NatAmi 68070 design draft

[HenryCase]

Matt_H wrote:
I'd suggest a different name to avoid confusion with this thing.

Some people have been calling it the N68070. That should be enough to avoid confusion with the existing 68070.

Zac67 wrote:
Actually I miss the point of recreating a completely new (?) RISC core to have it run/emulate/whatever 68k code.

1. It's not emulation. FPGAs give you the chance to build the real thing.
2. The main reason behind the N68070 is to integrate it with SuperAGA into one chip, giving cost and speed benefits over a 68060.

Zac67 wrote:
There are lots of low cost, high speed available CPUs (well, most of em x86), why not use on of them? While you're at it, add one of the off-the-shelf mobos that don't cost a fortune and are wickedly fast. Obviously you end up where Amithlon started - so I'd rather see a PCIe (or PCI if need be) board sporting an original AGA chipset or a nice vamped up Minimig/Natami/... chipset to get 100% compatibility. Most work (UAE) is already done.

How many f**king times have I got to answer this question. The NatAmi is called such because it is a NATive AMIga. You can have your emulation fun elsewhere, myself (and many others) want beefed up classic hardware, that's what the NatAmi offers. No x86, PPC, ARM, etc... or at least not as the main CPU.

Nostalgiac wrote:
as I said before.. I enjoy my A2000/060 as it is fun and makes me young again, but come on people, unless you make a 'new' Amiga OS run on x86 forget it ! (just finish aros and then add some 1000 features it is currently lacking... ok ?)

Then run AROS and leave the NatAmi to the people who want it... ok?

alexh wrote:
I tried to give some positive feedback, but it is just showing the gulf between his ambitions and his capabilities.

The document is just a rough draft, a sketch of where they'd like to go. If you can help them with technical suggestions (as you did on the EAB thread) then that is the positive feedback you are looking for in vain.

bloodline wrote:
He optimistically suggests 200Mhz speed... Something as complex as a 68k CPU is never going to get even 20Hmz real speed on an FPGA... I'd be surprised if that to be honest...

Who said it would be on a FPGA? When they are designing it, yes. When they are manufacturing it a structured ASIC is much more likely, so let me ask you this, is 200MHz out of the question on a reasonably priced structured ASIC (like one of the Altera HardCopy series)?

amiga_3k wrote:
Hmmm... I've not got to read about that 68070 thing but... I did read about the fact that Freescale seems to offer custom-made processor solutions where the buyer specifies the functions he / she wants to see added over the standard feature-set. As I understood it, you could take a 'standard' Coldfire processor and ask for adding instructions, say... the missing instructions that were available on the 68060 creating a more compatible Coldfire processor. And while you're at it, why not throw in some extra features that could make your special system just that little quicker ;-).

But then.. I could be wrong :-S.

amiga_3k, it's a decent idea, but AFAIK Freescale don't let you modify the Coldfire core, but just build functions around it, so the issues with certain processor functions would still exist.

@all
As I've mentioned, the document is a rough draft. The Natami60 will be released without the N68070, there is plenty of time for discussion about how best to construct the N68070 without interfering with the Natami60 release. If you want to see the N68070 be the best CPU it can be and you have some 68k ASM knowledge then share your ideas with the Natami team.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:

HenryCase wrote:

bloodline wrote:
He optimistically suggests 200Mhz speed... Something as complex as a 68k CPU is never going to get even 20Hmz real speed on an FPGA... I'd be surprised if that to be honest...

Who said it would be on a FPGA? When they are designing it, yes. When they are manufacturing it a structured ASIC is much more likely, so let me ask you this, is 200MHz out of the question on a reasonably priced structured ASIC (like one of the Altera HardCopy series)?

Absolutely no way anyone could ever raise the money to build a 68K ASIC... it would be quite a big and complex chip... There isn't any magic that can turn VHDL into an ASIC... you still need chip designers to load the HDL code into their software and work it into a functional chip...

