Blizzard PPC604e upgrade discussion

[Karlos]

That is a pretty neat thought.  If the BPPC had be designed to use the 64-bit bus of the 603, we could have had 64-bit Amigas at the time.

Well, that's not what is meant by a 64-bit architecture. A 64-bit machine is generally understood to have 64-bit registers, particularly for address calculation.

What we would have had is faster memory access. Although, I think L2 cache would have made more of a difference than widening the bus.

[Karlos]

A 350MHz 604e, with 64-bit bus and an L2 cache would make for a nice classic upgrade

Seriously though, I can't see any of that working with the existing accelerator designs.

[Karlos]

@Lando

Engineering concerns aside, the problem with ramping up the speeds that far is that the memory bus is going to be left so far behind. Suppose you managed to get a stable 80MHz memory bus (which would require some pretty rare SIMMs, given they need to be 5v). You'd need a 13x multiplier to hit 1GHz. Without L2 cache, that's really going to bite.

[Karlos]

If I were to guess I'd say as a cost saving measure as much as space saving - those cards were hideously expensive as it was, not to mention complex.

Yeah, the dual CPU design can't have been simple to pull off. I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the reason behind getting rid of the L2 cache. I really can't see the 68040/60 + 603/604 playing nicely with L2 present. It was bad enough with just the L1 caches and associated context-switch management.

When Phase5 announced the Blizzard G4, I was prepared to sell any non critical organ to get one. Alas, it never materialised.

[Karlos]

NON-critical?  You, sir, lack dedication. :laughing:

Well, I thought about it, but I didn't think the card would do me any good if I were dead...

[Karlos]

...along with the SharkPPC, which has also never materalised.  I was disappointed about that.  The impression I had from Elbox's website was that the design was pretty much finished, and that all they were waiting for was OS4.0 to be completed.

Such a shame when things like this happen.  I still hold hope that Elbox can release the Shark, but I feel it's doubtful that we'll ever see it.

Apple Hammer

The impression I got was that it was complete, but never intended to run OS4. As far as I could see, it was a Sonnet Crescendo card with a different heat sink.

[Karlos]

http://www.nutts.demon.co.uk/cyberg3.html
Take a read

Reading that made me sad. I would have loved to have seen that come to fruition.

[Karlos]

Come on Stacho, we want to see that

What, delshay on his knees, crying in adultation before the BGA MASTER ? I'm not sure I want to see that... :lol: