Sam460ex available with AmigaOS 4.1

[Piru]

• The version of AmigaOS 4 that will be shipped with the Sam460ex is still to be considered beta.
• The audio driver will be released on OS4depot as soon as it is ready.
• The driver for the onboard SATA port is still experimental. It is not loaded by the kicklayout file but you still can use it (at your own risk).

Uh oh. I thought the delay was there in order to make things working properly from the start?

I guess we were wrong.

Also are those 7 USB ports running at USB 1.1 speed? I wasn't expecting everything to work perfectly from the start but this sounds awfully like Sam440 all over again to me. Doing beta testing on the end users...

The final version will be released with an OS update

When can the users expect to see this update? Some kind of schedule would be reassuring considering the delays seen so far.
Will this final version include 3D support for the supported RadeonHD cards? (Important information for anyone building a system)

Price excludes local taxes

Okay so with tax the price with be around 900 €, excluding all other required components. That is quite expensive for a product with partial OS support.

[Piru]

• The version of AmigaOS 4 that will be shipped with the Sam460ex is still to be considered beta.
• The audio driver will be released on OS4depot as soon as it is ready.
• The driver for the onboard SATA port is still experimental. It is not loaded by the kicklayout file but you still can use it (at your own risk).

Uh oh. I thought the delay was there in order to make things working properly from the start? I guess we were wrong.

Also are those 7 USB ports running at USB 1.1 speed? I wasn't expecting everything to work perfectly from the start but this sounds awfully like Sam440 all over again to me. Doing beta testing on the end users...

The final version will be released with an OS update

When can the users expect to see this update? Some kind of schedule would be reassuring considering the delays seen so far. Will this final version include 3D support for the supported RadeonHD cards? (Important information for anyone building a system)

Price excludes local taxes

Okay so with tax the price with be around 900 €, excluding all other required components. That is quite expensive for a product with partial OS support.

[Piru]

I'll just copy and paste my reply from the same thread that you copied and pasted your comment:


Beta or not, the delay has definitely made what is on offer better.

Hans

So Hans, considering you're involved with the RadeonHD 3D support, can you give us any estimation as to when there will be 3D support for those RadeonHD cards? Or are users desiring 3D support advised to get a Radeon 9250 instead?

[Piru]

can you explain to me how that will make your email download faster?  Surfing?  How does your favorite text editor benefit from SIMD?

AltiVec can be used to accelerate many things: For instance OWB uses altivec to accelerate video decoding. z.library (shared zlib) has AltiVec acceration that is used by ALL applications using the library to decode gzip data (including png.library and thus PNG datatype). jfif.library has AltiVec acceleration (jpeg datatype uses jfif.library). Raggae multimedia multimedia framework uses AltiVec. Some low level graphics operations such as alpha blending and scaling and 3D are AltiVec accelerated as well. PowerSDL uses AltiVec when available. AHI software volume control (Mac HW) is AltiVec accelerated. Since these operations are in the OS itself it doesn't matter if the application supports AltiVec or not: All applications benefit automagically.

Various applications themselves use AltiVec too, such as Ambient, mplayer and ShowGirls.

It doesn't. SIMD has niche use.

Whatever rocks you boat. I prefer to have my system significantly faster, though.

[Piru]

It is great that Piru is so interested Amiga Os4. Judging from interest, he is going to buy Sam460ex as soon the drivers are ready

I already have 2 Mac mini G4s, one PowerBook G4 and one PowerMac G5. I paid less than 900 € for them, so no I really am not that interested in Sam 460.

Those questions are still valid IMO.

[Piru]

Just a few words to clarify the FPGA usage on the Sam boards: indeed the FPGA _is_ currently used on both 440 and 460 (more on the new 460 than on the 440)
Instead using a CPLD as a "glue chip" to control several signals on the board, we decided to use a more versatile FPGA.
Teorically speaking, if you remove the FPGA chip from the board, it won't work at all.

