What would you buy for classic Amiga?

[SamuraiCrow]

FPGA board!  What else?  Most recent FPGAs can match or beat a 68k anyway so who needs an accelerator board separately?

[SamuraiCrow]

I was only quoting the screen shots showing the Apollo FPGA accelerator already running at speeds equal to a Motorola 68000 running at 400MHz or more, not that the FPGA itself was running at that speed.  That is a skewed test result and probably (if it is even accurate) only shows one part of the functions of a Motorola 68000 CPU, not all functions running at a speed equal to 400MHz.  Only the Apollo Team members working on the FPGA soft-core design can explain the test results they are getting.  I don't know all the details, or how stable the soft-core design is at the speed they were running it at to achieve those "SysSpeed" number (or was it some other speed testing software for the Amiga they were using, besides "SysSpeed"?).

If the Apollo Team is able to include all of the most used instructions from the 68020 CPU or higher (68060?) and get it to run even just 2 times faster than a real Motorola 68060 @ 100MHz, it will be a huge accomplishment.  It is my hope that someone will release an FPGA based accelerator for several Commodore Amiga models, that will not only provide a fast CPU, but also improved AGA performance, RTG using Picasso96, and a whole complement of modern interfaces/ports, like USB2 or 3, SATA & IDE, plus tons of Fast RAM and a faster bus to connect it all together.

Stand alone replacement motherboards that improve upon every aspect of the original Amigas would be the best alternative, so there would not be any bottle-necks to contend with and more of the platform could be upgraded & improved (just like the goals of the Natami board, but revised and designed for lower cost with newer components than the last Natami board designed).  It seems that most users agree that the idea and goals of the Natami were very desirable and if it had ever been finished, it would likely have sold in large quantities, if the price could have been kept below $1,500 US dollars and all of the features completed and working.  With advances in FPGA speed and lower costs for bigger & faster chips, it should only be a matter of time before someone is successful in producing a motherboard that provides all the features of the Natami and more.

It would not be hard to get myself to go backward, away from the current NG Amiga platforms, and toward a faster and better Amiga 68k clone that could remain close to 100% backward compatible with all of the existing Amiga software.  A huge increase in the performance of all parts of an Amiga 68k system should allow the creation of new software which would be capable of making web browsing on such a system just as fast and comfortable as most current mainstream OSes and platforms.

I just like the idea of pushing the original Amiga design further than anyone thought possible 10 years ago.  Pushing it to the point where it becomes usable as an everyday platform again, not that it would replace the need for most of us to continue using a Windows, Mac, or Linux system for some tasks, but if it could at least do web browsing at close to modern speeds and functionality, and leave the door open for the possibility of new 68k software for word processing and image manipulation that at least half as fast and full featured as mainstream alternatives, I would use that upgraded Amiga clone for most of my computing needs.  A "Super-AGA" implementation does not make much objective sense, compared to modern video card performance and features, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to see some kind of "Super-AGA" created and maintained, for many reasons.

The 400MHz figure was from a multi thousands of dollars Arria devboard.  The Cyclone 5 can hit 120 MHz or so.

As for a standalone board, Thomas Hirsch is still on speaking terms with Gunnar so the Natami may yet come.

[SamuraiCrow]

Thanks for clearing up my mistake.  I did not realize that the 400MHz result was not from the board(s) the team is working on producing as accelerators for many Amiga computer models.

This changes my perception of what can be accomplished with the yet to be released accelerator boards, from being a "Game Changing" amount of performance increase, to simply a incremental performance step increase, above what is already available using old 68020, or 68030 CPU's, but not the 40MHz to 50MHz 68040 & 68060 CPU's.

How does a FPGA soft-core running at an equivalent of a 68000 @ 120MHz compare to a real 68060 CPU running at 50MHz to 100MHz  (which seems to be the fastest I remember any of the real 68060 chips being over-clocked to)?  I would assume that the FPGA soft-core 680x0 @ 120MHz would provide less performance than a real 68060 @ 50MHz, let alone an over-clocked 060 @ 100MHz.

Combining the fast soft-core design on a new motherboard with faster RAM & a faster local bus to all of the other components, plus the addition of on board USB, Ethernet & a SATA controller, will further increase over-all performance, but I think I will go back to dreaming of my FPGA Arcade Replay with the 68060 daughter board, as my preferred 68k Amiga clone.

With my perception of what is currently being worked on corrected, I think that more useful progress for 68k users could be made by improvements to the AGA chipset, instead of putting so much work into 680x0 soft-core designs.  At least until the performance and price of FPGA chips improves significantly, to allow the soft-core designs to exceed 68060 performance at a cost of only a couple hundred dollars.  Until that happens, I think that improvements to the AGA chipset performance and features (including higher resolutions and color depth choices, as well as the ability to access greater than 2mb of Chip RAM), by using FPGA chips, would be a better use of the talented FPGA programmers in our community.  Just my personal opinion, as the FPGA programmers will continue to work on what ever THEY think is most important.

FPGA accelerators will be nice, specially if they also include features like USB and/or Ethernet and additional RAM with faster bus speeds, but if they provide less performance than existing 68040 & 68060 accelerators, the new accelerators will be less impressive than I had first hoped.  Users who already have an 060 accelerator for their Commodore Amiga computers, probably also have a Deneb for USB and an Ethernet Zorro card, plus additional Fast RAM, so they will not replace a faster accelerator for a slower one.  The people who will want an Apollo FPGA accelerator are A500, CDTV, A600, (A1000 if it will fit) and some A2000 owners.  CD32 owners are desperate for a new accelerator design, but I don't know if the Apollo team will be able to shrink their design down enough to fit inside of the CD32, or if they can find the right connectors to make it work in a CD32.

Shame on you Gunnar for fooling me with that 400MHz test result and getting me all hyped up for something we won't see available for sale to most Amiga users for another 2 to 5 years (specifically an FPGA accelerator that can provide 400MHz performance).

The tests on the Apollo core website are all done on the same Arria board.  The efficiency of the Apollo core is very good.

A 120 MHz board will be faster than an overclock on a 68060 board by more than 20% and cost less as well.

::edit::
Also, a 400 MHz Raspberry Pi is not likely to be faster than this board except for OpenGL ES based 3D acceleration and even then, softcore add-ons are expected to come out for a budget-minded price after the initial release.  The hi-def AGA++ core, for example will address all 128 Megs of board memory as Chip RAM.  Can you tell me why a mere AGA chipset clone would be better?