Excitement about NatAmi

[psxphill]

I didn't realize people were still spreading this myth. Aside from sharing some banal power saving tricks, the Xenon is no more similar to the Cell than any other modern PPC chip.

How can it be a myth when it comes from the guy working for IBM?
 
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php
 
The powerpc chip in the xenon and the cell is basically the same & it was designed for sony. Apart from the instruction set, it has nothing in common with older designs & yet they both have a lot of things in common.
 
I didn't realise that anyone didn't know this.

[psxphill]

I disagree with that view...
 
To me the main reason for the Natami is quite simple, I'd like to be able to buy a new Amiga that can run all my old software, hopefully a bit faster on things like PageStream & ImageFX, without having to scour ebay and pay ridiculous prices for an 060 board.
 
The ability to access the net would be nice but not a necessity...

If thats all you want then uae on aros on a PC is probably good enough.

[Franko]

In that case, the ReplayArcade board may suit your needs. (aka fpgaarcade).
The initial MX run will come with '060 cards so that will still be pricey.

I just wish the developers would hurry up a wee bit and release the thing, price doesn't matter...

@ psxphill

If thats all you want then uae on aros on a PC is probably good enough.

Not a fan of either PCs or uae, so thats a big no no for me I'm afraid...

[lsmart]

I didn't realise that anyone didn't know this.

What is a Xenon? Some kind of arcade game? :laughing:

[kedawa]

How can it be a myth when it comes from the guy working for IBM?
 
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3904/processing_the_truth_an_interview_.php
 
The powerpc chip in the xenon and the cell is basically the same & it was designed for sony. Apart from the instruction set, it has nothing in common with older designs & yet they both have a lot of things in common.
 
I didn't realise that anyone didn't know this.

I've read the article and it's not exactly conclusive.  Most of what he says is out of context and refers to Sony's perception of the situation as if it were fact.

[minator]

I've read the article and it's not exactly conclusive.  Most of what he says is out of context and refers to Sony's perception of the situation as if it were fact.

Is this story still going...


The PPE was an *existing* PowerPC core that was taken and rejigged for the Cell using new circuit design techniques.  There's nothing spectacular about it other than it runs at 3.2GHz and only uses something around 25W on 90nm.  Something nobody else got even close to.

IBM took the PPC part and used it in the 360's Waternoose processor (yes, that's the actual codename).  

It's not actually that important though.  All the action is in the Vector units.  In the 360 they added on a heavily customised version of AltiVec.  In the Cell they used SPEs.

You can see the similarity here:




BTW the design techniques are not that spectacular either, domino logic has been around a long time and it's been used in ATI GPUs, and is in use in the iPad / iPhone CPU.  It was going to be used in the AMCC Titan but it got canned.  It'll likely appear in more Apple chips as they bought one of the companies who specialised in it.

[kedawa]

Thanks for the clarification.

[Iggy]

Is this story still going...


The PPE was an *existing* PowerPC core that was taken and rejigged for the Cell using new circuit design techniques.  There's nothing spectacular about it other than it runs at 3.2GHz and only uses something around 25W on 90nm.  Something nobody else got even close to.

IBM took the PPC part and used it in the 360's Waternoose processor (yes, that's the actual codename).  

It's not actually that important though.  All the action is in the Vector units.  In the 360 they added on a heavily customised version of AltiVec.  In the Cell they used SPEs.

You can see the similarity here:




BTW the design techniques are not that spectacular either, domino logic has been around a long time and it's been used in ATI GPUs, and is in use in the iPad / iPhone CPU.  It was going to be used in the AMCC Titan but it got canned.  It'll likely appear in more Apple chips as they bought one of the companies who specialised in it.

Better, but still not 100%. Yes the design created for Microsoft has several improvements related to floating point instructions.But both processors, while fast, still suffer from an in order execution pipeline that standard PPCs (which can execute instructions out of order) do not have.
The designs have similar cores, but these are not standard PPC cores.
Virtually all current PPCs have a superior IPC which allows them to perform well even at lower frequencies than the Cell or Xenon.

While I like the Xenon, were I to design a new PPC based PC motherboard I'd look at Freescale's QorIQ rather than a Cell derivative.

