Method to the madness

[ElPolloDiabl]

How was answering a perfectly legitimate question regarding performance within the HAM modes hijacking? Especially when Zac67 answered the question as to why blitter performance didn't improve...

My dear Watson,


I should have emphasised this thread was about reverse engineering the custom chip bus. Not discussing individual functions.
Plus: Point taken it was a fair question/answer.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I don't want to try and upstage AROS, UAE or even the Minimig. So I will aim at... A theoretical hand held Amiga device. If you can come up with any ideas for someone who 'may' carry such an idea to completion, feel free to share.
Wish List:
Shrink chip mem bus into a single serial bus.
Integrated HD Video output.
Dedicated OS Bus.

[the_leander]

I don't want to try and upstage AROS, UAE or even the Minimig. So I will aim at... A theoretical hand held Amiga device. If you can come up with any ideas for someone who 'may' carry such an idea to completion, feel free to share.
1st thing to do:
Shrink chip mem bus into a single serial bus.

One thing I am curious though and possibly this would be more into UAE territory is would it be possible or even desirable to run a similar type of software inside CUDA?

[ElPolloDiabl]

One thing I am curious though and possibly this would be more into UAE territory is would it be possible or even desirable to run a similar type of software inside CUDA?

Hard to say... It would certainly be handy, especially for 3D GUI. Did you have a specific function in mind?

[Karlos]

One thing I am curious though and possibly this would be more into UAE territory is would it be possible or even desirable to run a similar type of software inside CUDA?

How do you mean exactly? CUDA excels at parallel processing. For example, I'm currently using it to solve the optimal spacing of points on the surface of a sphere. Running on the Q9450, the system starts to struggle at 2000 points. With CUDA, it's still fast at over 10 times that number thanks to the inherent parallelism in the problem at hand.

I'm not sure where you see it fitting into Amiga hardware emulation, though I expect it could emulate things like high resolution HAM displays etc without any problem, but then you have RTG for that job anyway.

[the_leander]

Hard to say... It would certainly be handy, especially for 3D GUI. Did you have a specific function in mind?

These CUDA processors are (as I understand it) essentially programable units. So would it not be possible to offload the translation of Amiga graphics calls more directly then is currently done and allow the cpu more room to breath.

[the_leander]

How do you mean exactly? CUDA excels at parallel processing. For example, I'm currently using it to solve the optimal spacing of points on the surface of a sphere. Running on the Q9450, the system starts to struggle at 2000 points. With CUDA, it's still fast at over 10 times that number thanks to the inherent parallelism in the problem at hand.

I'm not sure where you see it fitting into Amiga hardware emulation, though I expect it could emulate things like high resolution HAM displays etc without any problem, but then you have RTG for that job anyway.

One of the biggest issues with Amiga emulation as I understood it was the graphics. Would it not be possible to have the CUDA processor deal more directly with it rather then needing the cpu to handle that particular facet?

This isn't my area of expertise so I could be viewing this in completely the wrong way.

[ElPolloDiabl]

One of the biggest issues with Amiga emulation as I understood it was the graphics. Would it not be possible to have the CUDA processor deal more directly with it rather then needing the cpu to handle that particular facet?

A good idea, but I haven't perused the UAE source code, or looked at the CUDA specific commands. It seems like the logical progression though.

[Karlos]

One of the biggest issues with Amiga emulation as I understood it was the graphics. Would it not be possible to have the CUDA processor deal more directly with it rather then needing the cpu to handle that particular facet?

This isn't my area of expertise so I could be viewing this in completely the wrong way.

Ah right, now I get you. I've wondered about that too. You could probably use it to speed up planar to chunky (yes, that's right, not chunky 2 planar) and rendering of HAM framebuffers to the host display format, you could probably use it to speed up blitter emulation too.

However, the thing is that on current CPU's these aren't really too taxing. A more widely supported solution I think would be to leverage multiple core support on the CPU. Since AmigaOS 3.x exec just isn't cut out for SMP (something else I've pondered for UAE is a hacked exec that can use multiple concurrent JIT instances for handling as many AmigaOS "ready to run" processes as the host feasibly allows), you can have the JIT on one core and offload things like display emulation to another core. Worth noting too is that if you are using UAE for anything beyond a spot of retro gaming you are probably going to be using RTG anyway and not even worried about "native" amiga modes.

Also, anything you do with the GPU is probably best left until OpenCL becomes more widespread as it'll work on more systems than CUDA.

[Karlos]

A good idea, but I haven't perused the UAE source code, or looked at the CUDA specific commands. It seems like the logical progression though.

CUDA doesn't have commands, per se. You write code for it using a modified subset of the C++ syntax.

[SamuraiCrow]

http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php might be a forum for this.  There's talk there of making a consumer-grade Amiga-compatible chip out of a FPGA chip and some other logic using 16-bit memory busses.  Of course the developer version will be more expensive but also more powerful with 32-bit memory busses.  The Natami aims to put all of the chipset functionality on one chip including an experimental new 68050 processor core.

Also, I'm planning on working on a GLSL shader implementation that will imitate the functionality of an Amiga graphics chipset without outright emulating all of the timing of each function.  It's intended to be just enough gusto to make Amos Basic code work on non-Amiga graphics chipsets.

[ElPolloDiabl]

@SamuraiCrow

Thanks for that, it looks interesting.
Yeah, I'm thinking that smartphone/multimedia device parts are likely to be cheap in the next couple of years. While I've got time on my hands I can look at ways to replace the ageing Amiga hardware. I won't get very far without a Oscilloscope, but I'll look at picking up a cheap one in the near future.


Check this: (unlikely, but a good idea)
_AAA spec_>
64-bit pixel bus with 114 MHz pixel clock in dual systems which makes 1280x1024 @72Hz screens possible.
128-bit long memory bus bursts

_Hombre spec_> (nearly rubbish)
Indexed 8-bit (256 colors) chunky mode with 24-bit CLUT
non-indexed 16-bit chunky graphic modes
32-bit chunky with 8-bit alpha channel)
1280 x 1024 resolution in 16.8 million colors

the what if:

That's Dave's design. I poured over it for 5 minutes, but couldn't fault it.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Theoretical digital sound... Can you make a speaker up of many elements? And make a guesstimate how much that would cost...

[meega]

Like this?

[ElPolloDiabl]

Like this?

That are basically earbud headphone on a large scale. I was thinking you could have a hundred plus (per channel) speakers outputting the various frequencies while minimizing the use of ADC/DAC.
Imagine connecting each instrument in a orchestra to a mic. Then having wall to wall speakers. It would be truly immersive sound.

[Roondar]

That are basically earbud headphone on a large scale. I was thinking you could have a hundred plus (per channel) speakers outputting the various frequencies while minimizing the use of ADC/DAC.
Imagine connecting each instrument in a orchestra to a mic. Then having wall to wall speakers. It would be truly immersive sound.

And a bit of a bother to troubleshoot if one of the speakers blew up