To Vampire or not

[kolla]

The integer performance of the 68080 outlcasses any Amiga FPU option..

You know that this makes no sense? :)Anyhow, "any Amiga FPU option" also includes PowerPC cards, and they run in circles around 68EC080. The showcase for the apollo core superiority is Riva, and anyone who are used to offloading mpeg decoding to either dedicated hardware or to PowerPC, it is rather unimpressive.

[kolla]

It's not as tedious as the constant cultish demands for an FPU.

Is it cultish to expect "the most compatible 68k processor ever" to actually be compatible with a large chunk of the most important productivity software for the platform? Especaially since it has been touted as the most insanely impressive piece of PFU ever, since what... 3 years ago?Anyhow - my advice for anyone is to buy the Vampire, and then weigh in with your oppinion about where the core, and really the 68k Amiga platform, should go feature wise.

[kolla]

And what PPC or even 060 OR EVEN 040 options do we have for a600 and a500 ?

 This thread is about A2000, but more importantly my reply was to a claim about "any Amiga FPU option". For what it is worth, my other CPU card for A600, which ironically is an Apollo 630, with a 68882, runs in circles around the V600 when it comes to software relying on FPU, as all you get on Apollo Core is 8000 000B

[kolla]

Try to run this on your mighty 030 with FPU....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m6zm_tI2mE

Why don't you show off Quake instead?

[kolla]

* The claim is that an FPU is done, and was done more than 12 months ago.
* The only testing Gunnar is interested in, is that can be done in assembler code and that is a "killer app" for the Apollo Core FPU, the way Riva is a "killer app" for the AMMX instructions.
* The claim is that they offered the Apollo Core FPU 12 months ago to "the amiga coder community" (whoever they are?), but that noone showed any interest in it
* Gunnar wants to do a different FPU, a new one, even better, faster, more amazing etc.
* But only if there is enough interest in "the amiga coder community" to work man hours for the "team".
* Gunnar does not care one squat about old legacy programs that use FPU, for those, if anyone is interested, someone can very well slap together an FPU emulator.
* No FPU for current Vampires. The super duper new FPU is for the next generation of cards only, because Gunnar now sees potential in shiny new FPGAs that are coming.

[kolla]

I give you a good advice... do not buy it

then you can stay a happy man

Good advice for you is - buy it, so you can see for yourself what it offers.

[kolla]

I think the topic starter got the advice he was asking for on page 1.

And hence any further communication between amiga.org members on the topic of "To Vampire or not" should cease to exist?

[kolla]

All quite scary, if true. :confused:

I would be happy to be wrong, but this is the essence of what Gunnar has stated on IRC and on the Apollo Core forum. Sadly he has a tendency to delete what is written on the forum, so it can be worth while to take screenshots and copy text for future reference, wayback machine only visits so often

http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=4¬e=5931

[kolla]

It's not just "heavy mathematics", it's random software compiled for 040 and 060, for which the compiler used assumes FPU to be available and hence may use it for optimization. It doesn't matter if the usage is heavy or not, the use of FPU instructions can be quite arbitrary when there is software meant to run on 040 and 060 in use. To avoid the 8000 000B crashes, users must be very aware what they install and run, with AC68EC080 most often being detected as 040 or 060 by installers, the user must override what is detected and insist on 68000/020/030 if they exist.

The most worrisome 8000 000B I have seen yet was on file system validation, on a system that afaik was "clean" for all FPU software (duplicated straight from my MIST), had to work around it by disabling partition in early startup and fix from hdtoolbox...

But whatever, these are all worries that AmigaKit etc will have to deal with now.

[kolla]

yeah the ones who have run out of arguments (give us FPU now) would like to get this thread closed now.  Give us FPU or we will hate you is the main argument. If you dont, you are a dork and gay of course, liar, amiga hater, cheat and a AROS lover. BUrn mf....

You have no concept of what hate is, you can rest assured that I have zero hate for any people involved with Amiga. Stop being so damn polarized, and rather spend time actually using Amiga software and be creative.

[kolla]

Do you guys really believe it takes your input to make a professional CPU developer and long-time Amiga user understand the value of a compatible FPU or compatibility with as much of the Amiga software catalogue as possible?

It has worked before, so why not - the trick is to somehow make him think that it is his idea.

And the FPU is STILL not done, what is Gunnar THINKING!!!

It is clearly done, he has said so many times now, and besides, 3 years ago, it was even available...

http://web.archive.org/web/20140516224526/http://apollo-core.com/

Optionally, a fully pipelined, double precision FPU is available to be included in the Core.

