Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: freqmax on September 08, 2012, 07:43:10 PM
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Provided access to chip-fab and circuit board manufacturing where the volume price must be lower than 600 USD. What kind of setup hardware wise would you use to make something that make technology minded people go OMG!!-must have! ..?
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It would have to be a new 68K Amiga :) Nothing other than that.
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Yes! AGA-compatible, with DVI-out. 3GHz "68080" (quad core?). PCiE.
I am considering a project of my own, making an accelerator for A1200 with an ARM CPU running software emulation. What is the point of that? Well lots of people are doing it with FPGAs but it would seem cheaper, faster and easier to do it this way as there are software emu's already available, ARM chips come in the GHz range already and are widely available (and the logical next step for desktop PCs in general if you ask me) and affordable. The software would be in ROM on the card itself so you wouldn't know it was there. Why not just emulate the whole Amiga on a PC? Well because then you have to host the emulator in some other OS you have to boot up, ugh. And it doesn't feel the same.
After that, remake an A1200 motherboard with AGA in an FPGA, no CPU but with the accelerator edge connector, and no 14MHz limit. (This is why I asked about core licensing elsewhere, but I think I'll try the accelerator first.)
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I totally get your idea Mrs Beanbag and am looking forward to following your project :)
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Amiga compatible, with AAA chipset and a GPGPU that executes 68k instruction set as a subset of its own graphics oriented instruction set.
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But AAA wasn't going to be completely compatible with AGA anyway, and since it was never released there is no software for it, and graphics hardware has advanced so much since then it hardly seems worth bothering. However PCs still maintain legacy text mode/VGA for various reasons so there's no reason we can't have AGA compatibility in there, alongside some more established GPU design from the likes of nVidia. In fact a PCIe slot would be a must anyway.
I like the way the Sega Megadrive kept the Master System's Z80 as a co-processor, and then the Saturn had a 68000 as a co-processor! Still, I think these days software emulation of the 68k should suffice, since it would still be faster than any real Motorolla chip that was ever put in an Amiga, as long as the emulator is part of the hardware so it's invisible, and new software can use whatever CPU it really is in its native language. Which might require the OS to pull some tricks but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
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Is the aim to make amiga users excited or to make general tech nerds excited?
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You mean everyone wouldn't be excited by a new Amiga?
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I intended something that excite general tech nerds. In particular something that makes it possible to do something that isn't possible currently for that kind of economic price point. The physcal technologies of Amiga is too far away in the tech race to build something competitive upon.
Do remember that the capacity of a "normal" PC became available for really large corporations and goverments in the 1960s. The problem were size and price.
Oh and for ARM emulation of 68k, it's a nice idea but will wreck cycle accurency and lock-step.
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You people don't want much.
$600? That's all you want to pay?
And the seller just has to develop a new 68K processor, a new chipset, and somehow miraculously get licenses for the legacy software (as well as develop the new code that implements the new features).
Hey, who wouldn't want to invest in that?
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Well I don't know what excites general tech nerds, except after the event, and it usually surprises me. But the thing that really impressed people about the Amiga when it came out was raytracing. I've read a paper about quite an impressive real-time raytracer (several frames per second) implemented in an FPGA that ran at alarmingly low clock speeds, so maybe something like that could do the trick. Texture mapping and shading has served the games industry well so far but it's not "the real deal" and maybe it stops being the most efficient solution at some level of detail.
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I intended something that excite general tech nerds. In particular something that makes it possible to do something that isn't possible currently for that kind of economic price point. The physcal technologies of Amiga is too far away in the tech race to build something competitive upon.
Do remember that the capacity of a "normal" PC became available for really large corporations and goverments in the 1960s. The problem were size and price.
Oh and for ARM emulation of 68k, it's a nice idea but will wreck cycle accurency and lock-step.
OK, that's closer to home.
You get some big money backers.
You contract IBM to make a processor similar to what's going in the next generation of game consoles.