This is big money...

Read what I said. I did not say 'ASIC' I said 'structured ASIC'. The Altera HardCopy II may give enough power for a 200MHz 68k family CPU, and costs a fraction of a standard ASIC.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:

HenryCase wrote:

Zac67 wrote:
There are lots of low cost, high speed available CPUs (well, most of em x86), why not use on of them? While you're at it, add one of the off-the-shelf mobos that don't cost a fortune and are wickedly fast. Obviously you end up where Amithlon started - so I'd rather see a PCIe (or PCI if need be) board sporting an original AGA chipset or a nice vamped up Minimig/Natami/... chipset to get 100% compatibility. Most work (UAE) is already done.

How many f**king times have I got to answer this question. The NatAmi is called such because it is a NATive AMIga. You can have your emulation fun elsewhere, myself (and many others) want beefed up classic hardware, that's what the NatAmi offers. No x86, PPC, ARM, etc... or at least not as the main CPU.

Ok, I have a question... As you will note that Jens at the Breakpoint07 stated... "The Amiga was essentially unchanged for 8 years, If you change anything about the hardware, you create incompatibilities, basically you make a new platform... Why create a new platform... Just buy a Cheap PC?"... While I can see the value in projects like MiniMIG and CloneA, I'm not really sure what NATAMI is really trying to do...

People want the Natami for different reasons, I can only speak about the reasons behind my liking of the Natami project.

One of the best things for me about the Amiga is its architecture. The custom chipsets (OCS/ECS/AGA) working in tandem with the CPU to create a more capable system overall. The PC platform has been moving towards providing the balance in resources we had with the Amiga, but progress on this seems slow (I hope GPGPU tech will take off). The Natami gives us an elegantly designed computer now, because it is based on the elegant design of the Amiga architecture.

Why is this elegance important? Well apart from giving better usage of resources, it is easier to understand from a programming perspective and therefore we should see a high percentage of well written programs on the Natami (less unnecessarily wasteful programs).

That's just from the technical point of view. On the geeky level what's hard about understanding the appeal of a classic Amiga capable of (most) modern computing demands without using any accelerators? That's cool in my book. :-D

I suppose I'm also excited about the Natami because I want to see something close to what the A5000 could have become, so I suppose there's closure reasons too. Of course we'll never know what the A5000 would have been, but the Natami lets us live out our A5000 dream anyway.

There are probably plenty of other reasons, that's just a list off the top of my head.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:

HenryCase wrote:

bloodline wrote:

HenryCase wrote:

bloodline wrote:
He optimistically suggests 200Mhz speed... Something as complex as a 68k CPU is never going to get even 20Hmz real speed on an FPGA... I'd be surprised if that to be honest...

Who said it would be on a FPGA? When they are designing it, yes. When they are manufacturing it a structured ASIC is much more likely, so let me ask you this, is 200MHz out of the question on a reasonably priced structured ASIC (like one of the Altera HardCopy series)?

Absolutely no way anyone could ever raise the money to build a 68K ASIC... it would be quite a big and complex chip... There isn't any magic that can turn VHDL into an ASIC... you still need chip designers to load the HDL code into their software and work it into a functional chip...

This is big money...

Read what I said. I did not say 'ASIC' I said 'structured ASIC'. The Altera HardCopy II may give enough power for a 200MHz 68k family CPU, and costs a fraction of a standard ASIC.

Ok, I've read up about Hardcopy, and it is a Fabing service... it's going to offer better performance than an FPGA... and be cheaper than a full blown ASIC... but it's still big money, money that no one has for some weird slow CPU with no software investment...

No software investment? That's why the Natami60 is being released first, to help build up the software base for the Natami.

As for structured ASIC cost, you may be right that even a structured ASIC may be too much money for us. The Natami team had thought about getting other companies interested in the N68070/SuperAGA chip, so if that happens we'll be back into 200MHz territory easily.

