What are the advantages of the present/future Amiga?

[alexh]

amigaksi wrote:

alexh wrote:
"To be honest if you're even THINKING what the underlying hardware is then the OS + applications have not done their job correctly."

From the very thing you replied to.

But we were talking about from the USER perspective! (OS + applications). The discussion concerned "Was a MAC was really a MAC if it had an INTEL processor?"

amigaksi wrote:
But you see the point that some applications are not even possible without going directly to hardware registers; even my floppy simulator does not work if I go through Windows API.

And you see the point that at the user level no-one cares! And if the OS designers and application programmers have done their jobs properly they do not even notice.

amigaksi wrote:
The defined bits are 100% backward compatible.

True, but the softies never listened.. they never do. Why use extra cycles to mask off those reserved bits when you can just overwrite them and it doesn't do anything :-)

[cicero790]

I agree with you alexh. Having this opinion doesn't offend the great vintage hardware the slightest bit. It is just a way of looking at it from another perspective.

[mdwh2]

Beast96GT wrote:
The Amiga graphics chips could optimize for Quaternions which are much better than matrices (especially for rotations).  

In what sense "optimised", that isn't already done on modern hardware? Presumably if there was some obvious way to speed things up here, NVIDIA etc would already be doing it.

Quaternions are only a representation of 3x3 matrices for rotations, they still need to be converted to 4x4 matrices to represent general transformations anyway.

[alexh]

amigaksi wrote:
It's always more optimal to go directly to hardware registers if the hardware is standardized

But it's even more optimal to go directly to the library level if the hardware is not standardized. Especially today.

amigaksi wrote:
and you also know exactly what is happening in your code and how many cycles it will take.

I can appreciate there are some very strange situations where that would be good. But I doubt you can count cycles on todays processors with all their caching, out of order execution and branch prediction? Or would I be surprised?

amigaksi wrote:

alexh wrote:
Like everything in life its a matter of numbers.

That's even more absurd.  It's okay to claim "Not everything is a matter of numbers" as an absolute claim since you only need one item to prove it like "love" or where quality is better than quantity.

All decisions today, especially in business are a matter of numbers. In our discussion I was trying to express that the decision makers at Apple decided that the customers need for the speed improvement offered by Intel processors was a bigger number than the customers need for 100% compatibility. And they were right, as the sale figures show.

amigaksi wrote:
Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC.

Yes? Excluding I/O.. what would that be?

amigaksi wrote:
I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs".  That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".

I was thinking modern x86 based systems.

amigaksi wrote:
Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?

Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?

amigaksi wrote:
Think again.  It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.

I'll try and do a little experiment and post back. Got to remember how to use VRAM shared memory extension :-)

[mdwh2]

alexh wrote:

amigaksi wrote:

Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?

Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?

Indeed, his claim is ludicrous. Moreover, there's no reason it has to be done in software anyway - on modern hardware, this sort of thing can easily be done in hardware (the sprites are stored in graphics memory, and rendered directly by the graphics hardware). Therefore you don't even have the bottleneck of PCIe, and graphics memory is even faster than DDR2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_200_Series , the memory bandwidth on modern graphics cards is ~100GB/s, with 240 processors giving a peak fillrate of about 20 billion pixels per second (which would fill that 320x240 screen about 260,000 times a second). What was that about being able to set a measly 30 registers?

[amigaksi]

by mdwh2 on 2008/9/1 21:10:36


>>>Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?

>>Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?

>Indeed, his claim is ludicrous.

When you don't understand the point, you should first try to understand it before replying.  Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.

>Moreover, there's no reason it has to be done in software anyway - on modern hardware, this sort of thing can easily be done in hardware (the sprites are stored in graphics memory, and rendered directly by the graphics hardware).

Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites.  It won't work on modern hardware that I have-- my ATI card does not support sprites in hardware so you have to repaint the screen or some other algorithm.

>Therefore you don't even have the bottleneck of PCIe, and graphics memory is even faster than DDR2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_200_Series , the memory bandwidth on modern graphics cards is ~100GB/s, with 240 processors giving a peak fillrate of about 20 billion pixels per second (which would fill that 320x240 screen about 260,000 times a second). What was that about being able to set a measly 30 registers?

