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Author Topic: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)  (Read 51767 times)

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Offline psxphill

Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #44 on: January 06, 2013, 09:19:21 PM »
Quote from: JimDrew;721517
I am curious why there is some idea of a shortage of 68060 chips? There are tens of thousands of these chips, both 50MHz and 60MHz (MC and XC versions) available from suppliers in China.

The shortage is only because we're looking for the rare versions with the bugs fixed & sellers in china are remarking chips to say they are the latest mask (71E41J) when they are not. The real ones can be clocked over 100mhz.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2013, 09:27:11 PM by psxphill »
 

Offline freqmaxTopic starter

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #45 on: January 06, 2013, 09:26:41 PM »
Asfair, the shortage is on 060 that are 75 MHz or faster, has MMU/FPU (full version), without chip bugs.

50 and 66 MHz variants are supposedly quite easy to get.
 

Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #46 on: January 06, 2013, 10:03:22 PM »
Quote from: JimDrew;721517
I am curious why there is some idea of a shortage of 68060 chips?  There are tens of thousands of these chips, both 50MHz and 60MHz (MC and XC versions) available from suppliers in China.  These were used in the Northern Telecom call center boards.  There is a thread here about this.  Just pull the chip with the heat sink and put it in your Amiga (or replay) board.

eBay has a slew of these boards, for about 1/2 of what 68060's by themselves are selling for.


Every once in a while someone starts a thread asking why AmigaKit keeps selling brand new 030 and 020 accelerators when what so many ppl want is an 060 accelerator.  The answer that ppl post in forums is that there are no 060 chips available or that they cost ridiculous amounts of money so therefore no 060 accelerators can be built at a profit.  Or they say that since the cheap 060 chips are "from China" they can't be trusted.  Even though everyone who ever bought any of them was pleased with the results.

There is no shortage of 060s.  But there is a shortage of 060 accelerator cards.
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Offline Iggy

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #47 on: January 06, 2013, 10:25:40 PM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;721523
Every once in a while someone starts a thread asking why AmigaKit keeps selling brand new 030 and 020 accelerators when what so many ppl want is an 060 accelerator.  The answer that ppl post in forums is that there are no 060 chips available or that they cost ridiculous amounts of money so therefore no 060 accelerators can be built at a profit.  Or they say that since the cheap 060 chips are "from China" they can't be trusted.  Even though everyone who ever bought any of them was pleased with the results.

There is no shortage of 060s.  But there is a shortage of 060 accelerator cards.

And there are plenty of '060s w/o MMUs or FPUs.
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Offline Iggy

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #48 on: January 06, 2013, 10:27:08 PM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;721516
Why not just build an adapter with an ARM processor equipped with very fast
JIT interpretation?

Because X86 is much faster.
"Not making any hard and fast rules means that the moderators can use their good judgment in moderation, and we think the results speak for themselves." - Amiga.org, terms of service

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Offline psxphill

Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #49 on: January 06, 2013, 10:34:52 PM »
Quote from: ChaosLord;721523
Even though everyone who ever bought any of them was pleased with the results.

You might want to ask why mikej decided not to buy any of the remarked chips he was offered, if you think he would have been pleased.
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #50 on: January 06, 2013, 10:37:58 PM »
Quote from: Iggy;721526
Because X86 is much faster.
+more expensive
+more power hungry
+...

+ THE ENEMY
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #51 on: January 06, 2013, 11:29:57 PM »
Quote from: freqmax;721403
In another thread the issue that there are too few fast Motorola 68060 CPUs around came up. But that a solution could be to join a male socket and a FPGA on top of that. Much like the 486- or pentium  overdrive solutions for the x86.

The MC68060 datasheet provides the PGA 206 pinout at page 356. And the frequency span is 0 - 75 MHz. Power (p328, p344) requirement is 3.3V +/- 5% @ 2A with 5V compatible I/O. There has not been any QFP variant on the commercial market, ever?

So this is what the FPGA has to be able to work with. Some kind of onboard DC/DC circuit will be needed. The voltages of iVDD, EVDD, PVDD and CVDD is unclear especially in a mixed 040/060 environment. So the question becomes, can a powerfull enough FPGA that implements 060 make do with 6.6 W ? and will the mechanical size be within limits? otherwise circuit board stacking may be needed.

Btw, with some additional PGA-114 (020) and PGA-132 (030) to PGA-206 adapter it could be used as a upgrade option for those CPUs too.

