Is the Coldfire project dead?

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:

@Whabang

Dont worry, most of it is academic argument  - unless someone does release a G4/G5 card for the classic :-D

Or an XScale card :-D

Imagine a Trapdoor connector with an FPGA to convert the ZII (A1200 trapdoor) bus signals (and generate an interupt) to one of the hi-speed serial interfaces (Hirose DF12C(3.0)60DS0.5V80 or NSSP?) for a gumstix computer...

Gumstix Board

That would be a cool A1200 Acelerator...

[Karlos]

bloodline wrote:
Or an XScale card :-D

Or an XScale card.

What about an Athlon64 card running a JIT emulation? For tower systems only of course. You get the benefit of decent off the shelf controllers for memory, AGP, IDE etc then :-)

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:

bloodline wrote:
Or an XScale card :-D

Or an XScale card.

What about an Athlon64 card running a JIT emulation? For tower systems only of course. You get the benefit of decent off the shelf controllers for memory, AGP, IDE etc then :-)

I've thought about that actually... since Free HyperTransport core are available for FPGAs...

The Athlon64 has 16 General purpose registers, which makes it ideal for 68k emulation... it's general purpose regs are 64bit, so JIT book keeping could be kept in the upper 32bits of the registers (sort of treat the 16 64bit regs as 32 32bit regs)... the CPU is REALLY fast and very cheap... it's 64bit (always a good thing :-D), it got strong Vector support (MMX, SSE, 3DNow!), SMP is possible... oh and AROS support is there ;-).

But, the CPU is big, it's hot, it draws a huge amount of power.. it needs one hell of a heatsink... while I agree that it would be perfectly acceptable for someone with a Tower system... these people would probably be better off buying an A1/Peg or a modern PC and Running WinUAE...

The XScale on the other hand could go into a stock A1200 (or even other Amiga Models) and run with no heat, power or space issues. It should be able to far outperform the 060 , and be far more affordable...

Hell if we're using an FPGA one could even put a few nice features in there too... a Chunky buffer (+ Blitter) with a DMA to Lisa... which would allow the CPU to write chunky pixels and would convert the pixels to Planar  during the screen refresh :-)

[Karlos]

One reason I suggested the althon 64 was largely because it apparently dissipates a lot less heat than previous generations.

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:
One reason I suggested the althon 64 was largely because it apparently dissipates a lot less heat than previous generations.

That's true... 32Watts normal, 65Watts underload, 95 Watts max (IIRC)... but my BlizzPPC melted... and I'm sure that didn't pump out 35Watts of heat... I think that the small "British" RISC ARM CPU is better suited to the task :-D

Hell... I want an Athlon64 Accel for my A1200 now :lol:

[Karlos]

How the hell did you melt your blizzppc?

I have the 040 version and it doesnt get that hot!

[Dan]

What´s the maximum speed of a coldfire anyway?
I have seen 266MHz, know any faster?

[Karlos]

I think some of the v4 cores are over 400MHz already?

@Matt

Anyhow, your basic Athlon64 card would naturally have an ATX power connector and appropriate cooling :-)

[Dan]

bloodline wrote:

Karlos wrote:
One reason I suggested the althon 64 was largely because it apparently dissipates a lot less heat than previous generations.

That's true... 32Watts normal, 65Watts underload, 95 Watts max (IIRC)... but my BlizzPPC melted... and I'm sure that didn't pump out 35Watts of heat... I think that the small "British" RISC ARM CPU is better suited to the task :-D

Hell... I want an Athlon64 Accel for my A1200 now :lol:

Just put a nanoITX in a empty A1200-shell:-P

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:
How the hell did you melt your blizzppc?

I have the 040 version and it doesnt get that hot!

IIRC I have the same board as you... 25Mhz Full 040 + 240Mhz PPC... I kept it in the desktop case, with the trapdood lid off... then the fan melted... then wires melted and other things melted... I found an old 486 and used the cooler from that to cool the 040... but it was a pain in the bottie as I was moving around a lot at the tim... also taking the A1200 to gigs and stuff so I swaped my Bliz1230-IV in for increased reliability. I've not put the PPC back in since :-/

[Karlos]

@bloodline

Yeah same card (I have the SCSI also, but nothing is using it atm).

That sounds far more like the result of an electrical short out in the fan to me. The current surge would be enough to melt the wires after that - they are only thin, after all.

My system now just has the heatsink on the 040 and that physically touches the case side plate (no space for a fan). There is a slimline VGA cooler added to the PPC heatsink now and although it fits in the case, I left the side off for the moment until I can drill some holes where the fan is (it is illuminated too so it might not look totally poo if done right).

[TheMagicM]

This discusstion has turned waaay too technical for me.

LOL!! same here.. I was just wondering if they had a card ready for general release etc..

[Dan]

400Mhz, well then a Coldfire would be faster than what my pc does in UAE(6 times faster than a 060-50Mhz( or  PPC-JIT on 1Ghz MOS/OS4)).

[bloodline]

Dan wrote:
400Mhz, well then a Coldfire would be faster than what my pc does in UAE(6 times faster than a 060-50Mhz( or  PPC-JIT on 1Ghz MOS/OS4)).

You forget about the IPC... it's not that great on the Coldfire... certainly not as good as the 060 (or the PPC or the Xscale or the Althon64 etc...)

[Dan]

bloodline wrote:

Dan wrote:
400Mhz, well then a Coldfire would be faster than what my pc does in UAE(6 times faster than a 060-50Mhz( or  PPC-JIT on 1Ghz MOS/OS4)).

You forget about the IPC... it's not that great on the Coldfire... certainly not as good as the 060 (or the PPC or the Xscale or the Althon64 etc...)

I don´t know anything about that. first term java and c-programming only here.:-P
IPC=interprocess communcation?

[bloodline]

Dan wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Dan wrote:
400Mhz, well then a Coldfire would be faster than what my pc does in UAE(6 times faster than a 060-50Mhz( or  PPC-JIT on 1Ghz MOS/OS4)).

You forget about the IPC... it's not that great on the Coldfire... certainly not as good as the 060 (or the PPC or the Xscale or the Althon64 etc...)

I don´t know anything about that. first term java and c-programming only here.:-P
IPC=interprocess communcation?

Instructions per Cycle :-)