a golden age of Amiga

[matthey]

The successor to Freescale's Dragonball is i.MX series, which is an ARM based CPU, so I'd still consider this "linear development".  In other words, if I could do with with the freescale component it would still be "real amiga" spiritually, if that makes any sense to anyone.

Sorry, it doesn't make sense to me. Freescale could have abandoned the ColdFire Dragonball for various reasons probably related to small power efficient devices, customer wants/needs and cost. There are many aspects of ARM that make it easier to follow the crowd but then where is the creativity and originality? If you want simple and want to follow the crowd then buy an x86 and run UAE. I think an enhanced 68k (with ColdFire and other improvements) still has possibilities because I think it can offer better code density than ARM with Thumb 2 while being easier to program and more powerful (although not as energy efficient). It was dropped and is still delegated to the cellar for pure marketing reasons while it is proven technology (68060) that can be improved and scaled up with today's technology. The Natami fpga 68k+ CPU should be as fast as the last 68k processors and it would be possible to burn ~500MHz processors that would provide enough power to do most of today's computing needs.

ARM is the future of computing though, I'm sure of that.  x86 has to end sooner or later, it's too stupid to continue indefinitely.  Surprised it's lasted this long to be honest.

ARM will do well in the low end device market where energy efficiency matters. They are getting faster too, but I think x86 will be able to hold them off on the high end. The x86 is not the same architecture it originally was. It has it's baggage but so does ARM which has gone through 3 architecture changes itself to arrive at an efficient CISC style encoding much like the 68k had all along.

Still.  Now we can buy a Megadrive in a hand held device, not sure what the hardware is in one of these exactly but there must be a market for a similar Amiga product.

Probably an all in one (68k + custom chips) burned chip from an fpga just like could be done for the Natami when done. We need Amiga users to support what we have and consolidate development efforts.

[matthey]

If you care about code density though, x86 wins, because it's still an 8-bit instruction set at heart so it can encode some instructions in a single byte, whereas 68k instructions are 16 bit and therefore always multiples of two bytes.

The x86 has variable length instructions from hell that make up for the short instructions. The average code density of x86 is better than most RISC encodings but a ways behind 68k and Thumb 2 ARM which both use 16 bit instruction encodings. The 64 bit x86 is a little worse yet at code density. I think the 68k can be improved 5-10% in code density over the 68020 or ColdFire with the additions the Natami is likely to add without significantly increasing the complexity of the decoder. Those little ARM devices have good battery life but are dogs and x86 devices are fast but chew through the batteries. An enhanced 68k could hit the sweet spot between. We know how little of memory and storage an Amiga needs to be useful.

x86 will still be around for a few more years at the top end but it won't hold on forever.  Heat dissipation is already becoming an unmanageable problem in high performance systems.  Whereas ARM is already being investigated for servers, and Nvidia are going to be pushing it for mainstream desktop/laptop use.  AMD and Intel don't just supply top-end CPUs, once their mid-range and server markets fall away they're going to find their premium products much more difficult to keep competitive.

Servers generally need to access lots of memory and 64 bit x86 makes sense there. Yea, it generates a little more heat but crank up ARM to that processing power with 64 bits and I wouldn't expect a huge difference. PowerPC was supposed to be able to dethrone x86 due to it's more efficient and superior design but it didn't happen. IBM has take the PowerPC to the max but it's advantages don't seem to be enough to pay the cost differential in most cases.

But let's not forget what else we already have in the community, AROS's new Kickstart and 68k JIT for ARM CPU's could come in very handy for the scheme I have in mind.

The fpga Arcade chose fpga CPU emulation over ARM CPU emulation. It would be interesting to see how a faster ARM could emulate the 68k.

... For a new golden age the Amiga would have to do the same thing that the 1000 did, totally revolutionise the gaming/computing world like it did back in 85'.

It's very difficult and expensive to revolutionize the gaming/computing world anymore. Another golden age for me would be a very affordable for everyone Amiga in 1 chip (68k CPU, custom chips, 3D) with backward compatibility. Think Natami produced in enough quantity to approach the Raspberry pi price. Say $100 U.S. with the expansion the Natami has. It is possible with enough quantity.