You design a basic machine that can either play games or be expanded into a real computer (add a little memory, a keyboard, a mouse, etc).
You pay the MorphOS developers big money to devote real time to taking their OS to where Quark could have gone - multitasking Q-Box (and A-Box can be retained for Amiga compatibility and maybe even enhanced).
Sell it for slightly more then a game console by appealing to hackers and technically oriented electronic enthusiasts ($600 sounds right).
Think it would generate some excitement?
And no Amiga name, so no curse.
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Oh and for ARM emulation of 68k, it's a nice idea but will wreck cycle accurency and lock-step.
Cycle-accuracy is shot with any accelerator anyway; that's pretty much the point. If you need accuracy, you pretty much just go with the built-in CPU.
Well I don't know what excites general tech nerds, except after the event, and it usually surprises me. But the thing that really impressed people about the Amiga when it came out was raytracing. I've read a paper about quite an impressive real-time raytracer (several frames per second) implemented in an FPGA that ran at alarmingly low clock speeds, so maybe something like that could do the trick. Texture mapping and shading has served the games industry well so far but it's not "the real deal" and maybe it stops being the most efficient solution at some level of detail.
I'd like to see a link for that. "Done in an FPGA" sounds like the crucial factor there, anyway - raytracing is made for massive parallelization, and in an FPGA that's easy to do. On a general-purpose CPU, not so much.
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But it feels like the same track over again. It's still the standard setup CPU-GPU-RAM, only faster. No paradigm shift. The only real bright point is a cleverly designed CPU, but that cost plenty these days and it might be more efficient to use commercially available chips in that area.
When Amiga did color graphics, stereo sound and multitasking. IBM PC did poor color palette graphics, beeps, single task using a bus that got easily stalled.
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http://www-wjp.cs.uni-saarland.de/publikationen/SWWPS04.pdf
GPUs, on the other hand, are made for massive parallelization, but aren't necessarily optimal for full on ray-tracing, for a variety of reasons, impressive though they are.
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I was hoping the UltimatePPC would come in about that price range; I've got a lot of life left in my current Amy's
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I'd like to see a link for that. "Done in an FPGA" sounds like the crucial factor there, anyway - raytracing is made for massive parallelization, and in an FPGA that's easy to do. On a general-purpose CPU, not so much.
A box with standard CPU but multiple buses that let's one exploit multiple FPGAs and DSPs? That would at least open the software defined radio area and most definitely power raytracing.
As for raytracing: Realtime Ray Tracing of Dynamic Scenes on an FPGA Chip (http://www-wjp.cs.uni-saarland.de/publikationen/SWWPS04.pdf):
Using a single FPGA chip running at 90 MHz it offers realtime rendering performance of 20 to 60 frames per second
The SaarCOR prototype is build using a Xilinx Virtex-II (http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/virtex-ii.htm) 6000-4 FPGA [Xil03], that is hosted on the Alpha Data ADM-XRC-II (http://www.alphadata.co.uk/products.php?product=adm-xrc-ii) PCI-board [Alp03]. The board contains six independent banks of 32-bit wide SRAM (each 4MB) running at the FPGA clock speed, a PCI-bridge, and a general purpose I/O-channel. This channel is connected to a simple digital to analog converter implementing a standard VGA output supporting resolutions of up to 1024 x 768 at 60 Hz.
I think the above specifies what is needed in terms of hardware to accomplish realtime raytracing. One catch is that a suitable FPGA seems to cost like 100 USD at digikey.
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Indeed, and in fact if you look at it one way, the Blitter is a sort of FPGA - the minterms register is essentially a LUT!
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You can probably build brand new Amiga 1000s for $600 in material costs in China easy BUT who is going to pay the millions in R&D to recreate a 100% compatible Amiga 1000 motherboard and do all the testing? :)
Manufacturing costs per unit are not the issue, it's finding a genius to create something fantastic and revolutionary from the ground up that is difficult, R&D and upfront investment is why it doesn't happen on a regular basis. Even Macs are just regular PCs in different cases.
