What would you buy for classic Amiga?

[amigadave]

How about a completely finished Natami, or FPGA Arcade Replay board with 68060 CPU, USB, Ethernet & more RAM daughter board, or a stand alone Apollo FPGA based Amiga clone with 400MHz+ 680x0 speed, improved AGA and Picasso96 graphics, greater than 2mb of Chip RAM, USB, Ethernet, SATA2, or 3 controller and 4gb Fast RAM?

In other words, a completely modern Amiga clone using FPGA technology that is at least 10 times faster than any real Motorola 680x0 CPU and has all of the modern ports, controllers and interfaces that we need to move forward, plus new programming tools that make it easy to create new Amiga content and applications/games.  Not asking for much, just want it all!  

[amigadave]

An Amiga 68k fpga CPU won't be hitting 400MHz any time soon. An fpga that fast would cost thousands by itself. An affordable Cyclone V with the Apollo/Phoenix CPU can do 100MHz or a little more and a superscalar 2 integer unit Apollo CPU should be 2x to 4x as fast at integer than the 68060. That's still pretty powerful as the 68060 is no slouch. I would expect it to be faster than some older ARM processors with clock speeds approaching 400MHz. I hear you on the Natami and would love to see a comeback of a higher spec complete Amiga motherboard.

I was only quoting the screen shots showing the Apollo FPGA accelerator already running at speeds equal to a Motorola 68000 running at 400MHz or more, not that the FPGA itself was running at that speed.  That is a skewed test result and probably (if it is even accurate) only shows one part of the functions of a Motorola 68000 CPU, not all functions running at a speed equal to 400MHz.  Only the Apollo Team members working on the FPGA soft-core design can explain the test results they are getting.  I don't know all the details, or how stable the soft-core design is at the speed they were running it at to achieve those "SysSpeed" number (or was it some other speed testing software for the Amiga they were using, besides "SysSpeed"?).

If the Apollo Team is able to include all of the most used instructions from the 68020 CPU or higher (68060?) and get it to run even just 2 times faster than a real Motorola 68060 @ 100MHz, it will be a huge accomplishment.  It is my hope that someone will release an FPGA based accelerator for several Commodore Amiga models, that will not only provide a fast CPU, but also improved AGA performance, RTG using Picasso96, and a whole complement of modern interfaces/ports, like USB2 or 3, SATA & IDE, plus tons of Fast RAM and a faster bus to connect it all together.

Stand alone replacement motherboards that improve upon every aspect of the original Amigas would be the best alternative, so there would not be any bottle-necks to contend with and more of the platform could be upgraded & improved (just like the goals of the Natami board, but revised and designed for lower cost with newer components than the last Natami board designed).  It seems that most users agree that the idea and goals of the Natami were very desirable and if it had ever been finished, it would likely have sold in large quantities, if the price could have been kept below $1,500 US dollars and all of the features completed and working.  With advances in FPGA speed and lower costs for bigger & faster chips, it should only be a matter of time before someone is successful in producing a motherboard that provides all the features of the Natami and more.

It would not be hard to get myself to go backward, away from the current NG Amiga platforms, and toward a faster and better Amiga 68k clone that could remain close to 100% backward compatible with all of the existing Amiga software.  A huge increase in the performance of all parts of an Amiga 68k system should allow the creation of new software which would be capable of making web browsing on such a system just as fast and comfortable as most current mainstream OSes and platforms.

I just like the idea of pushing the original Amiga design further than anyone thought possible 10 years ago.  Pushing it to the point where it becomes usable as an everyday platform again, not that it would replace the need for most of us to continue using a Windows, Mac, or Linux system for some tasks, but if it could at least do web browsing at close to modern speeds and functionality, and leave the door open for the possibility of new 68k software for word processing and image manipulation that at least half as fast and full featured as mainstream alternatives, I would use that upgraded Amiga clone for most of my computing needs.  A "Super-AGA" implementation does not make much objective sense, compared to modern video card performance and features, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to see some kind of "Super-AGA" created and maintained, for many reasons.

[amigadave]

The 400MHz figure was from a multi thousands of dollars Arria devboard.  The Cyclone 5 can hit 120 MHz or so.

As for a standalone board, Thomas Hirsch is still on speaking terms with Gunnar so the Natami may yet come.

Thanks for clearing up my mistake.  I did not realize that the 400MHz result was not from the board(s) the team is working on producing as accelerators for many Amiga computer models.

This changes my perception of what can be accomplished with the yet to be released accelerator boards, from being a "Game Changing" amount of performance increase, to simply a incremental performance step increase, above what is already available using old 68020, or 68030 CPU's, but not the 40MHz to 50MHz 68040 & 68060 CPU's.

How does a FPGA soft-core running at an equivalent of a 68000 @ 120MHz compare to a real 68060 CPU running at 50MHz to 100MHz  (which seems to be the fastest I remember any of the real 68060 chips being over-clocked to)?  I would assume that the FPGA soft-core 680x0 @ 120MHz would provide less performance than a real 68060 @ 50MHz, let alone an over-clocked 060 @ 100MHz.

Combining the fast soft-core design on a new motherboard with faster RAM & a faster local bus to all of the other components, plus the addition of on board USB, Ethernet & a SATA controller, will further increase over-all performance, but I think I will go back to dreaming of my FPGA Arcade Replay with the 68060 daughter board, as my preferred 68k Amiga clone.

