Amiga emulators: is it worth it?

[Hammer]

amigaksi wrote:
>by DiskDoctor on 2009/1/18 9:57:56


>Hello,

...
>Also, some time ago I encountered some post on some other forum stating that "no one has ever managed to re-create the original chipset as a Virtual Machine because it was SO PERFECT it is hardly possible if ever."

If you go by PC standard hardware, it is impossible to do the cycle-exact emulation of the Amiga.  Now if you have some specialized PC hardware like a multi-channel audio card, sprite-based video card, digital joystick interface, PC w/HPET timers, etc. that are all superset of the hardware of your Amiga in every respect and have software that uses these directly (not through an API or buffered scheme), then it is possible.  
(SNIP)

To have design for Windows Vista logo on PCs, the PC must have HPET timers.

Refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb931844.aspx

[Hammer]

Regardless, of how fast your CPU is, it won't make your beep speaker (1-bit resolution) do 4-channel 16-bit 44Khz audio. Regardless if your CPU is Pentium IV at 4Ghz, it won't improve your timers. And you can't time things equally or better with 1.19Mhz timer vs. a 3.57Mhz timer-- just seems to be violating some laws.

Just look for Vista logos on PCs for HPET(high performance event timing) aka MMT(mutimedia timing).

[Hammer]

bloodline wrote:
@amigaski

Just for your info, the HPET is a 64bit, 10Mhz Timer...

Does AROS use HPET?

[Hammer]

DiskDoctor wrote:
Oh, man...

By saying "get" it, I meant buy it...
*EDIT PIII doesn't make it work now.


Nice project, though.
Fortunately nowadays PC hardware (e.g. graphics) is less diverse, so maybe some time...

The GPU race is basically down to NVIDIA, AMD/ATI and Intel.

Tsang Labs = Gone. Assimilated by AMD/ATI
SIS = insignificant.
3DFX = Gone.  Assimilated by NVIDIA.
PowerVR = insignificant in desktop market
S3 = insignificant.
3Dlabs  = insignificant. Its software engineering teams assimilated by Intel (for Larrabee).

Pricey IBM’s CELL BE has the potential to enter PC GPU race.
http://www.mc.com/uploadedFiles/Cell-accelerator-board-2-ds.pdf

Pixelshading on CELL BE (PS3)
http://research.scea.com/ps3_deferred_shading.pdf