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I am considering a project of my own, making an accelerator for A1200 with an ARM CPU running software emulation. What is the point of that? Well lots of people are doing it with FPGAs but it would seem cheaper, faster and easier to do it this way as there are software emu's already available, ARM chips come in the GHz range already and are widely available (and the logical next step for desktop PCs in general if you ask me) and affordable. The software would be in ROM on the card itself so you wouldn't know it was there. Why not just emulate the whole Amiga on a PC? Well because then you have to host the emulator in some other OS you have to boot up, ugh. And it doesn't feel the same.
i proposed something of the like all along. if you do that, be my heroine. if not join aros68k project to massively upgrade amiga experience!
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An ARM accelerator can be accomplished by making a direct link from a mobile phone that usualy feature an ARM-CPU clocked to GHz to the CPU socket in the Amiga or other suitable motherboard connection.
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You can probably build brand new Amiga 1000s for $600 in material costs in China easy BUT who is going to pay the millions in R&D to recreate a 100% compatible Amiga 1000 motherboard and do all the testing? :)
Manufacturing costs per unit are not the issue, it's finding a genius to create something fantastic and revolutionary from the ground up that is difficult, R&D and upfront investment is why it doesn't happen on a regular basis. Even Macs are just regular PCs in different cases.
The improved A1000 MB is already done, just needs production.
http://www.illuwatar.se/project_pages/gba1000/gba1000.htm
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Interesting; some of those scenes are pretty non-trivial, moreso than I'd have expected.
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Interesting project. No updates for 3 years on gba1000?
For mass production you'd need to make cases, replica keyboard+interface, an easy to produce equivalent of all the chips inside an Amiga 1000, re-manufacture 3.5" Amiga compatible FDDs etc so even if that was a PCB layout ready to print out on a suitable machine there is still over a £million in initial investment needed whether you made a souped up faster model or an exact replica of original performance (but using today's production techniques and technologies like FPGA etc).
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Personally, I'd just buy a 4000 on Ebay.
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I suspect even the TI:s "Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad - ARM Cortex-M4" for 5 USD would run circles round the A4000. So the thing is to get the most out of those 600 USD, and I suspect a combo of DSP-FPGA-RAM will do just that.
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I suspect even the TI:s "Stellaris LM4F120 LaunchPad - ARM Cortex-M4" for 5 USD would run circles round the A4000. So the thing is to get the most out of those 600 USD, and I suspect a combo of DSP-FPGA-RAM will do just that.
I don't know. We'll see when TI gets around to shipping me one. They're only 80 MHz so this isn't going to be A9 level performance.
Besides, I was comment on the idea of bothering with the gba1000.
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So there is no answer to the original question?
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Oh and for ARM emulation of 68k, it's a nice idea but will wreck cycle accurency and lock-step.
When you add any accelerator to an Amiga then cycle accuracy is no longer possible. The point is to make it run quicker than any 68k Amiga ever made. Most software won't care & if it does then it's most likely broken. It's not like the c64 where the processor is in complete synchronisation with the vic and sid.
Using one of intels new low power processors would be interesting too (like the atom). The choice should be made on whichever gets the most performance for the price (within reasonable price limits of course). AFAIK they are all little endian, so some performance would be lost in the conversion either way. Although ARM is 3ghz, that doesn't really mean anything. Instruction throughput is what you need to consider, it's entirely possible that a 1.5ghz processor can beat a 3ghz processor depending on their design (the p3 vs p4 came close).
I have had a similar idea for a while and would be prepared to put some time into the software side.
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Many of these ideas are "neat!"
