That's the funny part, to me

I don't ever remember Steven suggesting an fpu didn't have utility, although many others have.
One thing many of you forget is he DOES actually know quite a bit about computing (six years of education...he damned well better), SO...any disagreements I may have had with the man aside, I do agree with him on this.
Hyperthreading DOES sound useful.

[Iggy]

This Gunnar is like GOD. He makes miracles, we want to believe in him & keep the faith, but  nobody has seen him.

Ahem...



http://www.greyhound-data.com/gunnar/gunnar.jpg

Not hard to find images of Gunnar "Big Gun" Von Boehn, you can keep your faith, but a God...no.

[Iggy]

Does anyone remember this?

Never saw this before, but its beautiful.
Dual '060s and a PCI bus.
Now imagine a similar board with Apollo cored FPGAs in place of the '060s.

Better yet, PCIe expansion slots instead of the PCI slots...
A second group of custom slots for four to eight FPGA boards...

68K systems capable of eight to sixteen concurrent threads?

SO...could we compete with modern hardware with THAT?

[Iggy]

Heh... don't give them any more CrAzY ideas. I was on IRC in Dev channel and BigGUN mentioned that including the HT option was easy for him to do since it takes up about 400 gates compared to and FPU that takes up tens of thousands of gates and dev time to perfect.

I don't remember if "gates" was the correct term, but FPGA's have a certain capacity depending on the model. Some sort of term is used to identify the amount of circuitry you can create on an FPGA.

I do some graphics over there, not a hardware or CPU designer, not qualified to get super technical on the matter.

I suppose it would depend on how modern you wanted it to be.
But even just the original Phenix board itself would be significantly less painful to web browse with than a legacy Amiga.

With even faster cpus (or even more of them), better still.