Is the Coldfire project dead?

[whabang]

lordv wrote:
Coldfire V4 & V5 have an ability to fully emulate 68k opcodes... But only AT THE FIRST SIGHT. No provisions made to emulate 64-bit mul, 64-bit div and division with remainder instructions (coldfire just won't trap on them and will make rubbish), so virtually every piece of real amiga code will fail on coldfire.

The overall JIT emualtion as well as other methods of workaround for this bug will make coldfire totally uneffective when compared even with 060.

So the coldfire accelerators "suck and must die" =)

As far as I understand, there is also a software-bit to the ColdFusion accelerators. There will be somekind of emulation made in software (on a ROM on the board) that will take care of this.

This would probably just take care of the normal 68000-instructions, though, I don't know if FPU-instructions will be supported aswell.

[whabang]

The Coldfire CPUs are classified as V3, V4, etc.
They are pretty fast, comparable to the 060 IIRC, but most of them don't have MMU or FPU. The major advantage is that they are availible in speeds up to 200+ MHz, and that they can use "modern" SDRAM.

They are semi-compatible with the 68k-series, and there are tools both for making 68k-software run on them. They are also cheaper than the 68ks, as they are produced in much larger quantities.

[whabang]

Well, I hope Oliver can make this work. Such a card would be the only way I'd ever invest in Amiga hardware again... :-(

[whabang]

:crazy:

This discusstion has turned waaay too technical for me.