A little teaser

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Just a little teaser.
http://www.apollo-core.com/bringup/apolloPhoenix.jpg

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Very nice!
Does it have RAM on board?

The card is primarily a CPU card. The main SPECs are:
* 128 MB DDR3 Memory 800MHz
* Fastest 68K CPU ever
* MAPROM

The secondary SPECs are:
* SDCard as IDE Disk
* HDMI Video Out (Truecolor)
* Network

We expect the card ready to sell, end of this summer.
The card will be sold as CPU card.


Some additional or optional features we are right now preparing.
We are planning/testing right now:
* buildin AMIGA graphic flickerfixer / scandoubler to view AMIGA signal on HDMI TV
* buildin Chipmemory upgrade
* buildin AGA AMIGA upgrade - turn your A500 into an AGA machine
* buildin SAGA (Super-AGA) upgrade - higher resolutions, more colors, more speed.
* AMIGA PICASSO 96 drivers


I think we will need something like a website for the project.

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Looking interesting.
Just curious though, why ddr3? Given the low speed of both the cpu core and ram (relative to modern computing) wouldnt ddr2, or ideally ddr1 be a better match?

DDR3 is perfect.
We do not run at low speed. We run the memory at real 800MHz datarate.
And 800 MHz Datarate is not that low speed - especially in the AMIGA area.
What memory speed have AmigaONE PPC systems?

Given the high latency of ddr3 Id expect the other RAM types to perform better. Is it simply a matter of availability/price?

You need to mind that the latency is relative to the clockrate.
A latency of 4 to a clockrate of 400/800 is the same as a latency of 8 to a clockrate of 800/1600.
This means in other words. DDR3 does not have higher latency than DDR2.

Also this memory is twice is fast as the fastest DDR1 memory available.
Twice as fast makes a difference, don't you agree. :-D

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DDR3@800mhz is slower than ddr2@800mhz because of amongst other things more aggressive timing available.

If you drive them with the same settings they both have exact the same latencies.
In theory you can find DDR2 modules which are specced 4-4-4
but you can also use DDR3 modules with higher speed grades and underclock them with also 4-4-4 settings. So the whole is the same at the end, right?

Much more important is IMHO power consumption as the power supply of the A500 is relative weak.

My personal opinion is this:

DDR1 is not a good option, for these reasons:
- much less memory throughput
- only smaller chips available, big chips really pricy
- higher voltage current needed. = power supply limitation problems on A500

DDR2 is OK.
o the fastest available DD2 chips are about as fast as average DDR3 chips.
- but chips are smaller or big chips are more expensive than DDR3
- DD2 needs about 25% more power than DDR3

DDR3 is ideal
+  performance is good
+  big chips are available. This means 128 MB memory easy to do with 1 single chip
+ Low power consumption.

LPDDR2 would also be a nice option IMHO.

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I presume the FPGA used (but not shown in the picture - is it on the other side? Or on another board that connects to the two IDE-like headers? Is there a photo of this other board?) has an on-board DDR3 controller, so it makes sense to use that.

Here is a picture of an AMIGA 600 mainboard.
The small card at the bottom is the FPGA CPU module.
http://www.apollo-core.com/bringup/card2.jpg

What's the low-end CPLD in the middle of the 68k area for?

The CPLD bridges to the AMIGA mainboard chip bus.

Wouldn't it make sense to allow a user to route the HDMI and Ethernet signals to a separate socket they can mount within their case? Or is it oriented so that both are easily accessible?

The HDMI is at the edge of the side connector on the A500 and A1000.
If you open the slot you can access it.
There is _NO_ need to drill any holes in your AMIGA. :-D

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Some sketch of the complete card:

http://www.apollo-core.com/bringup/Apollo_Phoenix.mp4

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The version you link to has 1GB of memory instead of 128MB. The brand, board layout and connectors look to be the same. The price is right too. Anybody want a 1GB memory Amiga for Christmas?

1 byte = 8 bit

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But would like a newer accelerator for the A1200 but if it's not going to be faster than the 060 then it's not worth it.

As you know performance if very hard to compare with a single number.
Every test you do will give you its own result.
Therefore saying this CPU is that much faster than that CPU is always unfair..

We did so far only a handfull of test.
E.g running the texture map demo, running dhrystone, running memspeed.
All three tests scored in the order of 68060@120-150 MHz - but this was for the small Vampire600 which has a 90nm Cyclone 2 FPGA.

The new 28nm Cyclone 5 card which you see on the teaser pictures is much stronger and much faster. We expect to double the performance with it.
We are right now very early in the testing. We believe that in 2 month we will be much further and will be able have AIB, sysinfo, and lame and other results.