But let's look at the numbers: The latest & greatest (by some opinion) Amiga is the X1000; price? About 2 grand USD. Number sold? I don't know, but I guess maybe a few hundred. Number of active Amiga users worldwide? Maybe 5,000. The number who just want to play retro games? Let's guess 1/2 to 2/3rds. The number of new, non-Amiga users, "Techies," who would buy a new Amiga? Probably the same number who bought an X1000 (mind you these are folks who may have heard of the Amiga name, could afford it, and decided they could put to use such a machine)? Maybe a few hundred.
So, how do recoup your R&D? You all answer that question, because 600 USD doesonly go very far.
[The main question, by the way has a punch-line if you add an "s" to the word "bang"]
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So what tech gear is popular now? Phones and tablets. Portable is "in," but what to do with portable that hasn't been done. Some group raised USD 8,000,000 on kickstarter for an Android game machine, an Android TV like Apple TV. It'll likely sell but I don't see a "wow" factor to it.
It almost has to be something that isn't out there right now or something that is out there but poorly implemented. This is something even Apple has a hard time doing, they wowed people with iPod and then built on it with iPhone and iPad, but they really only got the "wow" thing once. And getting the "wow" thing once made them the biggest market cap company there ever was....
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When you add any accelerator to an Amiga then cycle accuracy is no longer possible.
Amiga's are not cycle exact machines in any case.
Compare models with different processors, different models, different chipsets.
None are identical, so cycle exact reproduction is unimportant as it doesn't affect software.
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Amiga's are not cycle exact machines in any case.
Compare models with different processors, different models, different chipsets.
None are identical, so cycle exact reproduction is unimportant as it doesn't affect software.
A lot of software for the A500 did operate in a very hardware dependent manner. I guess it's the same for A1200. The common denominator is a simple and thus cheap machine and cheap machines that are good sell a lot (usually). That's why other models doesn't really apply.
Regarding the next wow-omg machine. It's likely better to focus on the tech crowd (or artistic crowd). As the ones that are happy with plain office computer likely won't get it anyway.
Raytracing, Software radio, "hw-x11", are some of the power applications. What signal bending hasn't been done yet in a machine a that a high school can afford?
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A lot of software for the A500 did operate in a very hardware dependent manner. I guess it's the same for A1200. The common denominator is a simple and thus cheap machine and cheap machines that are good sell a lot (usually). That's why other models doesn't really apply.
There are some games and demos that got upset if the processor could run while the blitter was stealing bus cycles as they didn't bother to check for the blitter to finish. When the A3000 came out things started getting better as you couldn't rely on the user to turn off their accelerator.
However this can be solved without cycle accuracy, disabling caches and running from chip ram would slow it down enough for it to work. There are patches for alot of software too. Nobody wants to spend $600 on something that can only run at 7mhz, if thats what you want then buy an a500 or a minimig.
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Nobody wants to spend $600 on something that can only run at 7mhz, if thats what you want then buy an a500 or a minimig.
Different subjects, don't confuse them.
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Interesting project. No updates for 3 years on gba1000?
on a1k there is sort of limited production run of upgraded gba1k.. 060 is included onboard and the like afair.
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33085&highlight=gba1000
please dont apply in the thread, the limit of customers (some 20 or so) has been met.
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Niche products aren't going to make the techies drool....
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So what makes them drool? :P
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So what makes them drool? :P
The "That's Neat!!" factor. They then lay awake in bed thinking how much they would enjoy something, "That Neat."
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How about a 3D headset with an inbuilt computer, wifi and sensors (gyro, accel, gps and camera) that can superimpose a virtual world on the real world. Add a hand controller that also has gyro and accel. Imagine playing a laser battle or swords and sorcery battle against other players at your local park
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"And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony."
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"And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony."
If its going to be equine I want a quarterhorse. They're like big puppies.
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How about a drop in replacement for existing accelerator CPUs using fpga or emulation on Arm or Atom processors, it would be useful to others outside the Amiga community using 68K
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How about a drop in replacement for existing accelerator CPUs using fpga or emulation on Arm or Atom processors, it would be useful to others outside the Amiga community using 68K
That's what I said!
