Coldfire - Binary Compatible

[Donar]

User Mode or Supervisor Mode library doesn't matter.

I only find it strange that in the user mode paragraph it is mentioned explicitly that the differently implemented instructions will not work, and in the supervisor mode paragraph there is no word about it. It sounds like the library will set up an full 680x0 Emulator (without MMU/FPU) on the Coldfire but maybe i interprete in the text what i want to be true :lol:  

Are you a coder, Donar?

No, but i think i can read...  :-)

[bloodline]

Donar wrote:

User Mode or Supervisor Mode library doesn't matter.

I only find it strange that in the user mode paragraph it is mentioned explicitly that the differently implemented instructions will not work, and in the supervisor mode paragraph there is no word about it. It sounds like the library will set up an full 680x0 Emulator (without MMU/FPU) on the Coldfire but maybe i interprete in the text what i want to be true :lol:  

Ok, the Coldfire Supervisor mode is so incompatible with the 68k that it needs to run any 68k code in an emulator in the SuperState. This is a very slow thing to do, and negates the point of using the coldfire in the first place... Since to run Amiga code in the User mode it would also need the emulator... by now it really isn't worth using the coldfire.

Are you a coder, Donar?

No, but i think i can read...  :-)

What the document is saying (probably not very clearly), is that coldfire User mode offers a high degree of 68k compatibility, and requires only minor source code modification in order to work. But the Supervisor mode is so different to the 68k, that all your supervisor mode code must run in an emulator... Amiga code would need to run in that emulator all the time, this makes the CPU useless.

[shoggoth]

I only find it strange that in the user mode paragraph it is mentioned explicitly that the differently implemented instructions will not work, and in the supervisor mode paragraph there is no word about it.

The user mode version only emulate the missing instructions. If you try to run your OS using this one, you'll get trouble not only due to the instructions that differ, but also due to the differences in the supervisor execution model. The supervisor mode version attempts to remedy the latter.

 It sounds like the library will set up an full 680x0 Emulator (without MMU/FPU) on the Coldfire but maybe i interprete in the text what i want to be true :lol:  
No, but i think i can read...  :-)

Well, no offence intended, but read the remainder of the document. That's just a section in the introduction chapter.

Having said that, I don't think you're necessarily on the wrong track. For full compatibility, you'll have to emulate every single instruction. That will be slow on a ColdFire. On the other hand, some apps may run perfectly using CF68KLib - or - can be patched or recompiled to do so. And they't  run fast.

[Hammer]

Again, I think you misunderstood me. What I mean is that CELLs will be in available microcontrollers soon, as PPCs are today.

CELLs based products such as Toshiba's SpurEngine (10W to 20W part) doesn't have PPE (aka POWER Processing Element).  

For a RISC ISA, POWER ISA is considered as complex-RISC.
In terms of yearly sales numbers, ARM and MIPS kills POWER/PowerPC.

 I bet your car has at least one PPC.

I'll bet it doesn't have a PPC in its critical computing systems.

"Toyota Prius, is using MULTI® IDE and C/C++ compiler on a NEC V850 processor to develop the powertrain, drivetrain, power steering, anti-lock brakes, air bags, body control, and electric motor control system on the Prius."
http://www.ghs.com/customers/prius.html

Same NEC V850 also in used in Toyota Avalon.

More info on NEC V850
http://www.am.necel.com/news/newsdetail.html?page=ghv850vr

Btw, Ford Jaguar and Lincoln LS uses Freescale Power Architecture MPC509 microprocessor for it's critical computing systems. I haven’t brought any Fords…

Anyway...
Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD uses
CPU: Intel Pentium 4-M (@ 2.4GHz)

Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD uses
CPU: Intel Celeron-M (@ 900MHz CPU for HDi) / NEC EMMA3 (CPU for video/audio decoding)

Toshiba HD-A20 HD-DVD uses
CPU: Intel Celeron-M (@ 900MHz CPU for HDi) / NEC EMMA3 (CPU for video/audio processing)

3rd generation HD-A3 players uses NEC MIPS based prcoessor.

[Zac67]

IMHO, if you need to emulate the 68k programming model in the first place, the only point left is speed. There's no point in starting with a comparatively slow ColdFire in the first place. The bus is hard to adapt as well, so no advantage gained there either.

From the speed POV, you're left with PPC and x86 - with x86 being highly available in all speed grades and form factors. Rather than designing a new accelerator board, it'd be much easier (well, somewhat) to redesign the chipset (when you're hooked to it) since this is already worked on. Put all this as an FPGA on a PCI(x) board, use an off-the-shelf x86 mobo and you're set.

