Amiga fans could force merge Amiga Inc. and Hyperion...

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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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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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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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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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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:
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:

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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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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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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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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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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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....