Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: on May 04, 2007, 12:23:05 AM
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Just a freaky stupid funny idea I'm throwing at you all.
Amiga Inc. paid less than 50'000$ to hyperion for OS 4.0. Does that mean anything to you people?
And the worst is... they actually made it. Or so they say.
To me, what it means is, both companies are very low budget companies and probably could be bought out for a relatively low price. Low being less than 500'000$ each.
If only a few hundreds, perhaps a few thousands of Amiga fans pooled a good amount of money together, it would be possible to buy out both companies, force merge them then force them to work together with one another and end this stupid battle.
But hey... that's just me... I'm a dreamer... an idealist... a crazy lunatic... a... whatever...
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OR "drum roll" we could tell them both to get a therapist and get out of the amiga scene... both are just amatures with out a clue. MorphOS is better anyway.
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I think I was reading elsewhere that MorphOS doesn't work well with A1200/mediator/Voodoo ?
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yeah well the mediator is a hacky piece of hardware.. so yes it's true morph does not run of EVERY classic amiga. (neither does os4)
What does that have to do with two amature companies that can't even tie there own shoe laces.
I think it's time the inc and hyperion make way for otheres as the both had plenty time and contine to fail in embarasing ways....let help them by putting them out of ther misserable existance. BOYCOT In the end it's for there own good, I mean I would hate for Bill M to waist the rest of his life attemting to do someting he does not understand, it;s the human thing to do here.
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:horse:
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guru-666 wrote:
let help them by putting them out of ther misserable existance. BOYCOT
Yeah, that's another alternative... in a few years, the patents will expire then we'll do what ever WE want...
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YES, sweet vicory could be ours....not that the patents are relevant anymore anyway.
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JoannaK wrote:
:horse:
Somehow, I think I have seen this in another thread... perhaps more than one...
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eslapion wrote:
guru-666 wrote:
let help them by putting them out of ther misserable existance. BOYCOT
Yeah, that's another alternative... in a few years, the patents will expire then we'll do what ever WE want...
What patents? All the commodore Amiga patents expired a couple of years ago... All that's left now are the trademarks... which A.Inc can renew as often as they like.
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Personally, I think we should force Matt to wear nothing but those mil-spec, boing-ball knickers he's got.
They're HOT! :lol:
I bet Cecilia would agree with me. :crazy:
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yeah it's time we kick those guys out of the scene. they are no longer relivant to the amiga... or maybe we should start calling it the omega. Omega is franckly a better name fora computer then amiga... alpha and omega... the end.
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eslapion wrote:
If only a few hundreds, perhaps a few thousands of Amiga fans pooled a good amount of money together, it would be possible to buy out both companies, force merge them then force them to work together with one another and end this stupid battle.
How much are you offering to throw into the pot?
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bloodline wrote:
What patents? All the commodore Amiga patents expired a couple of years ago... All that's left now are the trademarks... which A.Inc can renew as often as they like.
I don't know for other countries but here in Canada, the Lego vs Mega Blocks case confirmed patents last 20 years.
The AGA patents are dated 1991 or 1992, I think and therefore, technically still are under the juris(my)diction of Amiga Inc until 2012.
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Methuselas wrote:
Personally, I think we should force Matt to wear nothing but those mil-spec, boing-ball knickers he's got.
Err... :nervous:
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meega wrote:
How much are you offering to throw into the pot?
3000$
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eslapion wrote:
bloodline wrote:
What patents? All the commodore Amiga patents expired a couple of years ago... All that's left now are the trademarks... which A.Inc can renew as often as they like.
I don't know for other countries but here in Canada, the Lego vs Mega Blocks case confirmed patents last 20 years.
The AGA patents are dated 1991 or 1992, I think and therefore, technically still are under the juris(my)diction of Amiga Inc until 2012.
What AGA patents? I've not seen any filed...
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bloodline wrote:
What AGA patents? I've not seen any filed...