Actually there isn't really too much point left in dragging the chipset behind either - if you drop that as well, you're left with the OS. Port it to the platform of your choice - et voilá - that's where AROS comes into play.

It all depends on what you really want to achieve:
- save your old hardware from dying (expensive)
- modernize your system while keeping old software (=> emulation)
- regain a good price/performance relation (=> OS porting)

Everything else is :horse:

[bloodline]

Zac67 wrote:

It all depends on what you really want to achieve:
- save your old hardware from dying (expensive)
- modernize your system while keeping old software (=> emulation)
- regain a good price/performance relation (=> OS porting)

Everything else is :horse:

Beautiful summery.

[Donar]

Well, no offence intended, but read the remainder of the document.

I have read the whole document months ago.... Maybe we can make a deal? I'll shut my mouth now, and you try out how Coldfire behaves when you get your Coldfire EVB and tell us your findings in the next thread (that surely will appear). ;-)

It all depends on what you really want to achieve:

-Having new hardware that follows in the footsteps of the AMIGA architecture (see Natami project) but is fast enough to not bore the user to death, while waiting for a window to open (as AGA will do, when you use HighRes in 256 colours).

And no i do not want to play Crysis in 1680x1050 on it nor do i want to compress all my DVD's to MPEG 4 or watch BluRay on it. I have a fast PC and PS3 for such things.

[bloodline]

Donar wrote:

It all depends on what you really want to achieve:

-Having new hardware that follows in the footsteps of the AMIGA architecture (see Natami project) but is fast enough to not bore the user to death, while waiting for a window to open (as AGA will do, when you use HighRes in 256 colours).

Hacking together out of date technologies into something that is a little bit compatible to the old Amiga line of computers is not following in the footsteps of  AMiGA...

Taking the most advanced technology available to the consumer, putting it together in a new and innovative way and packaging it in a user-friendly way is following in the footsteps...

Unfortunately only Apple come close to that... and even they aren't really pushing the hardware envelope... but they are doing a good job.

And no i do not want to play Crysis in 1680x1050 on it nor do i want to compress all my DVD's to MPEG 4 or watch BluRay on it. I have a fast PC and PS3 for such things.

If we really were following in the footsteps of the Amiga, we would get all those things for free.

[Donar]

...footsteps of the AMIGA architecture...

Hacking together out of date technologies into something that is a little bit compatible to the old Amiga line of computers is not following in the footsteps of  AMiGA...

Maybe it's not in the footsteps of the AMIGA if you think of the most advanced computer that is available on earth. But it would be in the footsteps of how things were done "differently" in the AMIGA.

Taking the most advanced technology available to the consumer, putting it together in a new and innovative way and packaging it in a user-friendly way is following in the footsteps...

I like the idea but as i do not think that somebody who shares your vision of a new AMIGA has the funds to realize it, its just not going to happen. Somebody could cludge together an FPGA'ed Chip set and some processor in his cellar. But there is no way anybody beats Intel, AMD and NVidia with his cellar invention. :-(

Unfortunately only Apple come close to that...

Why do you think so? Because Apple sells dual processor workstations with four cores to everyone who want's to have more than one hard disk in his computer? Ok i admit: OSX just works out of the box.

[bloodline]

Donar wrote:

...footsteps of the AMIGA architecture...

Hacking together out of date technologies into something that is a little bit compatible to the old Amiga line of computers is not following in the footsteps of  AMiGA...

Maybe it's not in the footsteps of the AMIGA if you think of the most advanced computer that is available on earth. But it would be in the footsteps of how things were done "differently" in the AMIGA.

But the Amiga did things differently... then everyone else did the same... what we have now is the legacy of the Amiga's different thinking.

We now need someone to think differently.

Taking the most advanced technology available to the consumer, putting it together in a new and innovative way and packaging it in a user-friendly way is following in the footsteps...

I like the idea but as i do not think that somebody who shares your vision of a new AMIGA has the funds to realize it, its just not going to happen. Somebody could cludge together an FPGA'ed Chip set and some processor in his cellar. But there is no way anybody beats Intel, AMD and NVidia with his cellar invention. :-(

Well, Audio has reached it's highest level... No one can think of any other ways of getting hardware to produce sound... Synths (subtractive and modelling) and Samplers. All you can do in increase fidelity (but at 24bit 96Khz who can tell beyond that, especially with speaker technology).

But there are projects to develop new ways of rendering graphics... With ATI and Nvidia stuck with current polygon system... others are looking to ray-tracing... maybe there are other ways... we need innovation here...