So the questions is - is this professional CPU developer and long-time Amiga user able to do it, or is he not?

What happens with the already finished FPU implementation? Will it be available for sale? If so, how much?

[kolla]

I doubt there will ever be an FPU, since it depends on asm coders being willing to put in work hours on new software, rather than ensuring compatibility with existing software.

[kolla]

the fpu was not finished according to what gunnar said.

Though the marketing said something else, and he had no shame in gloating about how amazingly fast it was back then.

it worked to certain extent, but there were incompatibilities left and features missing, which caused for instance mac os to crash under shape shifter. therefore it has been disabled. because it was not compatible enough to guarantee regular operation, without people constantly complaining, that the fpu is there but doesnt work as they expected.

Yes, there are incompatibilities, and it is not just the FPU. As time goes on, and there are more and more users, more and more incompatibility issues will appear. I do wonder how "the team" will deal with this, as Gunnar is all about moving forward and leaving whatever compatibility issues behind, for the sake of performance.

It is funny and ironic how the OS3.x community now may get its own equivalent to the A1222 Tabor. :laughing:

you can search german forums for appropriate posts on subject or refer to apollo site fpu subject thread. discussing gunnars character and personal attitudes has nothing much to do with the problem technically and makes it look like you have some personal issues.

The Apollo Core is all about Gunnar - it's frustratingly enough his character and personal attitudes that shape the development of the CPU core that is touted to be "the future" of the Amiga. What would be your estimation regarding the "bus factor" of the Apollo Core project?

[kolla]

if people cannot be bothered to put even few hours writing software to test, hey have no say about someone elses project he has likely put thosuands of hours into. simple as that.

Maybe advertising the FPU before it is ready is a bad idea then?

Btw - who were contacted 12+ months ago?

[kolla]

So you see incompatibilities, yet fail to put the work into making clear-cut bug reports with small snippets of example code that invariably lead to crashes?

Yes, I do not work for "the team", correctly observed. It is my understanding, as your answer also suggests, that only clear-cut bug reports containing code snippets is what matters. Meaning that if the program failing is proprietary, one would go through disassembling the binaries to find snippets, or what?

Why do you then expect somebody else to hunt ghosts?

Nope, I don't expect much at all - that is rather the point.

99% of the alleged incompatibilities are just bad demo or game coding or long standing bugs and software mismatches that now get attributed to the Vampire. There surely are bugs in the core. Hardly anything man made is perfect. Go read the Silicon errata for the various 68k processors out there.

Exactly, but we are pretty much stuck with long standing bugs and software mismatches, as well as legal problems and what else.

Even a reproducible crash in a specific place of a program like a branch into no-man's land isn't enough to find a CPU bug because the real problem could have happened millions of instructions before. The Team you like to put into derisive quotation marks has been working in their spare time and provided hundreds of test cases and has found dozens of bugs in the CPU. And we paid for our Vampires just as you did. But you rather take a comfortable position as a big-talking paying customer demanding bug fixes and features. You are what we called a leech back in the Amiga coding days.

What I "demand" is:
* a lot more accurate marketing - just look at this...
http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=features
So we know the FPU is, at best, dysfunctional - what about the rest? Is this page at all trustworthy if one wants to know what is current state? Or does it require wading through forums such as eab and a1k, filtering propaganda and rumours from reality?

* a lot more accurate marketing - "buy it for what it is" we are told, but it can be damn hard to know what it actually is at any given time, since all information and marketing coming from "you guys" (what to call it - it is not a company, and we are told Vampire and Apollo Core are two very different things) is about what it potentially can be (typically in next core releases).

* a lot more accurate marketing - all the people surrounding the project, who do not have the hardware, who have not used it, yet are mighty opinionated about how truly breathtakingly awesome it is, and are allowed to spread this .. truthiness pretty much undisturbed.

* a lot more accurate marketing - are buyers who buy from AmigaKit and other retailers made aware that they are participating in some sort of beta program? How long can one expect the current V500v2+ and V600v2 cards to be supported by Apollo Core?

* modesty and politeness in general. Guess I can now add "leech" to the rather long list of terms used by "you guys" on me.

I was told that only if I could see and use the Vampire myself, I would be convinced.
I was told that I should shut up since I did not even have a Vampire myself.
It was only logical that I should buy Vampire, right? So I did, both of them.
Am I convinced? Not really. Should I still shut up? Apparently. :laughing: