Enter the Dragon or enter the vapor?

For more than 2 years now, Elbox has been publishing on their web site that they are going to make an accelerator that is based on the new Coldfire series of processors(Freescale, formerly Motorola).

Now for people out there who don't know what the Coldfire is, its what happened to the 68k when it refused to get faster. Coldfire processors are essentially 68k processors on steroids. They are dazzling fast but, they lost some instructions in the evolution process so they are not quite totally compatible with Amigas.

See: http://elbox.com/faq_dragon.html

Only a few weeks ago, I was arguing that it is possible, using present day technology, to make a 68k based Amiga that is much faster than a PC can emulate. Or more accurately, it is possible to make a 68k processor that is faster than an emulated one.

See: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=28960

To give a scale of comparison, my real Amiga 3000 with Mercury 35MHz 68040 provides 26.45 MIPS of processing power. My dual core PC running WinUAE 1.4.2 provides around 190MIPS of processing power in 68040 JIT mode.

The Dragon, using a 266MHz (that's less than 1/10 the clocking of my PC Intel dual core processor) Coldfire processor promises to deliver... hold on to your hat... 410MIPS of processing power that is fully 68k compatible.

You should also know that a new 68060 processor costs around 600$. Such a CPU can deliver around 40MIPS of 68k processing power. The specific Coldfire model that is going to be used on the Dragon costs... 42$ !!!

That's 40 MIPS for 600$ vs 410 MIPS for 42$.

Are we going to see the rebirth of the 68k based Amiga or is this just a fad?

[Flashlab]

Vapour has already entered and is here to stay I'm afraid...

Just for the fun of it, I went to digikey's web site and searched for the MCF5475, which is the processor the Dragon is supposed to use.

They have it in stock. So I don't know for the accelerator part but the processor does exist, it is cheap and it is easy to get.

[Zac67]

 :horse:

[Flashlab]

The Dragon has been announced for ages and has yet to surface.  The Coldfire processor isn't fully compatible it seems and software has to be recompiled for it. I don't know this for fact but if it's true then it could be the reason it has never been available. And it probably won't be ever...

Edit:

@Zac

Oh yeah I forgot our great new emoticon!

 :horse:

Zac67 wrote:
 :horse:

Well... I can see that hopes are very high indeed... :inquisitive:

[SamuraiCrow]

What I've heard about the Dragon is that it requires a recompile of the code in order to get that performance.  Running code through an emulator brings it down to about 68040 performance.  Dragon is not worth the effort.  :-(

[Damion]

Another thing to keep in mind, "mips" isn't really an accurate way to determine processor speed. You'll get different results depending on what instruction is being tested, and an emulator throws this out of whack anyway. (F.e, I get 1500 MIPS in SysSpeed within WinUAE, and around 90 on my 68060.)

My personal opinion is that the Dragon is pure vapor.  No doubt, it would be very cool to see a fast 68k accelerator. I'm not so sure about seeing one faster than WinUAE on a modern PC though. ;-)

[humppa]

My personal opinion is that the Dragon is pure vapor.

I agree that it might be "vapor" in a sense that it will probably never get released.
But calling it "pure vapor" suggests that it simply doesn't exist and was never seen running.
A year ago the Dragon was demonstrated at a Polish meeting. Some movies here.

Well, well... sometimes you gotta dig...

68k compatibility has been a big issue with Colfire processors and microcontrollers.

There has been a big pressure on Freescale for them to release a version of the Coldfire that is compatible enough NOT to require recompiles to run 68k code.

Of course, the Coldfire series has instructions of its own but the reason for the Dragon to take so long is because the V4e series of Coldfires were delayed.

Only the V4e core provides sufficient 68k compatibility to consider using it in a 68k compatible system. And yes, there are tremendous speed losses when doing so. Native Coldfire instructions are much faster.

Still, at 266 MHz, an accelerator like that should be expected to provide around 200 MIPS. Kiss you 68060 goodbye...

I doubt, however, that Freescale had the Amiga anywhere near their minds when they came up with the compatibility embedded in the V4e.

[Flashlab]

If the speedloss is so big that it underperforms my current 060 then I won't kiss it goodbye!

A lot of old 68k software won't be recompiled for coldfire. Authors and/or source code are long gone.

Flashlab wrote:
If the speedloss is so big that it underperforms my current 060 then I won't kiss it goodbye!

A lot of old 68k software won't be recompiled for coldfire. Authors and/or source code are long gone.

I think this should make for an accelerator that is just above twice the speed of the fastest 060 without recompilation.

But since the CPU is less than 1/10 the cost of the 060, that is where the final result should be very impressive.

It also has a DDR-SDRAM controller built-in, Ethernet controller built-in, USB built-in and other goodies...

That should make for a features and power packed little device that should cost around 200$.

That is, of course, assuming the V4e core can deliver on its compatibility promise. But seeing it play DiVX movies on an OS 3.9 workbench really gets me salivating...

I suppose if it is possible to have librairies specifically for the 68060 then I guess it should also be possible to have some for the Coldfire that uses some of its faster native instructions.

[countzero]

410MIPS of processing power that is fully 68k compatible.

NOT ! Coldfire is not fully 68k compatible. emulation degrades it to normal 68040-68060 performance. That's why elbox abandoned/shelved it. Now, if we were in the early 90's, and software vendors were available/willing to recompile their stuff for coldfire, it would be meaningful, but unfortunately we're in 2007, and there isn't any software vendors around, so coldfire is mostly a useless effort. still I would like elbox to release it. maybe if some crazy person ports a decent browser to it, it may be profitable, NOT. but probably wouldn't hurt elbox anymore, since they already did the R&D.

[mel_zoom]

Is there any valid reason why a coldfire couldnt run a hotspot-JIT for 68K?

countzero wrote:

410MIPS of processing power that is fully 68k compatible.

NOT ! Coldfire is not fully 68k compatible. emulation degrades it to normal 68040-68060 performance. That's why elbox abandoned/shelved it. Now, if we were in the early 90's, and software vendors were available/willing to recompile their stuff for coldfire, it would be meaningful, but unfortunately we're in 2007, and there isn't any software vendors around, so coldfire is mostly a useless effort. still I would like elbox to release it. maybe if some crazy person ports a decent browser to it, it may be profitable, NOT. but probably wouldn't hurt elbox anymore, since they already did the R&D.

Apparently you didn't read what I just posted above.

I said the full compatible instructions cause a loss of performance.

Nonetheless, if the V4e provides similar performance to a 68060, the 060 costs more than 600$ (just the chip) while the 5475 costs 42$.

It still makes for a very low cost and quite powerful box.

But considering what I found to post the previous message, I would still expect it to outperform the fastest 060 2:1.