What happened to Coldfire?

[bloodline]

Colani1200 wrote:

bloodline wrote:
The Xenon in the XBox360 is much more cool.

Wow, a gaming console with head lamps?

Wikipedia Xenon Xbox :-)

[Colani1200]

Hehehe...  indeed.  :lol:  :roll:  :-D

[terminator4]

@piru

interesting
http://piru.morphos.net/~p/coldfire-v4-m68k.txt
makes one wonder why Elbox keeps talking about the Dragon.
:roll:

[bloodline]

Crumb wrote:
@bloodline

Also PPC is a sunk ship now...ARM and x86-64 are where it's at!

That's the reason all next-gen consoles use PPC.

Just a quick update to this, the next Sony console may well use x86-64  based CPU, since intel look set to be designing the next system... And there is word that MicroSoft will shift back towards the x86 also... Nintendo will probably stick with PPC.

[AJCopland]

bloodline wrote:

Crumb wrote:
@bloodline

Also PPC is a sunk ship now...ARM and x86-64 are where it's at!

That's the reason all next-gen consoles use PPC.

Just a quick update to this, the next Sony console may well use x86-64  based CPU, since intel look set to be designing the next system... And there is word that MicroSoft will shift back towards the x86 also... Nintendo will probably stick with PPC.

Gotta ask, where did you hear that?

I work with both platforms and we've not heard anything.

That's not to say that they'll do anything that's expected for either platform I'm just curious.

As for your other assertions that PPC is dead, well, I'm confused by it. They still sell in the tens of millions into non-desktop areas (embedded), servers and supercomputers are still using them oh and then they are in all 3 of the *current* gen of consoles which sell millions.

They're not as powerful as a modern CPU like the Core i7 or Phenom II etc but then they are several years older.

One small correction, Cell comes with 4 or 8 SPEs, 8 in the PS3 and usually 4 SPEs in the plugin card versions you can buy for use in desktop PCs.

Andy

[bloodline]

AJCopland wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Crumb wrote:
@bloodline

Also PPC is a sunk ship now...ARM and x86-64 are where it's at!

That's the reason all next-gen consoles use PPC.

Just a quick update to this, the next Sony console may well use x86-64  based CPU, since intel look set to be designing the next system... And there is word that MicroSoft will shift back towards the x86 also... Nintendo will probably stick with PPC.

Gotta ask, where did you hear that?

I work with both platforms and we've not heard anything.

That's not to say that they'll do anything that's expected for either platform I'm just curious.

Rumours, from the various news sites... might come to nothing, but I like to keep up with the latest goings on!

Today's rumour:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/851/1050851/intel-design-playstation-gpu

As for your other assertions that PPC is dead, well, I'm confused by it. They still sell in the tens of millions into non-desktop areas (embedded), servers and supercomputers are still using them oh and then they are in all 3 of the *current* gen of consoles which sell millions.

They're not as powerful as a modern CPU like the Core i7 or Phenom II etc but then they are several years older.

Well, I always err towards the Desktop... since the Amiga is a desktop platform... I kinda though that is what we are looking at... If you read my earlier posts I did say the PPC has some nice embeded implementations... I don't deny that... but I wonder how much more dev will be spent on it in future... Probably only IBM will spend anything on development in the future...

I expect intel will start making more embeded wins in future with it's new "atom" line of chips... and the ARM can't be beaten for low power consumption and decent performance...

One small correction, Cell comes with 4 or 8 SPEs, 8 in the PS3 and usually 4 SPEs in the plugin card versions you can buy for use in desktop PCs.

Andy

Sorry, I wasn't aware of any 4SPE chips... though I do recal Toshiba saying something... blah!

Anyway, the Cell is not a desktop chip... any more than Sun's Niarga chips are...

[AJCopland]

Oh I ignore the Inquirer, its a joke I mean this is the place that think nVidia paid Intel to get SLi support in the X58 chipset! And the article you linked to think that nVidia pulled the same stunt with Sony that they managed with MS on the Xbox1.

Next you'll be believing that Larrabee is an actual threat to ATi+AMD/nVidia GPUs :-D

I wouldn't like to guess what CPUs or GPUs are going to be used for the next-gen but they've certainly already been designing them either in parallel with the current-gen designs or after only a short break. So the idea that they're "about to start" is unlikely :/

ARM aren't a desktop CPU either, you can't claim the PPC is dead on the desktop and then suggest that ARM would be good *if* someone did a desktop version.