In fact I've been conferring with some techies on this, we've decided that since you have to sync down to 14MHz to communicate with the A1200 chipset, a USB connection would be fast enough. So build a board that connects the trapdoor slot to a USB socket, that allows you to read and write directly to the CPU buses, connect to a Raspberry Pi, and run the 68k emulator there. This would be an interesting experiment, if nothing else.
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Would you explain the need to "sync down to 14 MHz" and how a serial interface can handle that much bidirectional data? This is just because my degree was not in engineering, electrical or otherwise.
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Would you explain the need to "sync down to 14 MHz" and how a serial interface can handle that much bidirectional data? This is just because my degree was not in engineering, electrical or otherwise.
The A1200 motherboard runs at 14MHz no matter what, if you have a CPU on an accelerator card that runs at other than 14MHz you still have to communicate with the motherboard at 14MHz.
USB* can get 480Mbit/s, although with 32 data lines and 24 address lines it might still be a bit of a bottleneck. But it's really more for proof-of-concept than final design, we have to take things one step at a time. It's just that producing a custom ARM board is a lot of unnecessary work at this stage, when we already have an ARM board already available at lost cost. The idea is get the software working on that first, and we can think about a faster interface later, and ultimately a single-board design.
*USB 2.0
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USB* can get 480Mbit/s, although with 32 data lines and 24 address lines it might still be a bit of a bottleneck.
The problem is that the fastest speed is when you're transferring alot of data. You're going to have crippling latency doing individual reads and writes. If you use a USB serial adapter in dosbox then it can't even run full speed at 115,200 baud. You're not going to get 14mhz even if you hit 480 mbit/s, with the latency I'd be impressed if you get 1mhz. It's likely to be much lower.
We know that you can run a 68k emulator on an arm board, it's the hook up to the amiga that is the problem. Any time you spend on using USB is going to be wasted and the results disappointing and not an indication of what you can achieve.
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The problem is that the fastest speed is when you're transferring alot of data. You're going to have crippling latency ... Any time you spend on using USB is going to be wasted and the results disappointing and not an indication of what you can achieve.
This is true but when doing development you do one bit at a time, you start simple and get it to work first, then you worry about the performance. I've never produced anything for the expansion port before, just being able to probe the ROM from my PC would be a start.
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This is true but when doing development you do one bit at a time, you start simple and get it to work first, then you worry about the performance. I've never produced anything for the expansion port before, just being able to probe the ROM from my PC would be a start.
When worrying about the performance means throwing everything away then you're doing it wrong. Doing development one bit at a time is good, but you aren't doing any bits that are worth doing.
Starting with the expansion port interface is worse than running before you can walk, it's hoping that you can learn to walk by learning to drive.
Talking to xilinx about something like this:
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/data_sheets/ds190-Zynq-7000-Overview.pdf
is going to get you further. You might even get some advice.
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When worrying about the performance means throwing everything away then you're doing it wrong. Doing development one bit at a time is good, but you aren't doing any bits that are worth doing.
I won't be throwing everything away, just the USB connection, which is easy. I still need the 68k emulator for ARM with whatever mods necessary (i.e. all memory access below 01x000000 needs to go off-board), and I still need to interface with the expansion slot somehow. But it's early days yet, I don't have a formal written plan, so I'm still looking at options. I'm going into the Hacklab tomorrow night anyway, see if anyone there knows how to build ARM boards, so far I've only spoken to a notorious pessimist.
We can make our own PCBs here. But if I can't make an ARM board I don't know what chance I'd have with an FPGA...? What would I need one for, anyway? I only need CPU, RAM, flash ROM and some kind of buffer.
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14 MHz 16-bit word read/write cached address bus shrinked to 8-bit = 336 Mbit/s not including latency issues which for USB is at minimum 1 ms, so to write an address and then read say the next instruction would put your GHz ARM CPU at an effective clock frequency of 1000 Hz. Ie 7000 times slower than an unexpanded A500.