What about the IP for OS 3.0 and 3.1 any copyright on this?
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even if there is, who cares? any new OS would be a rewrite at thei point, right. so 3.0 and 3.1 irrelevent. Most all of us already own os3.0 and 3.1 so we and emulate it all we want already.
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eslapion wrote:
bloodline wrote:
What AGA patents? I've not seen any filed...
What about the IP for OS 3.0 and 3.1 any copyright on this?
Copyright yes, but as Hyperion, MorphOS and AROS have proved... the 3.x IP is useless... it's all 68k assembler... useless, you have to rewrite pretty much everything for a modern CPU... and as MorphOS and AROS have shown you can rewrite everything from scratch without access to the original source. The IP has NO value.
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amen
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bloodline wrote:
...MorphOS and AROS have shown you can rewrite everything from scratch without access to the original source. The IP has NO value.
Now that's a nice open door for future development.
Hey Dennis?!? You noted that?
P.S. Why is it my signature never shows up in my messages even if I check the box for that ?
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bloodline wrote:
Err... :nervous:
*laughing hysterically*
Give you a big, {bleep} sword and you could be the official, Amiga Paladin. Someone at BioWare likes you, for I've seen your likeness in Neverwinter Nights, but somewhere buried in the forums is my posts and comments on *THAT* one. :lol:
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eslapion wrote:
bloodline wrote:
...MorphOS and AROS have shown you can rewrite everything from scratch without access to the original source. The IP has NO value.
Now that's a nice open door for future development.
Hey Dennis?!? You noted that?
MiniMig running AROS... the thought never crossed my mind... :lol: :-D
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Methuselas wrote:
bloodline wrote:
Err... :nervous:
*laughing hysterically*
Give you a big, {bleep} sword and you could be the official, Amiga Paladin. Someone at BioWare likes you, for I've seen your likeness in Neverwinter Nights, but somewhere buried in the forums is my posts and comments on *THAT* one. :lol:
I seem to recal the post... hmmm... that was like, 3 or 4 years ago though...
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eslapion wrote:
meega wrote:
How much are you offering to throw into the pot?
3000$
Canadian or US dollars? (Note: no p*ss take, but it matters.)
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Is it any copyright infringement to run a virtual 68060 in an FPGA?
If not, perhaps the Minimig could become the Maximig...
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I believe the 68060 is a Motorola design...
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eslapion wrote:
Is it any copyright infringement to run a virtual 68060 in an FPGA?
If not, perhaps the Minimig could become the Maximig...
You know, I really liked this one. I'm just a bit sad that Dennis has been so quiet, as of late. I like the idea of the Maximig, but I'm worried that the whole project has become a maxipad. :-(
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eslapion wrote:
Is it any copyright infringement to run a virtual 68060 in an FPGA?
If not, perhaps the Minimig could become the Maximig...
No, but it would be hard to get an 060 emualtion working in FPGA that would be anywhere near as fast as software emualtion of an 060 on the cheapest AMD or Intel CPU...
-Edit- you wouldn't bother with an 060, actually... since it was from a software point of view, an 040 with a few missing instructions...
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eslapion wrote:
Just a freaky stupid funny idea I'm throwing at you all.
Amiga Inc. paid less than 50'000$ to hyperion for OS 4.0. Does that mean anything to you people?
And the worst is... they actually made it. Or so they say.
To me, what it means is, both companies are very low budget companies and probably could be bought out for a relatively low price. Low being less than 500'000$ each.
If only a few hundreds, perhaps a few thousands of Amiga fans pooled a good amount of money together, it would be possible to buy out both companies, force merge them then force them to work together with one another and end this stupid battle.
But hey... that's just me... I'm a dreamer... an idealist... a crazy lunatic... a... whatever...
Too bad Amiga has a lot more cash than what you are talking about based on what we last knew, do searches on the Prokom Software SA investment they got (millions) and the very recent agreement with the city of Kent, Washington they entered into for naming rights for a new arena there (for again, millions).