If its going in an Amiga and you want to maintain compatibility with OS4 etc then its going to be PPC for the time being.

bloodline wrote:
Rumours, from the various news sites... might come to nothing, but I like to keep up with the latest goings on!

Today's rumour:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/851/1050851/intel-design-playstation-gpu

Well, I always err towards the Desktop... since the Amiga is a desktop platform... I kinda though that is what we are looking at... If you read my earlier posts I did say the PPC has some nice embeded implementations... I don't deny that... but I wonder how much more dev will be spent on it in future... Probably only IBM will spend anything on development in the future...

I expect intel will start making more embeded wins in future with it's new "atom" line of chips... and the ARM can't be beaten for low power consumption and decent performance...

Anyway, the Cell is not a desktop chip... any more than Sun's Niarga chips are...

[AJCopland]

bloodline wrote:
Sorry, I wasn't aware of any 4SPE chips... though I do recal Toshiba saying something... blah!

Anyway, the Cell is not a desktop chip... any more than Sun's Niarga chips are...

Yeah its Sonys fault. Basically we've got direct access to 7 of the 8 SPEs in the PS3. they use the other for... well for whatever they want :-D

The 4 SPE Cell put on the plugin cards allows you access to all 4. During the development of the PS3 though they touted using 2x4SPE Cell chips in the PS3 but when developer actually started getting the early kits it was a single Cell with 7 available (1 for Sony) etc.

Hence the proliferation of SPE versions.

Andy

[bloodline]

AJCopland wrote:
Oh I ignore the Inquirer, its a joke I mean this is the place that think nVidia paid Intel to get SLi support in the X58 chipset! And the article you linked to think that nVidia pulled the same stunt with Sony that they managed with MS on the Xbox1.

Yeah, since  Mike Magee left it has gone down hill :-( but they do get a lot of the rumours before anyone else... I'm happy to have a place like that, despite their near perpetual Apple bashing, since there is often a few golden nuggets in there. :-)

Next you'll be believing that Larrabee is an actual threat to ATi+AMD/nVidia GPUs :-D

Actually, if you remember we had a discussion about the future of computer graphics and I am actually in the Real Time Raytracing camp... So I do see Larrabee as a future contender... Actually, I see Larrabee as something like the Cell, but done right... ok, ok that is a very subjective opinion on my part.

Newer NVidia/AMD designs are going to look more like Larabee/Cell in the future, of that I have no doubt.

I wouldn't like to guess what CPUs or GPUs are going to be used for the next-gen but they've certainly already been designing them either in parallel with the current-gen designs or after only a short break. So the idea that they're "about to start" is unlikely :/

Now this I whole heartedly agree with you upon! I would be surprised if the development cycle was less than 5 years and we are expecting new machines in 2010/11...

ARM aren't a desktop CPU either, you can't claim the PPC is dead on the desktop and then suggest that ARM would be good *if* someone did a desktop version.

No, and if you read my posts, you will see that I agree there PPC has had a lot of development work done upon it. Any implementation you can licence now is going to be really well suited to most applications I can think of... but, I'm not sure how much future development work is going to be spent on the PPC ISA... Buying an ARM licence and then optimising it to the task seems more sensible now.

If I was looking to start a new system now, I would have a hard time choosing between either an x86-64 or an ARM... My instincts say go with the ARM... simply due to the Low power implementations...

If its going in an Amiga and you want to maintain compatibility with OS4 etc then its going to be PPC for the time being.

I don't know, since everything that I want to run is 68k and hardware hitting, the only solution available to me is emulation... in such cases it doesn't matter what CPU is sitting under the hood...

[bloodline]

AJCopland wrote:

bloodline wrote:
Sorry, I wasn't aware of any 4SPE chips... though I do recal Toshiba saying something... blah!

Anyway, the Cell is not a desktop chip... any more than Sun's Niarga chips are...

Yeah its Sonys fault. Basically we've got direct access to 7 of the 8 SPEs in the PS3. they use the other for... well for whatever they want :-D

The 4 SPE Cell put on the plugin cards allows you access to all 4. During the development of the PS3 though they touted using 2x4SPE Cell chips in the PS3 but when developer actually started getting the early kits it was a single Cell with 7 available (1 for Sony) etc.

Hence the proliferation of SPE versions.

Andy

I think the 7SPE rule is just to push up Cell yields... The Cell is a HUGE chip, and the PS3 is a high volume device... I expect the failure rate of 8SPE chips is very large...

