One possible future of the Amiga?

[commodorejohn]

With all the talk about possible updated Amigas lately, I just thought I'd share something I discovered today: Intel has announced the Stellarton; it amounts to a chip containing an Atom CPU @ 600-1600MHz, a whole peripheral chipset, and best of all, an Altera FPGA that's fast, fully integrated, and software-rewritable from the CPU. In other words, it's basically a whole computer on one chip, plus a giant roll-your-own-hardware sandbox. Call me crazy, but this sounds like the perfect piece of technology to build a next-gen Amiga out of.

As anyone who's tried to run an emulator on a lower-end PC knows, the big performance sink is in trying to provide accurate audio and video output; the CPU is generally trivial by comparison. Offloading the A/V emulation to an FPGA reimplementation would free up the Atom to focus on everything else, chiefly the CPU emulation (assuming that the FPGA couldn't do that faster, of course.) And since the Stellarton includes basically a full motherboard chipset in the Atom part of the package, you wouldn't even need a custom PCB to start with; whatever Intel provides in the way of a development board should suffice. Heck, you could even use the Atom natively, if you're one of those [strike]weenies[/strike] fine people who prefer AROS.

Maybe I'm talking crazy talk, but considering what's been pulled off with an FPGA alone, it seems like this could be an easy and inexpensive path to a next-gen Amiga platform. At any rate, I am definitely looking forward to 2011

[ElPolloDiabl]

:cool:
Very Awesome.
If it is cheap enough, unlikely, you could have a budget Amiga x86 rig with custom chip emulation.

[commodorejohn]

I dunno, it sounds like the Atom E600 (the Stellarton minus the FPGA) goes down as low as $20 with quantity purchases. I've asked to be notified when they come out with a development board, so we'll see what happens with that..

[Tripitaka]

LMAO, Aeon stick a software re-writable chip on the X1000 and get loads of grief for it. Intel does it and .....

....I'm going to go and read a book now and drink some tea.

[commodorejohn]

Maybe I missed something, but I don't think people's problem with the X1000 was the technology...

[mongo]

LMAO, Aeon stick a software re-writable chip on the X1000 and get loads of grief for it. Intel does it and .....

....I'm going to go and read a book now and drink some tea.

The XMOS XCore chip in the X1000 is not "software re-writable". It's just a CPU, not an FPGA. Big difference.

[Tripitaka]

Maybe I missed something, but I don't think people's problem with the X1000 was the technology...

No, it was the price of the technology in most cases.

[Tripitaka]

The XMOS XCore chip in the X1000 is not "software re-writable". It's just a CPU, not an FPGA. Big difference.

I know it's not an FPGA. As for software re-writable, well it is programmable. The question of exactly how this will be implemented in the X1000 is still unclear as far as I am aware.
According to some it's great, according to others it's a waste of silicon. TBH I'll wait and see what comes of it and I'll wait and see what comes of Intels FPGA offering too.

It may be worthwhile as a UAE + chipset in FPGA offering but the way minimig is steaming along it'll have some catching up to do, I don't see the point for Amigans to get exited yet.
Edit:
Then again, it could be interesting to see what the AROS fans have to say about it. mmm...

[Franko]

While it would be nice to see such a new chip being used, who going to do it, I don't think Aeon will suddenly drop their current development to switch processors and I don't reckon anyone else is interested in developing a new Amiga...

[Tripitaka]

Fair comment Franko.
I wonder if any of the Minimig core is use, I don't know nor do I claim to. If it is of use and could be tied in with AROS somehow, who knows.
I think with the amount of projects going on at the moment it will be lucky to get any attention but stranger things have happened. Minimig was a total suprise to all of us (except Dennis of course).

[Franko]

@ Tripitaka

While my last comment may have sounded a bit negative, I still hold out hope that one day someone will see the light and produce the new Amiga of our dreams...

As you say stranger things have happened, I waited 30 years and never gave up hope that my favorite band (The Specials) would make a comeback and in 2009 sure enough they did & it was well worth the 30 year wait...

I live life by the rule of never giving up hope no matter what the naysayers have to say...

[commodorejohn]

Yeah. I don't know if anything will actually come of this, I just think that, given that it seems to be a fairly powerful yet affordably-priced piece of hardware, it could be a potentially great tool for our purposes Time will tell.

[clusteruk]

From a "Weenies" point of view, it sounds interesting especially if tied into the Emumiga 68k emulation software for Aros in development. Problem as ever is who is going to do it because most projects get abuse from some corner or another instead of general encouragement. So Intel may be the saviour of the Amiga, who would have thought ;-)

[kedawa]

I'd like to know the specs of the FPGA.  If it has enough gates to reproduce a classic Amiga, and the price is reasonable, it could be a good substitute for a minimig.

[commodorejohn]

From a "Weenies" point of view, it sounds interesting especially if tied into the Emumiga 68k emulation software for Aros in development. Problem as ever is who is going to do it because most projects get abuse from some corner or another instead of general encouragement. So Intel may be the saviour of the Amiga, who would have thought ;-)

That's why I'm hoping there's a decent development board made available. With the peripherals from the Atom E600 and a companion peripheral chip introduced alongside it, there's basically a full motherboard on a couple chips, so there'd be no need to design a custom PCB and try to get it manufactured, at least not from the start.

I'd like to know the specs of the FPGA.  If it has enough gates to reproduce a classic Amiga, and the price is reasonable, it could be a good substitute for a minimig.

This is a good question. I don't know so much about FPGAs, but if the mock-up they're using in promotional shots is anywhere near accurate, the FPGA is actually bigger than the Atom + peripherals die.