Any realistic solution requires a low latency and high speed interface. Thus a GPIO directly to the "guest" CPU. Perhaps the GPIO on STM32 (ARM) CPU or Raspberry-PI is capable of that.
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Well, so much for pub conversations.
Any realistic solution requires a low latency and high speed interface. Thus a GPIO directly to the "guest" CPU. Perhaps the GPIO on STM32 (ARM) CPU or Raspberry-PI is capable of that.
"Realistic" is a long-term goal of course, but GPIO seems like a far better idea anyway! Seems quite easy to use, as well.
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I found an article on replacing old CPUs that uses the 68000 as an example, it even mentions using a modern CPU for emulation
http://www.cast-inc.com/company/blog/post.php?s=2011-06-20-chip-replacement-with-ip-and-fpgas-68000-processor-example
Here is what the article says about emulation
" introduces new boot code and timing challenges. The effort to resolve these challenges can exceed the appropriate lifecycle extension budget, consuming any profit to be made in extending the product’s life.In contrast, simply replacing the obsolete processor part with a new FPGA device that’s fully hardware and software compatible is usually significantly easier and less expensive."
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Here is what the article says about emulation
" introduces new boot code and timing challenges. The effort to resolve these challenges can exceed the appropriate lifecycle extension budget, consuming any profit to be made in extending the product’s life.In contrast, simply replacing the obsolete processor part with a new FPGA device that’s fully hardware and software compatible is usually significantly easier and less expensive."
The article says a lot of things. It depends on your design goals, of course, and expertise. For instance it also says this:
"If your design team has little experience using IP cores and FPGAs, then using a discrete processor chip is likely the better approach."
And "How many more years do you expect to ship the product? The longer this life, the greater the chance your new processor chip will also become obsolete, and the more using IP makes sense." I don't expect ARM chips to go obsolete any time soon.
Anyway since this is a hobby project (at least for now) most of the business-type decisions aren't really important. BUT I did consider the FPGA option, and rejected it for several reasons, the central one being, I don't intend merely to replace the 680x0 with an exact replica, but rather, to improve on it.
Also, I already have a Raspberry Pi.
(Besides, that article is basically a piece of marketing for their own IP cores...)
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I double checked. USB2 will give no faster response than 125 µs/7 thus the equalient clock frequency is no more than 56 kHz..
In other words USB is a dead end.
BACK TO TOPIC..
Emulating 68k won't impress current market.
DSP, FPGA, etc.. has likely higher chance.
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YES, sorry, kind of hijacked your thread there. I'll start my own thread once I've got something to show for it.
To be honest I've no idea what would impress the current market. When the iPad came out I thought, what is the point of that? It doesn't seem to solve any technical problem at all. There's nothing groundbreaking there from a technical point of view, but it comes in a stylish and convenient package. It's more of a lifestyle solution than a computing solution.
So if your question is, what would sell really well? I can't answer that. I know that a board with built-in FPGAs that the programmer could use could achieve some technically impressive feats, whether the average consumer could care less is another matter. But the rise of the portable computing market has really put ARM on the scene, and I expect desktop PCs to follow suit eventually. If I could buy a desktop motherboard based on ARM right now, that beat my current AMD 4850e, I'd be happy.
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Is the ARM chip same endian as 680x0 or opposite like the x86?
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Is the ARM chip same endian as 680x0 or opposite like the x86?
They can be switched to either mode (bi-endian).
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They can be switched to either mode (bi-endian).
Ah, cool feature indeed.
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They can be switched to either mode (bi-endian).
That reminds me of the F-CPU project which was designing an open source 64 bit cpu, the project has died 2 or 3 times so far, maybe if you decide to go the FPGA route you could revive it.
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Just thought of something...
Various cybernetic implants would impress the hell out of me :)
I'd give 600 bucks, and more for that !
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Just thought of something...
Various cybernetic implants would impress the hell out of me :)
I'd give 600 bucks, and more for that !