How this is possible is anyone's guess, damn them for being a private company! But they are not likely to sell for peanuts. Maybe they are a tax write off for someone, some people think they are a money laundering op. But no one can really say due to no access to the financials. The only reason we know what we do at all is because Prokom is a public company and Kent, as a city goverment must be forthcoming with such things.
And if they don't have such money, they certainly don't want us to know about it, especially with the Kent deal in the newspapers.
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bloodline wrote:
No, but it would be hard to get an 060 emualtion working in FPGA that would be anywhere near as fast as software emualtion of an 060 on the cheapest AMD or Intel CPU...
I find that rather surprising. Somehow, I would have expected the newer FPGAs that can run at ~ 200MHz to deliver some punch. I mean, real logic gates should be faster than software emulation.
-Edit- you wouldn't bother with an 060, actually... since it was from a software point of view, an 040 with a few missing instructions...
That's interesting.
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If some bits aren't working, then you might be able to run the chip faster.
Apples used 68k series processors that way.
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eslapion wrote:
bloodline wrote:
No, but it would be hard to get an 060 emualtion working in FPGA that would be anywhere near as fast as software emualtion of an 060 on the cheapest AMD or Intel CPU...
I find that rather surprising. Somehow, I would have expected the newer FPGAs that can run at ~ 200MHz to deliver some punch. I mean, real logic gates should be faster than software emulation.
You forget that the slowest x86 chips are multiple Mhz, designed specificaly for pumping instructions through them... and with an efficient JIT, the 68k instructions map closely to the native instruction set... An FPGA on the other hand is generic logic... nothing you can do will get it anywhere close to the billions of $ pumped into the Athlon64 or the Core2 Duo...
-Edit- you wouldn't bother with an 060, actually... since it was from a software point of view, an 040 with a few missing instructions...
That's interesting.
The 060 was little more than a process stepping (ok the introduction of a second integer pipeline is quite significant, etc)... but in the x86 world it probably wouldn't have warrented a new chip name/number...
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I don't know... 486, 486DX, 486DX2, and so on.
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bloodline wrote:
You forget that the slowest x86 chips are multiple Mhz, designed specificaly for pumping instructions through them... and with an efficient JIT, the 68k instructions map closely to the native instruction set... An FPGA on the other hand is generic logic... nothing you can do will get it anywhere close to the billions of $ pumped into the Athlon64 or the Core2 Duo...
Using WinUAE with JIT here running on a dual core of 2.8GHz, I get an equivalent of a 175MHz 68040.
Emulation is still emulation, you do lose a lot of speed in software translation.
Somehow, considering the way other processors are emulated, I would expect a 200MHz FPGA to provide the equivalent of a 200MHz 68060... and produce much less heat and consume much less power than a modern day intel or AMD processor.
Since FPGAs use generic logic, you can configure them to reproduce any processors. I can understand there isn't much point in trying to reproduce a pentium processor running at 200MHz but in the case of 68k processors that can be a different story.
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bloodline wrote:
The 060 was little more than a process stepping (ok the introduction of a second integer pipeline is quite significant, etc)... but in the x86 world it probably wouldn't have warrented a new chip name/number...
If that is so then is there a way for me just to swap the 040 on my Mercury for a 060?
It seems to me that the 060 has more pins.
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meega wrote:
I don't know... 486, 486DX, 486DX2, 486DX4, and so on.
In 68k terms, the 68060 probably should have been called the 68050... since it was an improved 68040 rather than a radical improvement in the architecture...
Note:
68000 -> 68010 small improvement
68010 -> 68020 radical improvement
68020 -> 68030 small improvement
68030 -> 68040 radical improvement
68040 -> 68060 small improvement -Odd one out, but then also the last of the line, so doesn't really matter...
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Methuselas wrote:
Personally, I think we should force Matt to wear nothing but those mil-spec, boing-ball knickers he's got.