It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card; stop picking up things randomly from the web and trying to argue against a point you don't understand.  You don't even understand how amiga sprites work; they can be rendered even on a 640*400 screen at their 320*200 resolution so the worst case is repainting 640*400.  It's the Amiga that only has to set 30 registers not the PC; PC has to repaint the area.  

This is your understanding of the argument:

I say: system without hardware sprites would have a hard time showing a screen full of sprites in real-time (on a standard CPU/Graphics card).
You say: that's ludicrous, just use the hardware sprites in the graphics card and use the latest and greatest graphics card.

Duh!  Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.

[bloodline]

amigaksi wrote:
by mdwh2 on 2008/9/1 21:10:36


>>>Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?

>>Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?

>Indeed, his claim is ludicrous.

When you don't understand the point, you should first try to understand it before replying.  

But you have proven time and time again not to understand modern hardware... Perhaps it is you who should do some reading before you post?

Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.

Yes... and there are two ways I can think of with a modern GFX card... see below...

>Moreover, there's no reason it has to be done in software anyway - on modern hardware, this sort of thing can easily be done in hardware (the sprites are stored in graphics memory, and rendered directly by the graphics hardware).

Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites.  It won't work on modern hardware that I have-- my ATI card does not support sprites in hardware so you have to repaint the screen or some other algorithm.

With your ATI card which I shall assume you purchased within the last 8 years, you can either use the blitter, which has a much higher bandwidth than anything the Amiga ever had, and so could easily repaint the screen with far more objects than the amiga could manage using both the Sprite hardware and the blitter... or use the 3D hardware, learn DirectX or OpenGL and use surfaces... they function exactly the same as sprites with the added advantage that they can be scaled, rotated and alphablended all in realtime...

LEARN ABOUT MODERN HARDWARE BEFORE YOU POST NONSENSE! :-)

>Therefore you don't even have the bottleneck of PCIe, and graphics memory is even faster than DDR2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_200_Series , the memory bandwidth on modern graphics cards is ~100GB/s, with 240 processors giving a peak fillrate of about 20 billion pixels per second (which would fill that 320x240 screen about 260,000 times a second). What was that about being able to set a measly 30 registers?

It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card; stop picking up things randomly from the web and trying to argue against a point you don't understand.

I wouldn't bother rendering in the System RAM... I'd use the gfx hardware to render gfx...

You don't even understand how amiga sprites work; they can be rendered even on a 640*400 screen at their 320*200 resolution so the worst case is repainting 640*400.  It's the Amiga that only has to set 30 registers not the PC; PC has to repaint the area.  

This is your understanding of the argument:

I say: system without hardware sprites would have a hard time showing a screen full of sprites in real-time (on a standard CPU/Graphics card).

Get a clue...

You say: that's ludicrous, just use the hardware sprites in the graphics card and use the latest and greatest graphics card.

Duh!  Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.

The concept behind the Video Toaster is long gone... everyone has been using digital video for 10 years now!!

Your argument makes no sense...

[amigaksi]

>by alexh on 2008/9/1 6:23:10

Quote:


>>amigaksi wrote:
    It's always more optimal to go directly to hardware registers if the hardware is standardized


>But it's even more optimal to go directly to the library level if the hardware is not standardized. Especially today.

You know what people did when there was only a few things nonstandard is that they give a list of sound cards or graphics card, so they could be used optimally.

>I can appreciate there are some very strange situations where that would be good. But I doubt you can count cycles on todays processors with all their caching, out of order execution and branch prediction? Or would I be surprised?

You can estimate the upper bound (worst case analysis), but if it's a library call, you can't really tell what exactly is happening behind the call-- some sort of emulation or exact hardware support.

>>amigaksi wrote:
    Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC.

>Yes? Excluding I/O.. what would that be?

Yeah, I posted some things in some places; but going by standards, sprite example would be one of them.  On my ATI graphics card, I get less than 100MB/second which would make a full screen of sprites impossible.  Then again there's the reading of joysticks, timers, sound sampling rate accuracy, etc.  