FPGA performance seems to be progressing at a reasonably good rate, maybe by the time the commercial version of the Natami is ready to be released we'll see cheap FPGAs able to run the N68070/SuperAGA at 200MHz.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:
NATAMI is anything but elegant... the Amiga was an elegant solution to the computing problems of the mid 80's... Take any generic mainstream PC/Mac/whatever and it will be far more elegant a solution to the modern computing environment than an weird Amiga like kludge...

You and I have different interpretations of the word 'elegant' it seems. I am looking from the perspective of less bottlenecks in the system, which the PC/Mac/whatever have. What's the point of all that CPU power if you can't use it to its full potential? Why use the CPU for everything when co-processors can do a better job? As I said PC architecture is moving in the co-processor direction (and has been for a while now) but it's not quite where I'd like it to be yet.

bloodline wrote:
A5000 is a bit of a meaningless idea, But I do understand that it would have been nice to see what could have been... but as the great Dave Haynie has pointed out, The future of Amiga development would have moved to off the shelf parts... AAA was OK, in 93... but nothing but a joke by 97...

AAA != SuperAGA, but I see where you're going by mentioning it.

Personally I have no issue with the PARISC strategy that was planned for the new Amiga CPU, as at least the 68k functions could have been built in to the new CPU core. However, if Commodore were planning on going with all off the shelf parts then I'm glad they fell on their arse when they did because they clearly didn't see the unique benefits of the Amiga architecture.

Moving to off the shelf parts would have been a lazy attempt to renovate the platform to make up for the years they wasted by not investing highly in R&D. Using your same Dave Haynie AAA reference 'it would have been revolutionary if released in 1990'. Commodore had 5 years to get from OCS to AAA, which is plenty of time IF they properly invested in R&D.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:
Have you noticed that we have gone from lots of different CPU architectures, to basically just 2... the x86 and the ARM... Yes, the PPC is clinging on too... I think you would be hard push to justify why you didn't use either the x86 or the ARM in a new design... And I think you would, probably kiss your job as a chip/system designer goodbye if you choose something other than x86, ARM or PPC in your system...

There simply isn't the investment in software to justify building a system built around the 68k...

There are plenty of different CPU architectures out there. Whilst I concur that the biggest players in the consumer CPU architecture market are x86/x64 and ARM, that doesn't stop companies using other architectures where appropriate.

bloodline wrote:
Why would any company be interested in a weird, slow, incompatible and expensive design... where is the value in that? How can you sell that to anyone?

Aah, I'm starting to see where you're getting confused now...

bloodline wrote:
By which time, your Average PC will be 20 times more powerful!

I have nothing against NATAMI, but you need to be realistic in what can be achieved!

I'm trying to be realistic in what the Natami can achieve, believe me there are people much more fanatical about the Natami in the Amiga community than me.

I think the reason we're not seeing eye to eye on this is because you think I expect the Natami to compete in the modern PC market. I do not. I do not expect to see it on the shelves of shops (at least not unless an outside company takes a liking to the N68070/SuperAGA chip, for mobile phones for instance). I expect it to be a successful product in the Amiga market, maybe drawing back a few old Amiga users and a few developers interested in retro hardware (demoscene coders for example) but not reviving the commercial viability of the platform.

The Natami is an ambitious hobby project and we have nothing to lose by giving the Natami developers our support. If the N68070 never sees the light of day at least we should have the Natami60 to play around with.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:

Using your same Dave Haynie AAA reference 'it would have been revolutionary if released in 1990'. Commodore had 5 years to get from OCS to AAA, which is plenty of time IF they properly invested in R&D.

Yes, that's sad. But that's what happened and the rest of the world moved on!

Not all of us, evidently. ;-)

[HenryCase]

I'm talking about general purpose CPU architectures... i.e. the market that the 68k was designed for...