They're HOT! :lol:
I bet Cecilia would agree with me. :crazy:
:roflmao:
Now THERE is an idea!!! :idea:
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eslapion wrote:
bloodline wrote:
The 060 was little more than a process stepping (ok the introduction of a second integer pipeline is quite significant, etc)... but in the x86 world it probably wouldn't have warrented a new chip name/number...
If that is so then is there a way for me just to swap the 040 on my Mercury for a 060?
It seems to me that the 060 has more pins.
Yes, the 060 and 040 are pin compatible... but the 060 use 3.3volts rather than the 040 5volts.. so make sure you adjust the regualtor.
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eslapion wrote:
bloodline wrote:
You forget that the slowest x86 chips are multiple Mhz, designed specificaly for pumping instructions through them... and with an efficient JIT, the 68k instructions map closely to the native instruction set... An FPGA on the other hand is generic logic... nothing you can do will get it anywhere close to the billions of $ pumped into the Athlon64 or the Core2 Duo...
Using WinUAE with JIT here running on a dual core of 2.8GHz, I get an equivalent of a 175MHz 68040.
Not sure where you get that figure from... but WinUAE does a hell of a lot more than just emulate the 68k... run Amithlon or BasiliskII to see a true idea of just how fast Bernie's JIT can be... though it could do with an update for the x86-64 architecture... that would give it a boost, as it has 8 more registers.
Emulation is still emulation, you do lose a lot of speed in software translation.
Not as much as you think.
Somehow, considering the way other processors are emulated, I would expect a 200MHz FPGA to provide the equivalent of a 200MHz 68060... and produce much less heat and consume much less power than a modern day intel or AMD processor.
The 060 was something like 1 and a half million gates... you can't get an FPGA big enough yet... AFAIK.
The Core2 Duo is something like 250million gates...
Since FPGAs use generic logic, you can configure them to reproduce any processors. I can understand there isn't much point in trying to reproduce a pentium processor running at 200MHz but in the case of 68k processors that can be a different story.
The FPGA is designed for flexibility, not speed. Central Processing units are massive and complex devices... that is why it takes massive companies with huge budgets to develop them.
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bloodline wrote:
Yes, the 060 and 040 are pin compatible... but the 060 use 3.3volts rather than the 040 5volts.. so make sure you adjust the regualtor.
Hummm... never seen such a thing as an adjustable voltage regulator on a Mercury accelerator...
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bloodline wrote:
In 68k terms, the 68060 probably should have been called the 68050...
I know, but it looked better as 68060 when competing with the ever increasing x86 numbers of the day.
Besides, the x86's were ramping the clock rates rather than noticeably increasing efficiency.
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meega wrote:
bloodline wrote:
In 68k terms, the 68060 probably should have been called the 68050...
I know, but it looked better as 68060 when competing with the ever increasing x86 numbers of the day.
Well the x86 development was jumping forward leaps and bounds by then... the 68060 was EOL and all of Motorola's money was going in to the PPC project... so I guess the processor number didn't really matter.
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A little ot, when were the first 68010's produced, and when did the first 68020's appear?
Edit: with apologies for the ninja edit above in the post that you just quoted.
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meega wrote:
A little ot, when were the first 68010's produced, and when did the first 68020's appear?
Edit: with apologies for the ninja edit above in the post that you just quoted.
68010 was relelased in 1982... the 68020 was released in 1984, does that help?
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Do you know any details about design-stage plans, date-wise (I don't).
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I should clarify, that the actual architecture of the 68060 was a break away from the 68040 (the 68060 was very similar to the Pentium of the time)... which probably does justify the Even model number... but it was released at a stage where it was not a significant step up from the 040... I think it needed more development time... the last stepping of the 060 was probably what should have been the first 060 :crazy:
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meega wrote:
Do you know any details about design-stage plans, date-wise (I don't).
Not really... Motorola never officially published anything... Though we do know the 68000 project was started in 1978/9, and was on the market by 1981....