>>amigaksi wrote:
    I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs". That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".

>I was thinking modern x86 based systems.

My brother got rid of original mac/documentation so can't really try out to see whether it's specs are subset of modern x86 systems.

>Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?

Try it out.  I could not get it done on modern systems.

[mdwh2]

amigaksi wrote:
Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.

Right, I understand this - and even if you have to repaint every pixel by CPU, this is easily possible on modern hardware.

Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites.

What do you mean "works maybe your system"? 3D graphics cards that do texture mapping in hardware have been around for over a decade!

How old is your ATI card exactly?

Software written for graphics cards will work on any make of graphics cards (although there may be some differences, this is in areas that is way beyond what any Amiga chipset ever did) - unlike banging the hardware, which won't work on anything, possibly not even a newer version of that chipset from the same company (consider all the OCS vs ECS vs AGA incompatibilities).

It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card

If you're rendering from hardware, the CPU doesn't need to do a thing.

I say: system without hardware sprites would have a hard time showing a screen full of sprites in real-time (on a standard CPU/Graphics card).
You say: that's ludicrous, just use the hardware sprites in the graphics card and use the latest and greatest graphics card.

You don't need "sprites", because any bog standard (or even several years old) PC will do it in hardware. You don't need latest and greatest - that was just an example of what modern hardware is like today - a 10 year old Voodoo would do it.

But even if we restrict ourselves to a CPU solution, I don't see why this is not possible. The obvious example would be a software 3D renderer, which has to redraw the entire screen many times a second. That was being done a decade ago with Quake - now computers are doing things like real time raytracing!

Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.

Okay, fine - and what will it be able to do better, compared with modern hardware?

[persia]

Yeah, low-res analogue non-HD video, that'll confuse the heck out of most people today, maybe you could add a punched card reader too...

Duh!  Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.

[kolla]

Piru wrote:
@Georg

if MorphOS development had started today (not x years ago) - or maybe put differently: if cpu situation when MorphOS development started back then would have been as it is now - which CPU family would in your opinion have been the best choice?

Assuming that there would be no backwards compatibility issues to consider, clearly x86 (or x86-64 probably).

Are you crazy?!

MorphOS would then be in *direct* competition with Windows.. oh, and MacOS! _Noone_ would use it!

Hahahaha....  :-D

Btw, after having read this entire thread - I just realized that it is September again. Is this... :idea:

[mdwh2]

kolla wrote:
Are you crazy?!

MorphOS would then be in *direct* competition with Windows.. oh, and MacOS! _Noone_ would use it!

Hahahaha....  :-D

Btw, after having read this entire thread - I just realized that it is September again. Is this... :idea:

This is a common anti-x86 argument that I've never understood. By this argument, no one should use MacOS X, because it's now in "direct competition with Windows". Moreover, MorphOS was in "direct competition" with MacOS for years when it used PowerPC.

But none of this is true in any case - platforms are in just as much competition with each other whether or not they use the same CPU.

[downix]

mdwh2 wrote:

kolla wrote:
Are you crazy?!

MorphOS would then be in *direct* competition with Windows.. oh, and MacOS! _Noone_ would use it!

Hahahaha....  :-D

Btw, after having read this entire thread - I just realized that it is September again. Is this... :idea:

This is a common anti-x86 argument that I've never understood. By this argument, no one should use MacOS X, because it's now in "direct competition with Windows". Moreover, MorphOS was in "direct competition" with MacOS for years when it used PowerPC.

But none of this is true in any case - platforms are in just as much competition with each other whether or not they use the same CPU.

See, here's the confusion.  Mac's might run Intel CPU's, but they are not IBM compatible, missing several key 8-bit components.  Hence why the Hypervisor mode to enable Windows to run, emulating the missing pieces.  But whenever anyone mentions an x86 Amiga, they figure on bog standard boards.  That will not work.  At the minimum we'd need a custom boot loader, Kickstart embedded in the mobo you could say.  

[amigaksi]

>by A6000 on 2008/8/31 11:52:47

>@DavidF215
>Good post, wrong website - this one's filled with amiga haters.