There is basically either an x86 or an ARM that fits into any market and price point now, that needs a general purpose CPU... And you are talking to a MIPS fan here...

But 68k does fit in the Amiga market. The Natami is not aiming to be some PC killer, but rather a supercharged classic Amiga.

But I doubt they are able to see the flaws in their thinking....

I don't know if that was meant to be a sly dig at me or not but I personally I think I'm fairly willing to admit when I've got something wrong.

Ok, give me one thing that N68070/SuperAGA has over an StrongARM/PowerVR chip (i.e. the chipset in the iPhone)?

It will have me coding for it. ;-)
In all seriousness, it's clear that software is the thing that drives computer sales. From a technical perspective I think the N68070/SuperAGA chip would work well in a mobile phone. The software is another matter. The direction of the commercial Natami will largely be determined by the Natami60 software developers.

The NATAMI is looking to be expensive and incompatible with features that are not required by the amiga software base.... How do you sell this to an investor?

With a library of Natami60 apps and games. I personally don't see any investors coming from outside the Amiga community, but who knows.

bloodline wrote:
The NATAMI is a fun hobby project, really good... but I really can't be much more... the N68070 is totally pie-in-the-sky, I would suggest the originators of the idea do a lot of reading...

As I've said, the N68070 is a fairly new idea. I'm glad you approve of the Natami as a fun hobby project. The best way we have to ensure we see this hobby project succeed is to give our advice and support to the Natami team, so what would you add/change in the current N68070 design brief?

[HenryCase]

Crumb wrote:

Something as complex as a 68k CPU is never going to get even 20Hmz real speed on an FPGA... I'd be surprised if that to be honest...

Tobiflex m68k core is faster than a 20Mhz 68000 with a DE-1 board.

I'm pretty sure 20Mhz is a typo, it should say 200MHz, though thanks for the information about Tobiflex's 68k core.

[HenryCase]

Zac67 wrote:
However, some of the possible design goals are not at all realistic (chipset for mobile phones, ASIC design, ...) and should seriously be rethought before much time gets wasted on them...

Those were not design goals, those were my own ideas. I am not a member of the Natami team. Perhaps it would be better if you visited the Natami forums to see what the real plans for the Natami are.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:
How it can be as compatible as the MiniMIG, which is already a very mature beta product, and still full of bugs. The added complexity of SuperAGA is going to increase Debug time. The added features of the SuperAGA Chipset will decrease compatibility, unless they are kept away from the AGA emualtion (i.e. moded out)... and then what is the point of them, no existing Amiga software can use them, and if you are writing new software... use a new machine.

Personally I see the Natami, Minimig and CloneA as all complementary products. Bloodline it seems to me you are seperating out the Natami from this group because you don't believe it will be as compatible as the Minimig or CloneA.

Whilst I fully expect CloneA to be the most compatible of the three, I don't see where you get the idea that Natami will be less compatible than the Minimig. The Minimig is not cycle exact, neither is the Natami, they are both in the same boat.

Also, whilst I hugely admire Dennis for what he has done, the Natami project has been going for far longer than the Minimig has (Minimig started around 2005, Natami started before 2003 IIRC). Thus, even with the added complexity of the Natami design it is feasible that Thomas Hirsch (designer of the Natami) would have removed most if not all of the bugs in the design.

The cycle exact thing is oversold anyway. If you can run most OCS games on an AGA A1200 (with WHDLoad and other tools) why would you expect the SuperAGA to be a compatibility killer?

Why not wait and see the Natami in action to see how well it runs old Amiga software? Better to do that than claim it won't work without proof.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:
No, I separate out the NATAMI because unlike the MiniMIG and the CloneA, the motivation behind it don't make any sense, or at least seem very unrealistic!

The motivation is unrealistic/suspect? The ideas behind the commercialisation of the Natami only started recently (probably around the time bbrv offered to help with getting it running Coldfire, which we know now was not the path to take), and you've said yourself that you see it as an interesting hobby project, yet the motivation behind the Natami is suspect?