Plus, the presence of a FPGA open up more opportunities to personalize the board for the industrial market, since there is still free space to be used on the XP and XP2.

We know the FPGA is not currently used on the Amiga side, but this isn't the primary reason for the presence of the FPGA on our boards.

So basically you have no intentions to release any documentation on how to use the FPGA? Where's this Amiga custom HW emulation for SAM 440?

It's rather interesting considering the effort put to marketing the FPGA as the wonder device here: http://www.acube-systems.biz/common/Bitplane15.pdf

Wouldn't it be time to admit that no amiga programmers will ever have access to the FPGA?

[Piru]

Where I said we don't release any documentation about the FPGA ?
What an interested developer needs to use the XP/XP2 FPGA is already on LatticeSemi web site (tools, datasheet, application notes, IP etc..)
A LatticeSemi JTAG cable is needed to reprogram the FPGA with a new bitstream.

Does this mean that FPGA cannot be reprogrammed with the CPU? Anyone wanting to install new programming such as amiga chipset emulation needs to buy such JTAG cable? How much is it? Ah to answer myself: HW-USBN-2A, $149 USD, 139 € in some european shop.

We provide some additional info how the FPGA is connected to the onboard buses under written request.

Hmm wait. You're saying that all the current programming on the FPGA can be overwritten or that the current program can be downloaded from LatticeSemi website? I thought the board would be bricked if the original programming was overwritten.

How much of the original FPGA space is available for user programs?

[Piru]

The FPGA can be reprogrammed in several ways, and in some way directly from the CPU too.

...

Another way to reprogram the FPGA with the CPU is using 4 GPIO pins connected to the FPGA JTAG connector.

I'm currently pondering to modify U-Boot to allow developers to use such technic.

Ok that sounds sensible.

No, the additional info how the FPGA is connected to the onboard buses includes how to not "brick" the board.

Fair enough.

Taking as an example the custom hw emulation, an additional little board connected to the 80 pin expansion slot may reprogramm the FPGA (the jtag pins are replicated there)
This little board may provide additional joystick ports, aga/audio output etc..

Hmm. So would solution like this be isolated from the rest of the system or would it be possible to use keyboard, mouse etc connected to SAM 4x0 for input? Would it be possible to read/write data from host HDD(s)? Would it be possible to have the graphics output in a window? Assuming integration at this level is possible then it could be worth the effort.

[Piru]

And when driver supporting gpgpu's on SAM460 like the AMD/ATI 4XXX series get released

Let me know when that happens, assuming we're still alive and kicking

[Piru]

Cell's PPE doesn't I don't think

Cell PPE has AltiVec.

[Piru]

@m3x

It appears that Sam460 runs the AMCC460 slightly (15%) overclocked. Is this similar to the overclocked 440 models where the memory bus is slightly underclocked? Does this explain why 7447 166MHz DDR-333 memory interface appears to be faster than Sam460 DDR2-400 memory interface?

[Piru]

You have some information slight wrong and outdated

On the Sam440ep models, the DDR runs at the nominal speed (133 Mhz) on the 667 Mhz and 800 models, and run overclocked on the 733 Mhz model (147 Mhz)
There is a pci-update which overclock the PCI unit on the SoC, but due constraints in the internal multipliers, is not possibile to overclock both DDR and PCI unit, and thus on this model the user may choose to keep the original setup or to overclock the PCI unit.

On the Sam460ex the DDR is overclocked as the CPU. The reason why right now the reported speed is somewhat low is due the very conservative setup done by U-Boot, and because APM is still updating their autoconfig code.

I was able to enhance the speed just recently and now the figures are as follow:

Read: 350 MB/s - Write: 560 MB/s

Next U-Boot versions for our board will include modifications on the DDR config code to achive higher speed transfers.

Thanks for the info. Still slower than 7447 166MHz bus + DDR though