New ppc board by Acube/A-Eon: A1222 "Tabor"

[nicholas]

Wow,
Does anybody really think Acube and A-Eon are so dumb that they would spend money time and all the rest and not have thought through every bit of what they are doing. They are the only ones that make NG hardware and both have products out and work hard to advance things in that regard. Remember 2 years ago just after Amiewest 2013 they announced a hardware partnership. This is good news all across the board for everyone. So I am one who says GREAT JOB!!! and thanks for all your efforts both Acube and A-Eon. Some on this site should just stop with the I know better than everyone but have no track record to back it up garbage. Thanks again Acube and A-Eon. You build it I and others that really do care about this hobby buy it and everyone wins.  

even the know it all naysayers win but again it is because of the people that spend money and support the work for AmigaNG. If you dont have the money to play in the sand box then get out of it  instead of pissing in it and on the people working in it.


I have spent far FAR more money this year in 2015 by a long shot than it costs to buy a new X1000 in just donations to AmigaNG software and other projects. So keep talking crap as the producers and backers move things forward. How about you put your money in and join us or go find another hobby that like the glass is half empty talk.

I play to win and I will.
I have an A=Eon AmigaOne X1000 and will have a X5000/40 and the new mb from Acube and will keep up with software donations and buy all the new software and spend more of my money. Talk is cheep. My lips don't flap in the wind and I am not cheep.

https://youtu.be/U8Kum8OUTuk

[nicholas]

@apsturk

Yes, I'd like it to be noted that I think using the P1022 with its non standard fpu is a damned stupid idea.
So, we now have to modify the OS' AND recompile software just for this one model?
That is preposterous, and any of you that don't get that have missed a serious point.
Using an e500v2 cored cpu was a mistake.
Its a dead end.
The obvious evolution would be the e5500 and then the e6500.

So the T10XX would have been the logical choice.

Any Amiga program should be using the OS provided Maths libraries anyway Jim so as long as Hyperion provide libs with the same public interfaces but internally using code specific for this weird FPU then most stuff should be OK. Theoretically anyway.

[nicholas]

is this a smartphone perhaps?

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-compute-stick.html

 Not the best choice of argument there.  I've got an ASUS Transformer T100 TAM with a faster version of that same CPU and it's performance is terrible under 32bit Windows 10 Pro, slightly more tolerable under 64bit Linux but not much more.  

[nicholas]

Huh, V8 exist for PowerPC now?

 For quite a while now.  https://developer.ibm.com/opentech/2015/06/30/ppc-support-for-google-v8-goes-mainstream/

[nicholas]

It's used in games, programs like blender, my own SketchBlock is very floating point based as I use ARGBfloat pixels , these kind of things would benefit from a recompile, much as you might have for 68060 in the olden days.

 Do you use the OS Maths libraries in your own stuff or internal routines?  I'm wondering just how big a percentage of 3rd native OS4 programs don't use the OS libs and also how this incompatible FPU would affect 68k programs that don't use them.

[nicholas]

im not sure about boadblues, but given that almost all software today is more or less quick and dirty ports and that on os4 so objects support must have been added, to avoid the neccessity to build amiga dynamic libraries, which is probably a task hardly anyone is capable and patient to do anymore. id say chances are that almost everything is linked statically this days. which means the code that demands fpu needs to be recompiled for this board.

 That's the same suspicion i have of most OS4 ports too. I'm optimistic that stuff that Broadblues and others have written that is original OS4 software will use OS routines though.

[nicholas]

I have run AmigOS 4.1 update6 on Sam440ep-Flex,FE on Sam460ex.
Linux on both Sams and the Tabor.
I have run Both the Special FPE Debian on the Tabor and the regular
Debian with the emulated floating point on the Tabor.
The Tabor is much faster than the Sams under Linux .

What are the Prometheus Trailer benchmark results running mplayer on regular Debian with the emulated floating point?

[nicholas]

Unfortunately the regular Debian Mplayer powerpc32 wont run.

I hope that isn't a bad omen for regular pp32 OS4 programs running on the Tabor.

Would have to try to compile a non-altivec version but
I suspect that  other components may also causes  problems .
Same issue on the Sam460ex but I compiled a non-altivec version some time ago and that works.Interestingly the regular Mplayer version in Ubuntu-mate 15.10 works ok on the Sam460ex . Tabor does not work with X windows stuff under Lubuntu 15.10. I can experiment and see if I can get a regular Debian benchmark by some means .

Cool.

[nicholas]

Listen, trollmaster...statements such as this do not contribute anything of value to this discussion. Give it a rest. Don't you have something more constructive you could be doing?



I'd like to steer this conversation back towards reality for a moment... If someone buys a dual-core PPC32 machine and expects to be running Blender on it, well, that's just crazy. This isn't a machine for that. The recommended hardware for Blender at the moment is a 64-bit, quad-core CPU with 8GB RAM. This is not the type of hardware you would EVER seriously consider running Blender on.

Yet many masochists *do* choose to run it on AmigaONE branded hardware. ;-)

[nicholas]

Nicholas, I am a PPC fanatic, but even if I get a chance to buy an X5000/040 next year, I won't be running something like Blender on it (even if it is quad core, that feature isn't supported by NG OS' yet).

I have X64 hardware that is cheaper and more powerful set up specifically for that.
Frankly, I wasn't even aware that there was a PPC NG port.

It might run under Linux ok on an x5000, though lack of SIMD might cripple it.

[nicholas]

I run it on a SAM-Flex 440 733MHz, works okay. I mean it's not going to knock out the likes of Sintel or Tears of Steel, but it's okay for small projects and editing music videos.

I admit if I'm in a hurry I use my loonix laptop with a more recent version of blender, but I like using it on the SAM.  But my loonix laptop stil falls far short of those specs posted above!


It also works on the x1k but I don;t have a Warp3D capable gfx card and so WaZp3D is a bit sloe and glitchy.

Doing stuff it's not ideally suited for is all part of the joy of using old and quirky hardware.

[nicholas]

OK, its a start.
Maybe Hyperion needs your input as recompilation seems to be the best course with this cpu.
Recompiling what can be, and resorting to trapping/emulation as only a secondary method for execution.

Perhaps having the entire OS as shipped by Hyperion recompiled specifically for this CPU and then just having trapping for third party binaries that the end user installs might be a good compromise?

Plus third party devs can always ship two binaries with their future releases as was the case with 040/060 specific builds in the past.

[nicholas]

Most of the AmigaOS does not need floating point so only a few modules need to be recompiled. A modified version of AmigaOS is already needed for standard PPC FPU trap support and emulation. This is not a problem.



Right. It's more work and time for developers but this is the best option when there is so much difference in floating point performance between full trapping and recompiling. The partial FPU trapping of the 68040 or 68060 for 6888x instructions usually provides better performance than the 6888x and usually with less than a 20% performance loss compared to recompiling for the 68040 or 68060 FPU.

Sounds like this would be the least worst way forward then. IIRC something similar is already in place for the X1000 boards because of missing/modified CPU instructions and the same for G5 specific builds on MorphOS. (Recompiled CPU specific builds that is, not trapping.)

[nicholas]

Can I haz netflix? Who in their right mind wants to watch video on Amiga systems?

Who in their right mind does anything on an Amiga system in this day and age?

Because we can, no other reason is necessary ;-)