With my perception of what is currently being worked on corrected, I think that more useful progress for 68k users could be made by improvements to the AGA chipset, instead of putting so much work into 680x0 soft-core designs.  At least until the performance and price of FPGA chips improves significantly, to allow the soft-core designs to exceed 68060 performance at a cost of only a couple hundred dollars.  Until that happens, I think that improvements to the AGA chipset performance and features (including higher resolutions and color depth choices, as well as the ability to access greater than 2mb of Chip RAM), by using FPGA chips, would be a better use of the talented FPGA programmers in our community.  Just my personal opinion, as the FPGA programmers will continue to work on what ever THEY think is most important.

FPGA accelerators will be nice, specially if they also include features like USB and/or Ethernet and additional RAM with faster bus speeds, but if they provide less performance than existing 68040 & 68060 accelerators, the new accelerators will be less impressive than I had first hoped.  Users who already have an 060 accelerator for their Commodore Amiga computers, probably also have a Deneb for USB and an Ethernet Zorro card, plus additional Fast RAM, so they will not replace a faster accelerator for a slower one.  The people who will want an Apollo FPGA accelerator are A500, CDTV, A600, (A1000 if it will fit) and some A2000 owners.  CD32 owners are desperate for a new accelerator design, but I don't know if the Apollo team will be able to shrink their design down enough to fit inside of the CD32, or if they can find the right connectors to make it work in a CD32.

Shame on you Gunnar for fooling me with that 400MHz test result and getting me all hyped up for something we won't see available for sale to most Amiga users for another 2 to 5 years (specifically an FPGA accelerator that can provide 400MHz performance).

[amigadave]

Out of curiosity, how would this work?  I know this is basically how the IndivisionECS works, by replacing Denise with an FPGA (and from what I understand, the ECS model is actually more advanced than the IndivisionAGA, since the ECS can operate without the Denise chip entirely)...  but since most AGA chips are SMD, are you proposing something like a "super IndivisionAGA", that would graft onto the top of the AGA chips, hijack their signals, and enhance them?  Or something entirely different, that might fit in the video slot of big box Amiga's?  Just trying to wrap my brain around how this might work.  

Yes, I think that Jens has learned enough about how to replace signals from the original Amiga Custom chipset and several programmers have toyed with improvements to the AGA video output (either in working demonstrations, or in theory), to make such a device possible for all Amiga models, as well as new stand alone FPGA systems.  Ideally, it would be developed for all models, with some being clip-on style, and others could be designed for the big box video slot.

[amigadave]

The hi-def AGA++ core, for example will address all 128 Megs of board memory as Chip RAM.  Can you tell me why a mere AGA chipset clone would be better?

Who asked for "a mere AGA chipset clone"?  I brought up the topic of an improved AGA chipset clone, the so called SAGA, or Super AGA, chipset that some developers have worked on since the early days of the Natami project (perhaps before that, I don't know), because I thought that it would be more beneficial to have programmers work on completing and perfecting a new SAGA standard that would allow higher resolution and color depth software applications and games to be created for Amiga computers and clones equipped with a device which provides SAGA features.  My preference to have programmers work on SAGA instead of the soft-core 68k, was based only on my misunderstanding that a soft-core 68k CPU would only be faster than a real 68060 when loaded into an FPGA that costs thousands of dollars each.

I keep getting bounced back and forth by one side or the other, when one side says that the actual performance of the (relatively cheap) FPGA based accelerator boards will provide performance slower than a real 68060, while the other side comes back with statements that the bench mark test results are from the FPGA to be used in the accelerator, not some bigger, faster, FPGA that costs thousands of dollars to purchase.

At this point in time, I don't know what is real and what is fantasy, so I guess I will just wait until an actual product is available for purchase.  I had hoped that work on the design and firmware would be finished and production of the accelerator boards would have begun, so assembly and testing could begin, followed by sales to customers shortly afterwards.

[amigadave]

Our roadmap is:
*Vampire release (600/500)
*Phoenix CPU card release (500/1000/2000)
*Phoenix CPU card releases (1200/3000/4000)
* Standalone system

Where does my CDTV and/or CD32 Phoenix accelerator fit into your roadmap? :laughing:

Thanks for clearing up my confusion Gunnar!

I was getting dizzy jumping on and then off and then back on, the bandwagon of supporters who want a super fast Amiga 680x0 accelerator and/or clone stand alone system.  Are additional instructions from the 68020, 030, 040, & 060 being added to the 68000 Soft-Core design, so it will eventually be able to run AmigaOS3.9?

Is the Cyclone5 FPGA the chip that you are planning on using for the Phoenix accelerators?   How much does the Cyclone5 cost per chip and how much more expensive will the Phoenix accelerators be than the $90 Vampire boards (or is the $90 just the cost of the FPGA on the Vampire board)?

If only the FPGA technology had been available 10 years ago at cheap prices, maybe the whole switch to PPC would never have happened (but it probably would not have changed anything actually).

It will be very interesting over the next few years, to see what software will be back ported from MorphOS and/or AmigaOS4.x to AmigaOS3.x when 68k Amiga computers suddenly have 2 to 4 times more power and speed than ever before.