Lord Aga of Borg
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Yeah, I'd even give my right arm for a cybernetic one :D
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The point with the different "pads" are that they offers easy access on the go due to the shape and keyboard "placement" and builtin mobilephone instead of a dongle. It's mainly a ergonomic issue. Computing wise they are nothing new at all.
If one leave the hardware side of things, what applications would one desire?
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Although it's less than USD 600, I plan to order an iPhone 5 this week...
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PC became available for really large corporations and goverments in the 1960s. The problem were size and price.
____________________
Levitra Online (https://www.rx247.net/levitra.html)
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PC became available for really large corporations and goverments in the 1960s. The problem were size and price.
Huh?
You, with your Levitra, and Persia with his sad, crowing cock, need to get together
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Although it's less than USD 600, I plan to order an iPhone 5 this week...
I was planning on keeping my iphone 4 forever because I just replaced the screen and because I have never had an issue with the antenna...
I would like to get rid of AT&T and this "unlimited" data plan... They are complaining because I use over 3GB/month and throttle me.
I'd be pretty pissed if I rented a car from AVIS with "Unlimited" miles in Miami and it had a speed governor that kicked in (allowing a maximum of 15MPH) 1/2 way or Orlando.
What is the point of a LTE if I'm just going to burn through my data that much faster.
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PC became available for really large corporations and goverments in the 1960s. The problem were size and price.
____________________
Levitra Online (https://www.rx247.net/levitra.html)
But the 8088 IBM PC was not actually built until Commodore 64 era so no whatever that is it is not a PC :P
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I was planning on keeping my iphone 4 forever because I just replaced the screen and because I have never had an issue with the antenna...
I would like to get rid of AT&T and this "unlimited" data plan... They are complaining because I use over 3GB/month and throttle me.
I'd be pretty pissed if I rented a car from AVIS with "Unlimited" miles in Miami and it had a speed governor that kicked in (allowing a maximum of 15MPH) 1/2 way or Orlando.
What is the point of a LTE if I'm just going to burn through my data that much faster.
I was planning on keeping my Sony P-900 because it is less pretentious and does everything a touch screen phone needs to do LOL
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I'm going to hold on to my iPhone 5 for at least the next two years. I have an estimated delivery date of October 1 to 5.
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But the 8088 IBM PC was not actually built until Commodore 64 era so no whatever that is it is not a PC :P
The IBM 360 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_360) released in 1964 had 8 kB - 8 MB of RAM, 112 MB HDD, and CPU with 0.034 MIPS. That's more than some 1981 PC:s had.
CDC 6600 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600) accomplished 1 MFLOPS in 1964.
So mid 1960s where the point where capacity equaling to the IBM PC became available.
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But the 8088 IBM PC was not actually built until Commodore 64 era so no whatever that is it is not a PC :P
IBM didn't invent the term PC. The Altair 8800 from 1975 was where the term Personal Computer origininated.
It's quite a meaningless term nowadays, in the I'm a PC advert Microsoft implied it meant that it ran one of their operating systems. Yet on the same computer you could run Linux or MacOS.
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If one leave the hardware side of things, what applications would one desire?
I suppose Hollywood
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_(graphics_chip)
or
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_(programming_language)
..?
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I guess if had to determine which one was an Application that I would use on an Amiga and was nearer to $600, oh, let me see.....
Would it be a multi OS programming software package or a Wii hardware chip made by ATI? Gee, I get so confused with these heady issues. It must be this Southern heat; I do declare Miss Scarlett, I just can't decide. You just make the decision for me; I am sure it will be alright
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Think application that the best hardware for 600 USD can run. Hardware one can build, not neccessarliy existing right now.
Not specific to Amiga or it's OS.
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Why, I do declare Miss Freqmax, that I'm lost in all this talk of War Between the States.
"Look... I am not stupid, you know. They cannot make things like that yet."
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The Most BANG for $600:
"Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"