Are you questioning Thomas Hirsch's motives or the motives of the other people interested in the Natami?

The Natami doesn't need to be flying off the shelves in shops to be a success, maybe you think it does? Cue Garth:



"It's like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that's just really sad."

The MiniMIG is just trying to be Amiga compatible... that is the motivation... that is what everyone working on it is trying to achieve. It doesn't matter what the MiniMIG devs have to do, they can do anything to improve the compatibility.

The Minimig is open source, any one can build what they like with it. If I had the time (and skill) to implement the AAA chipset on the Minimig your argument falls apart, as the AAA is Amiga technology and something that (the majority of) Minimig fans would not shun.

NATAMI seems to have some crazy idea about making a better Amiga, for no discernible reason...

Why is that such a bad idea? If a company were releasing the Natami I would probably class them as 'brave', it doesn't have enough mass appeal for today's market, but to those who are interested in it it is a huge deal, and providing Amiga developers embrace it too it could be a very interesting retro platform for a good number of computer fans from different computing 'cults'.

So Dennis got the MiniMIG from idea to shipping product in 2 years... and I understand that he took a break between finishing the design and releasing it... and the NATAMI has been in process for 5 years and is not even out of the development phase... does that not start alarm bells ringing?

You're clutching at straws here, why would that bother me? It's clear that the Natami consists of a more complex design than the Minimig, more complexity = longer development time.

Every extra feature takes time and silicon away from debugging the standard AGA features... Plus somethings I have read about the "Super" features would be incompatible by design... anyway that isn't the point, why bother with these new features, no existing software can use them!

According to the Natami team the development process for SuperAGA is close to complete, including AGA compatibility. I'm so glad that this chipset was developed (largely) in secret so we didn't have to go through the painful 'will they let us down' phase. Of course the Natami60 hasn't been released yet, but I'm confident we'll see some progress on that soon. Yes the SuperAGA features are mostly useful for new software development, but there may be one or two features I've heard of that will be of use to standard Amiga software.

I don't care how well it works, I just don't understand the project motivations or perhaps really I don't understand what benefits this has over MiniMIG and CloneA as a commercial product... but I can see disadvantages...

Your argument is baffling. Any product sold, whether that be to Amiga hobbyists or any other group, is a commercial product. The Minimig (in its preassembled form) is a commercial product, it is selling to those who are interested in it, the Natami will do the same. If someone is willing to pay money for something then it has the potential to be a commercial product. Some of us (myself included) may get a little carried away with dreaming what the Natami could do, but that doesn't give you an excuse to knock the technology, which is the issue at hand here.

If the SuperAGA was shown to be highly compatible with AGA, became open sourced, and was developed for a future Minimig revision, would you still shun it then?

[HenryCase]

AJCopland wrote:
Yeah actually I'd like it if they DID put in an extra off-the-shelf GFX chip on there too. My point about the PSone was that its a reasonable benchmark to surpass. Slow 33Mhz CPU, weak 3D chip (by todays standards) but a potent machine when used right. Even an A1200 with a 3D chip would have given it a PSone a run for it's money at the time if commodore had ANY idea that 3D was coming.

FYI, Gunnar has added a 3D core to the SuperAGA chipset.

@Atheist
Dude, you've been posting variations of that list for a while now, it's getting really tiring. I like you're enthusiasm, just try to direct it in a more positive direction. Don't bother with the silly Windows/AmigaOS comparisons, they are not doing you any favours.

[HenryCase]

@bloodline

AAA never worked. No one will ever know what AAA would have been like or even how it would have worked if C= had ever got it to work.

...and yet there would still be interest in it if it was finished (as close as possible to the design specs) for the Minimig. I don't see that happening, especially now we have SuperAGA, but my point is that those involved in open source development are free to choose the direction they take, you shouldn't dictate to people what they should and shouldn't want to see.