[Crumb]

@Bloodline

Today's rumour:  http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/851/1050851/intel-design-playstation-gpu

I think that Intel will probably design PSX4 GPU, but I think that the cpu will continue to be a CELL because Sony has always been concerned about retrocompatibility. The article only talks about the GPU, not the CPU.

Another possibility is that they used a x86 core with a CELL chip for the SPEs but that would require a very good and fast PPC JIT. But having everything in the same package saves costs usually so I guess they'll continue with a more powerful CELL.

I expect intel will start making more embeded wins in future with it's new "atom" line of chips... and the ARM can't be beaten for low power consumption and decent performance...

I don't know intel's plans, but ATM they haven't shown much interest in embedded stuff. Atom requires a northbridge with relatively high power consumption and most of embedded chips don't require a northbridge at all. Freescale embedded "G4 like" cpus probably offer more features and a similar speed. The embedded market is not so focused on speed but on low consumption and easy integration and since Atom requires a "power hungry" northbridge I don't think it's a good board for embedded stuff.

AMD Geode isn't very good in performance compared to embedded PPCs and I think the real danger for PPCs are ARMs, not x86. Since the embedded market doesn't require so much numbercrunching abilities and is more focused on low power and features the PPC may have a problem there.

An additional problem for the PPC is that Freescale management doesn't seem to show much compromise with PPC.

Well, I always err towards the Desktop... since the Amiga is a desktop platform... I kinda though that is what we are looking at...

That's right, but keep in mind that a cpu that would be almost useless for inneficient OSes like OSX, Linux and Windows is quite useable on Amiga flavour OSes like AROS/AmigaOS/MorphOS.

[AJCopland]

Hmmm I'd personally say that Larrabee is more Intels reaction to nVidia/AMD gpus starting to look more like general purpose cores.
They've been heading that way for a long time so its inevitable that they'd end up becoming more like general purpose cpus. When AMD first announced their GPU-on-die idea they wouldn't just be thinking of using it for rendering.
So you'll get your ray-tracing in "GPU" hardware, in fact you almost can already but I don't think that Larrabee is the approach that stuff like PS4 would take. One of the PS3 ideas was it'd that 2nd Cell would be the GPU but the predicted performance just wasn't there hence why Sony went to nVidia.

The other thing is that Intel don't just make x86(_64) cpus so there's no reason that Sony might be going to Intel for an Itanium revamp.

I'll ignore the rumours into the hardware is announced I think. So far I've not read a good hardware speculation thats come out right.

Andy

bloodline wrote:

Next you'll be believing that Larrabee is an actual threat to ATi+AMD/nVidia GPUs :-D

Actually, if you remember we had a discussion about the future of computer graphics and I am actually in the Real Time Raytracing camp... So I do see Larrabee as a future contender... Actually, I see Larrabee as something like the Cell, but done right... ok, ok that is a very subjective opinion on my part.

Newer NVidia/AMD designs are going to look more like Larabee/Cell in the future, of that I have no doubt.

I wouldn't like to guess what CPUs or GPUs are going to be used for the next-gen but they've certainly already been designing them either in parallel with the current-gen designs or after only a short break. So the idea that they're "about to start" is unlikely :/

Now this I whole heartedly agree with you upon! I would be surprised if the development cycle was less than 5 years and we are expecting new machines in 2010/11...

[alexh]

The ultimate replacement CPU chip for the Classic Amiga today is a Virtex 5, XC5VFX***T FPGA!

Why?

Onboard 550MHz PowerPC 440, Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe 2.0 (not enough lanes for gfx card :-(), SATA II 3G, DDR2, enough FPGA space to easily implement a 680x0 CPU

Ok so they are several hundred dollars each

[jj]

@ Crumb

I dont think sony really care about reteo compatiablity anymore.

I could be wrong about this, but apart from the first lot of 60Mb ps3 , the rest of them have no backwards compatiblity with ps2 games.  They removed the hardware.

[bloodline]

Well my point is not that x86 is all pervasive... but simply that the choice of ISA is simply based on what you have a licence for now, there is very little technical reason to use one or the other.

[little]

What happened to coldfire? Nothing I didn't predict in 2003 already.

Does this also applies to Coldfire v4e? I do not ask about v5/v5e because so far I have not been able to find any information on it (besides the fact it is used in HP printers) so I suppose nobody here has any info either.