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:crazy: And DX4 is clock-tripled! :crazy:
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bloodline wrote:
The 060 was something like 1 and a half million gates... you can't get an FPGA big enough yet... AFAIK.
The Core2 Duo is something like 250million gates...
The Virtex 5 family can offer up to 330'000 gates. However, it can run up to 550MHz. Also, nowadays DDR2 memory can run so fast that there is no point in giving any cache to a virtual emulated processor in an FPGA.
Therefore, I suppose, it might be possible to reproduce something that would be cacheless but whose performance would be "like" something halfway between a 68030 and a 68040 but whose whole RAM is the cache.
If you had a 550MHz emulated 68k processor whose RAM is actually just as fast as the cache then I can't think of any way an emulated CPU could be as fast. Unless you buy yourself a quad core running at blazing speeds. However, right now, WinUAE still appears as a single thread.
In order to run faster, WinUAE would have to become multithreaded to use multiple CPUs. Assuming you can actually gain any speed by doing so.
The FPGA is designed for flexibility, not speed. Central Processing units are massive and complex devices... that is why it takes massive companies with huge budgets to develop them.
Modern processors are not developped with emulation in mind. They cost billions to develop because they can run their OWN code at dazzling speed. That's not what we want to do here.
The bottom line is, can a programmable logic system emulate the 68k processor faster than the real thing was and at a lower cost than a x86 PC ? I think so.
If somebody can program a JIT emulation for a piece of software then I am convinced it is also possible to do it for programmable logic.
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eslapion wrote:
bloodline wrote:
The 060 was something like 1 and a half million gates... you can't get an FPGA big enough yet... AFAIK.
The Core2 Duo is something like 250million gates...
The Virtex 5 family can offer up to 330'000 gates. However, it can run up to 550MHz. Also, nowadays DDR2 memory can run so fast that there is no point in giving any cache to a virtual emulated processor in an FPGA.
How many gates would the DDR2 controler use? 30% at least... doesn't leave much left over...
Therefore, I suppose, it might be possible to reproduce something that would be cacheless but whose performance would be "like" something halfway between a 68030 and a 68040 but whose whole RAM is the cache.
Hmmm... my 50Mhz 030 gets about 10MIPS... my 25Mhz 040 gets about 20MIPs...
Getting an FPGA emualtion of the 68k working without any cache, at anything like 15MIPS would be a real challenge...
If you had a 550MHz emulated 68k processor whose RAM is actually just as fast as the cache then I can't think of any way an emulated CPU could be as fast. Unless you buy yourself a quad core running at blazing speeds. However, right now, WinUAE still appears as a single thread.
It doesn't work like that... Cache is low latency... RAM is high latency.
In order to run faster, WinUAE would have to become multithreaded to use multiple CPUs. Assuming you can actually gain any speed by doing so.
You could get the JIT to emulate a dual core 68k... that would require SMP support in the 68k OS though.
The FPGA is designed for flexibility, not speed. Central Processing units are massive and complex devices... that is why it takes massive companies with huge budgets to develop them.
Modern processors are not developped with emulation in mind. They cost billions to develop because they can run their OWN code at dazzling speed. That's not what we want to do here.
what is emualtion... how is it different from what a CPU normally does...?
JIT maps 68k instructions to x86 instructions... The 68k program is actaully turned into an x86 program... no interpetation is required... registers permitting, it would be close to 1:1 (though I imagine it would be 1:2 on average) .. the CPU is unaware that it's running a program written for a different CPU.
The bottom line is, can a programmable logic system emulate the 68k processor faster than the real thing was and at a lower cost than a x86 PC ? I think so.
Time and equipment cost... not to mention testing would be far greater for the FPGA... that's why there are no FPGA emuations of any CPU more complex than the 6502...
If somebody can program a JIT emulation for a piece of software then I am convinced it is also possible to do it for programmable logic.
Of course it can be done... but this situation is best suited to a JIT than to an FPGA.