NatAmi 68070 design draft

[bloodline]

wawrzon wrote:
you dont ask ladys things like that, she is polish anyway. so now im going afk, partytime.

Bah! This thread was just becoming interesting...

[ChuckT]

I think the Natami will be good as it might put a dent into Ebay prices (ending supply and demand).

[mike-]

man, i've read trough the thing and its like steroinds for the C= Amiga heart, if only someone could presuade them to add a C128/vic support to it all.

However, i fear the split, an 68060 a4000 would require some form of emulator to do what the natami can, maybe this can be remapped to a rtg card, i dont know.'

But heck if, as i see it, prehaps cpu chips will be made in the future ^^

[Bamiga2002]

@mike-
After the Natami is ready, i highly doubt you'll need an A4000 very much anymore 8-)

@Bloodline
A positive mind makes positive things happen, so don't shoot the duck down just yet :-)

[Fats]

bloodline wrote:

Certainly once one has the HDL of the chip, an ASIC could be made. Indeed, in the next 20 yearsit might become possible to make ASICs of the required complexity for a tiny fraction of the cost they are now...

I don't think you have to wait 20 years. Here are two companies I'm watching that try to solve these hurdles: eASIC and ViASIC. I hope Gunnar tries to contact them also for a quote.

greets,
Staf.

[bloodline]

Fats wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Certainly once one has the HDL of the chip, an ASIC could be made. Indeed, in the next 20 yearsit might become possible to make ASICs of the required complexity for a tiny fraction of the cost they are now...

I don't think you have to wait 20 years. Here are two companies I'm watching that try to solve these hurdles: eASIC and ViASIC. I hope Gunnar tries to contact them also for a quote.

greets,
Staf.

Actually I've heard of ViASIC... but I didn't realise they had got anywhere!

[RedskullDC]

Hi Piru, et al.

Piru wrote:
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/boxer.html

"It was only when the motherboard entered final prototype that the design was demonstrated."

Presumably they finished the HDL code used on the 2000 prototype model.
From the pics it appears the 2000 prototype used 3 small (by today's standards) Altera flex devices.

Does anyone know if the HDL code the BoXeR team wrote still exists, or who may have it/where it might be?
Perhaps they could be persuaded to release it?

Red

[Hans_]

RedskullDC wrote:
Hi Piru, et al.

Piru wrote:
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/boxer.html

"It was only when the motherboard entered final prototype that the design was demonstrated."

Presumably they finished the HDL code used on the 2000 prototype model.
From the pics it appears the 2000 prototype used 3 small (by today's standards) Altera flex devices.

Does anyone know if the HDL code the BoXeR team wrote still exists, or who may have it/where it might be?
Perhaps they could be persuaded to release it?

Red

The BoXeR project just suddenly disappeared without a trace. We don't actually need their HDL code since NatAmi already has AGA support, etc.

Peronally I think that they're getting a little ahead of themselves with announcing a soft-CPU. Giving speed estimates is risky too, as it's very uncertain whether they will be able to reach it. Just don't expect to see this 68070 any time soon.

Hans

[CodeSmith]

@Hans_

The NatAmi team described their roadmap on their forum, and the new CPU is supposed to come in only after the first version has been released.  I think the recent chatter around the CPU arose from their deciding against coldfire and posting some ideas, and the discussion that came about around that (I can't find a link, but Gunnar mentioned that right now the CPU is at the stage where he and Thomas are just kicking ideas around at lunchtime; the main event is still the '060 board).  Gunnar has explicitly said that the 68060 version will come first, and the CPU will follow only once the SuperAGA chipset has been debugged.  Hopefully the first release will happen sometime in the next 2-3 months (summer 2008), but given the nature of engineering projects I'm guessing it will instead happen in the last 2-3 months of the year.

[ognix]

I know... this thread is quite unreadable now, it's absolutely too big!  :-)
..but I want to add a personal note too.

I personally like very much the Natami project: I've heard of it some months ago, and just recently I informed on it properly.

We are all sick of that {bleep} we got in these years from the various Amiga owners, and all the not fullfilled promises, so the negative and doubtly voices are normal; something not to complain if you consider also that in the Amiga scene and enthusiasts there are still many unrealistic and blind people who think about the Amiga as we were in the end of the '80s/early '90s: great times, great and feelings but things have changed a lot since then.

But beside this the Natami project is something real, in development since 2003 (right?), with a precise roadmap, next to a significant step, with the release of the Natami60 DevBoard.
So it's better not to criticise so much and wait a few more time and see what will happen.
If the promises will be (at least mostly) fullfilled, than let's drop our hats, otherwise constructive criticism is welcome.

Personally I have some doubts about putting not only the new Amiga custom circuitry in one FPGA (especially if not among the most powerful ones - but that would lead to high costs), but also a new advanced implementation of the microprocessor.
But I'm not an expert, and I have just a few basics of FPGA programming, so let's wait for the DevBoard.

Ahhh... yes... someone spoke about creating just multiplatform retro-machine: no, no, and I hope this is not the case.
I like the MiniMig project, but it's really a kind of toy at user level. (and a good FPGA programming at developer level!)

From such a project, as Amiga user and fan, I want a new upgraded system, with a good backwards compatibility, with new features, keeping the Amiga way of doing things: if I would get "just" an A1200 in a new compact size, maybe more powerful speaking about computing power, I'll stay with my original machines and emulators.

So go on, and give us a brand new model of Amiga, for the future!

Hear u 'n da future!
      Luca "OgniX"   \8^)


P.S. The Natami project (www.natami.net) is another good reason for having the Amiga OS4 for 68k (see a recent past thread), but I really doubt that this will happen (and not for technical reasons).   :-(

[mike-]

still i fear the split, there must be some way of doing it on a classic amiga or were slightly {bleep}ed, again. The only sulotion i can think of is that in a few years someone decides to make the 68070 into a real cpu, however, keeping it soft lets you clear any bugs... what do we do? if we want to use the classic?

What about jitting it? ( as i understand jit, it computes and stores the outcome )

[B00tDisk]

The 68070 is very much a real CPU.  Just not the one you'd want...

"Hey, how can we cripple a vanilla 68000 CPU?"  "I dunno...remove some math functions?"

[mike-]

 uhm, i think their adding functions not removing them but i see a road riddled with problems, just creating a compiler will take time effort blood sweat and tears, but the idea i love. we could add needed features as required, since its a soft cpu, problem being, we might change it 10 different ways each.

so new natami executable will might have custom have cpu instructions included?

[A6000]

mike- wrote:

so new natami executables might have custom cpu instructions included?

That's an interesting idea, What instructions would be usefull?