It's fine, but it's not a commercial idea. It's a hobby idea, it's not $20 ASICs and $100 dev boards... it is these claims that irritate me.

Those are the claims made with dream mode:on, everyone knows they are very ambitious goals, but the project would be a success even if we don't reach the pricing goals (as long as the Natami60 is released).

The more complex the design the more worried I get... I never make a project more complex than it has to be to achieve the required task! If the NATAMI is a great AGA clone and runs AGA software really well, but is going to take 20 years to develop... just because of extra feature that 98.4% of the time simply won't be used, then the project has little value!

According to the Natami devs the SuperAGA development period is close to completion (I have even seen it described as complete). No 20 year wait, so no problem here.

What does that mean? Feature compete? Alpha stage, beta phase... RC?!?! People are getting excited based on little information...

According to the devs the SuperAGA is complete enough for them to start designing the Natam60 dev boards, make of that what you will.

Yes, that word that has plagued the Amiga for the past 15 years... Soon...

You don't seem that interested in the Natami, so why worry about how long it takes to complete?

And the crux of my concern... why waste all that dev time and silicon for one or two features...

You misunderstand me, but that's okay as I didn't really elaborate on this point. As I said most of the SuperAGA functions will support new software, but let's take a look at one feature that is being considered that would help all Amiga software, which is the integration of Scale2x support into the hardware. You can read about Scale2x here:
http://scale2x.sourceforge.net/
Here's the discussion from the Natami forums:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=214

As a hobby project, the price doesn't really matter, the time scales don't matter, protecting the IP doesn't matter (so release the source code), Success doesn't matter... Open the project up let everyone have a play and learn... is any of this true with NATAMI?

The Natami team aren't fully against open sourcing the work they've done, it's just that they want to keep their options open at this stage, which is sensible I think. You can read a discussion about open sourcing Natami here:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=486

No of course not. I would love a cheap Replacement board for my A1200, based around an FPGA... But nothing I've read or heard about the NATAMI project suggests that it will offer me this.

So your main objection to the Natami is the potential cost, right?

[HenryCase]

@bloodline

We have all wondered what it would be like... but I see my friend's Machine with the latest 9800GX2 Nvidia GFX card on the latest Quad Core Intel CPU... (a system that cost less to put together than An A500 + 1 Meg RAM and HD cost in 1990) and I simply can't get excited about 16 year old technology..

Fair enough. However there are some people who still enjoy coding for classic Amigas, do you understand why they might be excited about the Natami?

Everyone here, the old timers at least will know my views of OpenSource... Why we even have closed source hardware/software in the Amiga community is a mystery to me...

I know that you are a fan of AROS, I was certainly not questioning your belief in open source, my point was geared around the statement you made about Minimig only being a pure classic Amiga clone while, thanks to the power of open source, it can be anything the devs want it to be.

They are not ambitious claims, they are false claims! and they make a joke out of the Amiga and the NATAMI project.

They are not false claims, they are unlikely claims. Let's say I won the lottery on the weekend, I'd probably fund a Natami ASIC. The chances of me winning the lottery are slim, but fingers crossed eh! The dev boards were described as being 'close to A1 prices', don't know where you got that $100 figure from. In any case, the advances in semiconductor fabrication has meant that prices of FPGAs are falling (while processing power increases). In 2-3 years maybe we will be able to buy an FPGA capable of running SuperAGA for around $100?

My use of 20 years was an obvious exaggeration to show my point! Every second longer than needed is a second wasted.

Translation: Every second spent developing features I do not want is a second wasted.

No, it's the weirdoes who are make this project a joke.

What does that matter, either you like the idea of the Natami (beefed up classic Amiga hardware) or you don't. I don't mind if you think of me as a weirdo, I know I've done more than most to keep this project from falling foul to crazy hype, and to misplaced negativity.