Unfortunately only Apple come close to that...

Why do you think so? Because Apple sells dual processor workstations with four cores to everyone who want's to have more than one hard disk in his computer? Ok i admit: OSX just works out of the box.

Apple now take the best technologies available, and package it in pretty user friendly boxes. That is what the Amiga was all about..

[Donar]

bloodline wrote:

Apple now take the best technologies available, and package it in pretty user friendly boxes. That is what the Amiga was all about..

But in the end a MacPro is just a dual processor Workstation with EFI instead of a BIOS, which you could also get from Boxxtech. I would have found it interesting if they had (for example) included a Cell or DSP that could assist the XEON's for special purposes.

[bloodline]

Donar wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Apple now take the best technologies available, and package it in pretty user friendly boxes. That is what the Amiga was all about..

But in the end a MacPro is just a dual processor Workstation with EFI instead of a BIOS, which you could also get from Boxxtech. I would have found it interesting if they had (for example) included a Cell or DSP that could assist the XEON's for special purposes.

For what purpose...? A Cell or a DSP isn't going to offer anything over over a regular GPU and certainly nothing for the consumer price bracket...

[Donar]

bloodline wrote:

For what purpose...?

Videoencoding, Raytracing booster.

A Cell or a DSP isn't going to offer anything over over a regular GPU

I do not know how good it works on an Apple computer. But if you try to do computational work on the GPU under Win XP (e.g. Folding @ Home) your GUI will slow down, and you have to dedicate one CPU core for "feeding/checking" the GPU client which runs on the GFX card, or it will be real slow, additionally you can only use ATI/AMD cards as NVidia cards are (according to the development team at Stanford university) not able to do this kind of work. You also have to stay on certain catalyst versions - and even then most people have severe issues with it.

I really do not care if you take Cell or a Radeon as super fast subsystem (take something with a good GFlop/Watt/Price ratio), but please integrate it properly into the whole System and OS, so that it is usable without any issues.
 

...and certainly nothing for the consumer price bracket...

I do not want Apple to integrate the Cell into a MacMini besides the Core 2Duo, but maybe into the MacPro. A MacPro is not what i think about for the consumer price bracket also.

Edit: If any body want's to talk about Coldfire, just do it i did not mean to hijack the thread.

[AeroMan]

Hammer wrote:
CELLs based products such as Toshiba's SpurEngine (10W to 20W part) doesn't have PPE

This still doesn't mean that nobody will ever have interest in producing a chip with the PPE

I'll bet it doesn't have a PPC in its critical computing systems.

Delphi, Marelli and Bosch uses PPCs in engine control modules. This is quite critical to me.
The V850 is a great chip, and it was well chosen to power Toyota's cars. Some people are driving Renesas, some ST, and I even had a experience with TI some years ago (not a really good one. We went back to Motorola, but the chip was nice).
Nobody, as far as I know, is using x86, for a couple of reasons. Unless Toshiba decides to install wheels in their HD-DVDs

Now I just swear I won't go off topic again...

[Hammer]

Donar wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Apple now take the best technologies available, and package it in pretty user friendly boxes. That is what the Amiga was all about..

But in the end a MacPro is just a dual processor Workstation with EFI instead of a BIOS, which you could also get from Boxxtech. I would have found it interesting if they had (for example) included a Cell or DSP that could assist the XEON's for special purposes.

Install Linux on it and install either NV's CUDA or ATI's CTM.

What's special about CELL?

[Hammer]

AeroMan wrote:

Hammer wrote:
CELLs based products such as Toshiba's SpurEngine (10W to 20W part) doesn't have PPE

This still doesn't mean that nobody will ever have interest in producing a chip with the PPE

I'll bet it doesn't have a PPC in its critical computing systems.

Delphi, Marelli and Bosch uses PPCs in engine control modules. This is quite critical to me.
The V850 is a great chip, and it was well chosen to power Toyota's cars. Some people are driving Renesas, some ST, and I even had a experience with TI some years ago (not a really good one. We went back to Motorola, but the chip was nice).
Nobody, as far as I know, is using x86, for a couple of reasons. Unless Toshiba decides to install wheels in their HD-DVDs

One may say Toshiba has installed wheels in their HD-DVDs.

Refer to http://news.thomasnet.com/companystory/525623

Toshiba Selects ARM Cortex-M3 Processor for Automotive Applications.

As for X86 for control CPU... Refer to
Underwater Vehicle Control software

"The Underwater Vehicle Control software is incorporated. into the MissionP software, which runs on a low-power X86. CPU"