Excitement about NatAmi

[Belial6]

I wish someone for once would make something they promised, sell at a price the promised, stop moving the goalposts and stop j&rkin off at the expense of the amiga community, just put up or shut up and ship out !! said my piece.

I would like to point you to the MiniMig, WinUAE, MorphOS, AROS, AmigaOS4, the slew of products from Individual Computers (although they have had a few bombs), the iMica, etc., etc., etc..

The Amiga landscape was really ugly for a long time, but the last few years have been a consistent stream of exciting new products actually released, and it keeps getting better every day.

The biggest challenge I see for NatAmi at this point is finishing the project, and getting it out there before the MiniMig line surpasses it.  With the first generation of the MiniMig platform released, and in wide use, we are now weeks away from having the second generation of MiniMig released in the form of the Replay boards.  This will bring the MiniMig up to parity with any hardware that Commodore released.

While NatAmi aims to be better than what Commodore released, they do need to get it finished soon, as we don't know what level the Replay boards will achieve when they hit the wild, and no doubt there will eventually be someone that moves forward with a third generation of MiniMigs that will surpass the NatAmi target.

[Belial6]

Why would anyone want essential features like USB and ethernet relegated to a PCI card?
Not only would it create a nightmare scenario for compatibility, but it would severely limit the options for different form factors.

In what way would it create any issues for compatibility?  You pick the card you want to support, and you just don't support anything else.  I don't understand why the fact that you COULD support different cards would in any way make you feel like you MUST.

While it might limit options for different form factors, the reality is that there just are not that many different options.  The most obvious is the standard PC itx case.  Anything else would pretty much require a second run of modified boards anyway, and at that point, you could always build the PCI interface and network/USB directly on the board.  So, again, where is the problem with the initial run having the parts on PCI?

[Belial6]

Which is why I say that the biggest challenge for Natami is to get released before it becomes irrelevant.  The first MiniMig was released in 2007 as a match to the low end of Commodores product line.  The Replay (basically MiniMig 2) board will be a match to the high end of Commodores product line.  This is while using only a 3rd of the gates on the board.  Given the awsome improvements in the original MiniMig, it would be shocking if we didn't see some major improvements in the Replay boards once they are out and about.

If someone decides to build a MiniMig 3, and it is as much of an improvement over the Replay board as the Replay is over the original MiniMig, it will surpass the target of the NatAmi, and the NatAmi will be an expensive board that brings nothing to the table.

If it is just a hobby for the developers, then there is no loss, but if they have dreams of being relavent to the rest of the Amiga community, they will need to get things wrapped up soon, or be relegated to the status of Vaporware.

[Belial6]

@SamaraiCrow

OK, help me be clear on this, as I have seen many things said by people that are not part of the team.  Is the NatAmi intended to be a Closed Source/Open Source, and is it intended to be a personal hobby project/a player in the wider Amiga community?

There is a lot of arguing that goes around based on different perceptions of what the NatAmi team is claiming for their goal.  The two criteria above sets many of those expectations.  If you have previously stated the goals in respect to open/closed and private/public, I am sorry to have to reask, but I missed it if it was there, and it sounds like others have as well.

My current perception is that NatAmi is intended to be a closed source commercial offering to the public with the understanding that it is a niche hobby group that it would be sold to.

Is this a correct perception?  Making this clear to us would help with managing those hopes and preventing them from being excessivley high, as well as possibly correcting some negative perceptions of the project.

[Belial6]

Your perception is correct.  We intend to sell it and keep the source closed.

Thanks for clearing that up.  I think it will help bring expectations closer to reality.  (Obviously, this being an Amiga forum, expectations will never actually meet reality. )

The problem with the Replay is that it uses a smaller FPGA and therefore won't get the performance of the N68050 or the extension of it, the N68070.  The CPU softcore used by the Replay MiniMig core hardly has any cache at all.

Natami is designed for efficient use of a medium-sized FPGA.  It will have a bigger cache on the CPU core and the ability to combine opcodes such that certain combinations of two opcodes will execute in one clock cycle.

Stay tuned.

I wouldn't say that it is a "problem" with the Replay.  It is just that the Replay's target is less than the Natami's target.  I think the Replay will be a fine addition to the Amiga community.  If the Natami were released today, it met it's target and it was price comparable to the Replay, then THAT would be a problem for the Replay.  Just as the Replay is not a problem for the original MiniMig.  The original MiniMig has had a good run, i suspect the Replay will also.  At worst, it would need to change it's marketing message from being a MiniMig that can also run other cores to being a system for other cores that can also run a MiniMig core.

My point concerning the release of the Natami is that time marches on.  There is active development going on with new Amiga compatible and enhanced hardware.  Natami has a target that is beyond what is currently available.  If it is another three or four years before it is released, it may not be as powerful as what is available at that time.  I don't have information on when the Natami will hit the market.  I only have a healthy skepticism built from dozens of vaporware projects, and a few too good to be true projects that have actually come to fruition.

Will Natami be on the vaporware side, or the too good to be true?  Only time will tell.  Until either it's target is surpassed or it is released, it is in the same category as the Kickstart Replacement bounty was 6 months ago.

[Belial6]

030 compatibility is no bad thing, especially if you are interested in backwards compatibility.

How much 680x0 software is there that won't be compatible with the 030?  In my area, the release of the A600/AOS 2.0, with it's massive incompatibility with the A500 was the last nail in the coffin for the Amiga.  We never even saw A1200's in these parts.