OT Found while searching:
a68k.de - Overclocking Amiga.pdf

As for power required vs. what the socket can be expected to supply, since this will require a pcb roughly shaped like an 060 chip, consider also including a floppy power connector... we'll likely need dc/dc converters for fpga core voltage and other things, why not for 3.3v as well? this could be a hard drive connecter or whatever to get enough power.

one could consider also trying to include 030 PGA pins as well as 040/060 all on the same module and be careful installing, but there is more chance the 030 pins would interfere with 060/040 socket or 040/060 pins interfering with other components on 030 board near the socket. some adapter.

i's use quickswitches or equivalent to get 5v tolerance on the fpga IO, so it would simply plug into an 040 socket and work, as well as simplify adapter to 030 socket to work there. thus the 060 fpga pcb is fpga + quickswitches + power. While quickswitches might affect timing, we're limited to the fastest 680x0 socket here, and that may not be a problem. but something to consider. If it is a problem on 060 like the overclocked Apollo boards, then put quickswitches on 040 and 030 adapters where they don't cause speed problems for super fast real 060 sockets.

also consider ddr3 memory on the pcb, as modern fpgas have a hardwired controller inside for our "whatever" to hook up to. super-fast main memory, or a cache or something. build up a real accelerator for your accelerator. :) for those that loathe ddr3, cook up something more paletable in there...

This sort of discussion is really fun!
« Last Edit: January 07, 2013, 12:20:24 AM by billt »
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Offline freqmaxTopic starter

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #52 on: January 06, 2013, 11:33:16 PM »
ARM/MIPS/Alpha etc.. is good enough and has an orthogonal programming ISA, low power etc.. compared to x86. Feeding a power parasite from a 3.3V 2A supply is perhaps not optimal.
 

Offline Iggy

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #53 on: January 06, 2013, 11:51:18 PM »
Quote from: Mrs Beanbag;721529
+more expensive
+more power hungry
+...

+ THE ENEMY

"+more expensive" - not by much
"+more power hungry" - again, only slightly
"+ THE ENEMY" - who cares

 THEY ARE MORE POWERFUL
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #54 on: January 07, 2013, 12:19:03 AM »
Quote from: Iggy;721512
Why not just build an adapter with an X86 processor equipped with very fast
JIT interpretation?



that will require an fpga for bus translation at some point anyway, in addition to x86 cpu + whatever else that needs to work (memory + maybe fch/pch, etc) why not just use the fpga?

yes, this means for two very different projects. x86 with software emulation, ala Amithlon. that's a PC motherboard + fpga bridge design, and c programming of the emulator. the 680x0 softcore is a simpler pcb design and then you need to be a microprocessor architecture and computer organization (sometimes called hardware/software interface) guy to design the cpu softcore. so those interested, look up coursera and udacity for such topics, or hit up your local university computer/electrical engineering department! (coursera just finished a very cool looking computer architecture course donated by Princeton)
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Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #55 on: January 07, 2013, 12:30:55 AM »
the other thing this sort of thing can give us is a pathway to x86 or arm native.

x86 cpu bridged to the cpu socket gives us a classic amiga with x86 cpu. os4.x works on classic+ppc, this gives us a pathway where we already have drivers for the classic hardware, get ported to x86, then refocus to drivers for x86 peripherals.

put an arm core into fpga, or similar to pc design bridging to an arm chip, to have already supported hardware to get the cpu supported and then move on to arm peripheral drivers. i remember reading about some controversy regarding an open arm-compatible softcore a couple years ago, so i believe suvh a thing does exist.
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Offline freqmaxTopic starter

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #56 on: January 07, 2013, 04:45:49 AM »
P-p-p-p-plase lets get on track here. One needs some onboard DC/DC and a FPGA. Anything else is just a burden that won't benefit the design goal.

The addition of any ASIC CPU will require lot's of scarce I/O on the FPGA, more power, more mess circuit board routing, more debugging, complicated sourcing, larger FPGA which cost more and is harder to source.. and harder to solder, additional RAM, boot ROM, etc. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's suitable.
 

Offline Mrs Beanbag

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #57 on: January 07, 2013, 11:20:50 AM »
Quote from: Iggy;721534
THEY ARE MORE POWERFUL
- who cares?

Seriously. If we only cared about raw CPU power, why do we care about Amigas at all? Because they have some charm that other computers don't. x86 has performance, but it has no charm. Ask yourself which you would rather go for dinner with.

Besides, hulking great desktop PCs with beastly CPUs are becoming something of a niche market these days. Most people seem to prefer the convenience of laptops and tablets, and if they want games too they get an Xbox. Only hardcore gamers need the performance of their x86-based PCs.

ARM is taking over, get used to it. x86 is the past of computing, not the future, and ARM will catch up with x86 performance before too long as well. Microsoft went to the effort of making Windows 8 work on ARM for good reason, they know the change is coming.
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Offline Faerytale

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #58 on: January 07, 2013, 11:31:32 AM »
If CPUpower means nothing. Why are people having cravings for 060?

Better stick to the 030 then :)
 

Offline billt

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Re: Motorola 68060 FPGA replacement module (idea)
« Reply #59 from previous page: January 07, 2013, 12:53:22 PM »
Quote from: Mrs Beanbag;721590
x86 has performance, but it has no charm. Ask yourself which you would rather go for dinner with.


You're right! My OS4 laptop is way more charming than any of my pc laptops or my iBook is. I'm really happy i can go to dinner with that instead of the others...
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