[kedawa]

What's a good example of a modern PPC, though?
There are no current desktop PPC chips, and the game consoles are getting pretty long in the tooth.

[Hattig]

Better, but still not 100%. Yes the design created for Microsoft has several improvements related to floating point instructions.But both processors, while fast, still suffer from an in order execution pipeline that standard PPCs (which can execute instructions out of order) do not have.

They are still conformant to the POWER ISA v2.03. Sure, it's in-order, albeit with a high clock speed. An x86 equivalent would be an Intel Atom running at 3.2GHz (which, of course, it doesn't). Of course the two-way SMT does increase IPC, especially in an in-order design.

The designs have similar cores, but these are not standard PPC cores.

This is what is being discussed - the similarity of the XBox and PS3 PowerPC cores.

[Hattig]

What's a good example of a modern PPC, though?
There are no current desktop PPC chips, and the game consoles are getting pretty long in the tooth.

I expect that we will have to wait for one of the next generation of games consoles to get a peek - one of them is bound to stay with PowerPC.

[digiflip]

We already know about the Natami. They have a team who invite you to be a part of it, then kick you out without explanation, and they remove the posts of experienced and respected Amiga coders from their forum. What a wonderful group of people they are! Already a lot of my friends have decided to not make Natami-enhanced versions of their games anymore, and I'm sure others will drop support once they realise how badly the team is running things.

I used to have unlimited enthusiasm and hope for the Natami, I enjoyed clearing things up about the project with people and explaining more about it in detail, convincing doubters that it's a good idea afterall, encouraging the Amiga coders I meet all around the world that they should think about SuperAGA-enhanced versions of their games. I'm working on games of my own which would have had much nicer graphics if we were still going to make a Natami version. But the Natami team thinks I'm so useless they should just kick me out without telling me why.

I wonder how well they'll do now when so many of their supporters are losing faith in the project because of the bad team management.

Wow I thought it was bad them bashing me has a possible consumer but hey thats life.

[Flashlab]

@digiflip

In your hurry to bash Natami you failed to read this:

Cammy,  
I'm very sorry to hear that you feel like this.

This might be a good example of the problems of miscommunictions.
This is how we saw/experienced the situation:


- You said that you wanted to develop AMIGA games.
- We told you that we are currently developing Amiga games.
   We ask you if you would like to take part in this.
   We invited ypu to do playtesting of our new 194x game.
   And we offered you game sources as exmaples for Amiga/Natami game development for you.
- You accepted to join.
- We gave you access to the Natami Team section, including access to our game source repositories.


- You were several times asked to introduce yourself to the rest of the team in the Team forum or the Team IRC server.
- You were kindly asked to take part in the team communication.
- 2 month did pass but you did not take part in any team communication.


Only in the public Natami channel you wrote this.


Cammy based on this I tought that you did change your mind and that you did not want
to take part in our developments efforts. Because we thougth you did not want to take part anymore your team access rights were disabled.


I'm sorry if I misunderstood you.

If you want to develop games for Amiga the offer still stands.
The NATAMI team is a team efforts. You or anyone wanting to take part can still take part now or anytime.
And please don't worry about lack of experience, we all started with zero.

[digiflip]

This is not specifically a Natami question, but something I've wondered about FPGA clones in general.
How practical would it be to use any leftover space on the FPGA to create a secondary core that mimics a simpler computer, like say a VIC-20, that could run in tandem with the main Amiga core?

I think MikeJ is thinking of doing something along those lines on his fpga Arcade with a daughterboard

[digiflip]

yeah sorry I read that afterwards.

[HenryCase]

I expect that we will have to wait for one of the next generation of games consoles to get a peek - one of them is bound to stay with PowerPC.

The Wii 2/Project Café is due to be announced at this year's E3, which is at the beginning of June, so we've got less than a month to find out about Nintendo's next-gen plans. I've heard rumours that they're sticking with PPC:

01net also claims to know some of the technical specifications of the new console (translation from Develop): "CPU is custom IBM PowerPC with three cores, GPU should be an ATI from the R700 family, with a shader unit at version 4.1. RAM should be at least 512 MB."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Project_Café#April_2011

Won't be long before we find out if this is accurate.