If the 040/060 were just optimizations, and did not add new opcodes, or if the new opcodes were rarely or never used, then anything past the 030 computability would just be an interesting sidenote.

I guess the other question is, are their opcodes in the 68000 that the 68060 cannot run?

[Belial6]

Depends on where you stand on the great "what makes an Amiga an Amiga" argument. Is it the architecture? The actual, physical hardware? The brand? The OS? Or some kind of intangible spirit thing? It seems like everybody has a different answer.

Personally, I'm beholden to the elegant hardware and software architecture of the original OCS/ECS machines, which NatAmi seems to be aiming to replicate/beef up, so it's right up my alley But I suppose if you don't consider an FPGA implementation to be a "real" machine, this isn't going to do it for you.

Personally, I just change the old saying "If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, then it's a duck." and change duck to Amiga.

For my personal use, I am most interested in being able to run classic software from the 1.3 era.  I would love to get into AROS x86, but like when I find an interesting show on TV, I go back to the beginning and watch all the episodes until I catch up to the new ones, I want to have my "Amiga" running all the old software so that I can catch up to the x86 port linearly through time.

Just as the new Dr. Who's are still Dr. Who, you get a lot more from the new episodes if you go back and watch the old ones to give context to what we have now.

[Belial6]

It is a bit harsh for people to shoot you down about this! An FPGA Amiga is still an emulation of the original hardware, even though it is not the step by step processor based emulation of something like UAE.

The FPGA I programmed using a language not unlike a normal computer pogramming language, the real difference is that the language is used by the FPGA software to build a logic map of the operation which is then "executed" by small programmable units in the hardware (often little more than logic units, but can have advanced features like adders and memory). The FPGA must be programmed every power on.

I wouldn't mind playing with an FPGA board (like mikej's Replay) to build my own CPU...

I don't see anyone being harsh about whether FPGAs are hardware or software.  People have an unrealistic view on the level of difference between hardware and software.  The FPGAs just make the issue cloudy for people that don't see the shades of gray.

Using software to configure hardware is common to the point of being ubiquitous.  This is part of why I always thought the concern about 'emulation' was silly.  If you have a black box, that takes an input, and gives out a predictable output, does it matter if it is hardwired, hard coded, loaded with software on boot, hardware configured on boot, or any other combination?

My extreme example I see in my head is to ask, If you walked up to a window in a building with access to a keyboard, monitor and a floppy drive. You inserted a floppy disk that had the instructions to tell the 100% automated factory exactly what parts to pull and assemble into a stock Amiga 500.  It would automatically pull every chip, resister, and capacitor, and assemble them into an Amiga 500 case, and attach the resultant computer to the monitor and keyboard that you have access to.  Would that be a real hardware Amiga?  What if when you took out the disk, the same automated factory disassembled the Amiga?

How is that different to what happens inside the FPGA?

[Belial6]

Hi,

I am really excited about the Natami, (yawn). How about upgrading the processor to something a small bit newer like a AMD 6 core cpu (1090t, 1055t or the 1075t) , why are we futzin around with something Motorolla gave up on a long time ago. I know why Amiga people aren't happy unless it is out of date junk that they can spend lots of money on upgrading for bragging rights.

Even apple had more common sense than to stick with a dead cpu.

Will someone please explain to me why?

I seem to be a little nieve in this area.

smerf

Because they are making an Amiga compatible and enhanced machine.  Not a Windows compatible and enhanced machine.

[Belial6]

I have kind of thought that a dual FPGA system would be cool.  If one of these projects supported a second FPGA, you could run your Amiga in the primary one, and set the secondary one to whatever system you wanted.  The key would be making it so that instead of having the second FPGA output it's Audio/Video/Keyboard/Mouse/Joysticks directly, they route into the first FPGA that could then handle forwarding them on to the real equipment.  That way they could be run in a window, or full screen.

It would be cool to be able to manage and launch your C64 FPGA configurations from your Amiga Workbench.

[Belial6]

Could someone explain what benefit there is in SMP over AMP.  It has always seem to me that AMP would be a far superior system.  AMP allows for the processors to be mismatched in both speed and architecture.  That seems like a huge benefit.

[Belial6]

I'm not doing OS development, so I understand my limited exposure, but I would think that if the design were done right, it should make things MORE cross platform.

It would be nice if the system were approached from a virtualization/emulation standpoint.  What I mean is that the base OS could determine what processors were available when it initilized, and then could pass off tasks to the processors or subsystems that were most proficient at the particular task.  This would require a base virtual machine/emulator that could be the fall back if the the target platform didn't exist.

This is one thing that AmigaDE had right in concept.  We have seen this actually implemented with graphics cards.  I don't know if it still has it, but at one time, any features of DirectX that were not implemented in the graphics card would be emulated in software.  We already have very effective AMP in most systems with one processor running graphics, and a completely different architecture running the rest of the code.

As long as there is a fall back virtual machine, the effort to port to new platforms should be trivial in comparison to porting the entire OS.  New platforms would require a small (in comparison) effort to get the base system up and running, and then anything after that would be optimization.

I suspect that in the short run, this would have a performance hit, but in the long run, it would keep the system from being tied to any one system.  It would also allow for an unprecedented level of backward compatibility, as you could always run the old system as a subsystem of the new one.