natami

[desiv]

The interesting thing is that now, with smart phones and tablets and the WEB all over, I find myself using my "computers" less and less (not counting work of course).

I still watch videos and such, but my tablet does that.
I'm not a serious FPS gamer, so that doesn't bother me.
I don't do anything that requires a graphics/sound/video workstation.

So, I've found that with my tablet sitting by me, I use my older computers much more than I use to...

It's funny too, one of the things I use my tablet for most (or the laptop, I haven't even turned on the desktop in months and months) is Amiga forums.

Honestly, if there was a 68k Amiga fast enough to support a decent web browser, I'd do that much more.  I'd rather use my Amiga for browsing rather than the tablet.
In fact, I do going to Aminet and eabmobile.  The Amiga.org proxy is OK, but not quite good enough on my 1230/28.

So, a 68k Amiga running near 100Mhz, especially with Picasso emulation and more CHIP RAM, I could see being very useful..
The Natami extras sound really great, but I'm not sure they'd be worth much more to someone like me....

Ideally, a really fast FPGA Arcade that fit inside an Amiga case using an Amiga keyboard and floppy, but with some expanded graphics...  That would be very very very tempting...  ;-)

I can see Natami doing that perfectly also, but the cost might be too much for me..

desiv

[desiv]

No one told me Natami is an emulator.

Of course it's an emulator.  It doesn't have an Agnus or Paula or Denise...
It uses an FPGA (The P is a clue..).

I thought it was real..

It is real.. They have videos you can see on youtube.  :-)

It's not a "real Amiga", but nothing since the last 1200 rolled off the line (or was a CD32 the last Amiga? Anyway, you get what I mean..) has been.

It's emulated in hardware.  Of course, LOTS of stuff is emulated nowadays.
The line is very blurry...
Lots of REAL chips have parts that emulate other things by design...

Now, you could say the Natami is more "real" than the FPGA Arcade, because it has more new features that the original Amiga never had.

Then again, the FPGA Arcade lets you have more than 2M CHIP, which the REAL Amigas didn't do, so that's not an "emulated" feature, but a new one.

The fact is, emulation isn't what it used to be...

We need a "Turing Test" for these emulators.
If it can do X (whatever X is) and people can't tell the difference, then it's real, because it's no longer distinguishable from real...

desiv

[desiv]

What the market wouldn't bear, I'm convinced, is both the NatAmi and FPGAArcade boards at the same time.

Now that I don't agree with.
The FPGA Arcade is a different market than the Natami.

I really liked what the Natami team was working on.  I think it was very interesting, but based on the price and the fact that I am really more retro, I knew I was never really in the "target audience."

It's like the X1000 or SAM stuff to me..  Looks great, but not something I would be interested in..

Now, the FPGA Arcade is very tempting to me.  It doesn't have all the bells/whistles, but it is MUCH more in the price range.
I think FPGA Arcade competes more with actual Amiga hardware.
Would you want a decked out 1200, or an FPGA Arcade?

There will be some overlap in the middle, but it's like saying a Kia Rio is stealing market share from a Ford Mustang, because some people won't pay more for the Mustang.

As I see it, feature and cost wise, the two products are VERY different with VERY different markets.  (With overlap in the middle, and a lot of the overlap people would probably buy both..)

desiv

[desiv]

Oh Mighty Zarquon! We're not going to start this "what's the difference between emulation and reimplementation" flame war again, are we? ;-)

Technology changes rapidly.
Word definitions don't...
Semantics can't keep up..

And if you can't discern the difference, is there really one?
:-)

desiv

[desiv]

I'm sure down the road, many of those advanced chipset features of the NatAmi could be implemented in the minimig core for the Replay.

It was my understanding (could be wrong) that the FPGA on the FPGA Arcade wasn't as big as the one on the Natami.
I didn't think there would be enough gates to fit what Natami was trying to do???

desiv

[desiv]

It's not an emulator in any normal sense of that word.

Really?

em·u·late

   [v. em-yuh-leyt; adj. em-yuh-lit]  Show IPA verb, em·u·lat·ed, em·u·lat·ing,  adjective  
verb (used with object) 1. to try to equal or excel; imitate with effort to equal or surpass: to emulate one's father as a concert violinist.

2. to rival with some degree of success: Some smaller cities now emulate the major capitals in their cultural offerings.

3. Computers . a. to imitate (a particular computer system) by using a software system, often including a microprogram or another computer that enables it to do the same work, run the same programs, etc., as the first.

b. to replace (software) with hardware to perform the same task.


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The only argument might be whether or not the programming in an FPGA is a software system.

As I said before, it's semantics, but I think "any normal sense" is seriously stretching it...

As the technology is (IMHO) changing faster than the definitions, I think some freedom in interpreting them should be allowed.

It used to be much simpler before FPGAs.  But now with programming FPGAs, you make them behave like other chips.  Which sounds a LOT like what emulation is.

Maybe what we have now is similar to programming languages, a separation between interpreted emulation and compiled emulation.. ;-)

From a purely technical definition, it might not be an emulator.
But from the generic definition of the word, I think it still fits..

Even EETimes considers FPGAs a type of emulator.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4081462/Viewpoint-Standard-FPGA-based-emulation-will-prevail

So even among the serious techs, it's not as clear cut as it used to be.

desiv