Some are poor souls mislead by misinformation or their own misunderstandings.

[amigaksi]

>by persia on 2008/9/2 19:09:15

>Yeah, low-res analogue non-HD video, that'll confuse the heck out of most people today, maybe you could add a punched card reader too...

Believe it or not for compatibility reasons, I would still go with NTSC non-HD video and MPG4 has its own unknown loss in the spatial domain associated with editing.  I have seen deltas ranging from -128..127 on primaries after decompressing/recompressing and comparing with the original data.

[amigaksi]

>by mdwh2 on 2008/9/2 19:00:43

>>amigaksi wrote:
    Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.

>Right, I understand this -

You don't because later in your post you state the samething-- let the hardware do it.  You can't let the hardware do it, if the argument is how to render sprites on a system that does not support hardware sprites.

>and even if you have to repaint every pixel by CPU, this is easily possible on modern hardware.

That's not the argument either.  This is a straw man argument.  When you emulate accurately some aspect of the system, you have to meet or exceed the requirements; here I PURPOSELY used the words REAL-TIME sprites meaning you have to meet the real-time constraints of the original item you are trying to emulate.  So back to the point, if the Amiga 1000 OCS can render 30 sprites in around 40 microseconds, you have to do the same in the new system in 40 microseconds or less.  IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH REFRESH RATE.  Imagine a scenario where besides the 40 microseconds, all the other time is being used to send pulses through the I/O ports or the Amiga is in HALTed state and some other machine is controlling some medical heart/lung machine.

>>    Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites.

>What do you mean "works maybe your system"? 3D graphics cards that do texture mapping in hardware have been around for over a decade!

I know cards are around, but we're talking about standards.  AGP is the standard since most people nowadays have AGP or better cards.  I'll answer this further below.

>How old is your ATI card exactly?

Does not matter really since it has to work in most PC systems which would require doing it in software not relying on some sort of "sprite" hardware being present.

>Software written for graphics cards will work on any make of graphics cards (although there may be some differences, this is in areas that is way beyond what any Amiga chipset ever did) - unlike banging the hardware, which won't work on anything, possibly not even a newer version of that chipset from the same company (consider all the OCS vs ECS vs AGA incompatibilities).

That's wrong.  OCS banging works just fine for ECS/AGA as far as I have tried it and thus good for this argument.  On the contrary, you can't be sure the graphics cards will support certain hardware features that you may be relying on.  And some software/OS/drivers may shut down certain hardware features without you knowing it.  And there are more bugs in these software/OS/drivers than in OCS/ECS/AGA compatibility.  So maybe it will work using a device driver and maybe it won't.  Hardware banging is allowed for by Commodore themselves in the Hardware reference manual as I already explained.

>If you're rendering from hardware, the CPU doesn't need to do a thing.

We're not sure if hardware is present, so we need to take the worst case and do some algorithm like (after pasting sprites in appropriate areas):

Mov ECX,640*400/4
CLD
Mov EDI,VidMem
Mov ESI,BitMapPtr
Rep Movsd

>You don't need "sprites", because any bog standard (or even several years old) PC will do it in hardware. You don't need latest and greatest - that was just an example of what modern hardware is like today - a 10 year old Voodoo would do it.

It's not a standard and some AGP cards do not support hardware sprites.  Regardless, the argument is to emulate sprites in systems that DO NOT support it in hardware.

>But even if we restrict ourselves to a CPU solution, I don't see why this is not possible. The obvious example would be a software 3D renderer, which has to redraw the entire screen many times a second. That was being done a decade ago with Quake - now computers are doing things like real time raytracing!

See now why this is called a straw man's argument.

>>    Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.

>Okay, fine - and what will it be able to do better, compared with modern hardware?

Another straw man argument.  Never said I'm trying to beat out modern hardware; since you kept picking some 100GB graphics card, I started picking up some hardware which is nonstandard for Amigas.  I purposely picked OCS Amiga as an example not even AGA to stick with bare standard where you know exactly what is happening in a REAL-TIME set up.