Why no FPGA accelerator cards?

[glitch]

Hey, now THAT's a great idea.  MiniMigAGA form factor re-worked for existing models!  Me likey!

All of the extra real estate could be used for additional RAM slots, etc.  Mmmm...

[KThunder]

Why no FPGA accelerator cards:

the knowledge sandwich


FPGA                  -lots of people have knowledge and experience
Glue Logic           -requires knowledge of both FPGA and 68k interfaces
68k                     -lots of timing and signal stuff

Not impossible, but very difficult. All this knowledge needs to be gathered and put together to make something useful. It isn't about money. This is a hobby, Minimig was designed basicaly to see if it could be done.

[Belial6]

Hey, now THAT's a great idea.  MiniMigAGA form factor re-worked for existing models!  Me likey!

All of the extra real estate could be used for additional RAM slots, etc.  Mmmm...

The idea isn't to make a MiniMig that was in an Amiga motherboard form factor.  There simply isn't even close to enough people to have that make sense.  The idea is to have adapter cables that will allow you to put a MiniMig that ISN'T in an Amiga form factor inside of an Amiga case.  If someone figured out the keyboard connector, and figured out a way to get the SD card up to disk drive, there is no reason that a current MiniMig couldn't be installed in an Amiga case.  I'm kind of surprised that no one has made a kit for that, and for installation in a standard PC case.

With a market as small as this, being able to use the same board in multiple form factors with only a couple of adapters can mean the difference between doable and not doable.

Today, it would probably make more sense to make adapters for the RetroReplay since it will already be set up for a PC.

[psxphill]

any Zorro cards are running at a mere 2x the chipset speed. It's still better than an unaccelerated Amiga, it's just not as good a solution as a uniformly faster system.

It's only graphics cards that need a lot of bandwidth, everything else would be enough. I wouldn't bother with zorro though, big box amigas are too expensive. I'd be happy with an ubber fast A1200 with AGA, especially if a texture mapper could be built in.

[Paulie85]

I had hoped to see a tegra chip accelerator but I suppose then you would need the software to utilise it.

[countzero]

the main reason why this doesnt exist is that people who are smart enough to pull this feat are also sensible enough to see there is absolutely no financial revenue for it, and their time is (very) valuable.

[fishy_fiz]

Its not always about money though. Even smart people have hobbies.

[alexh]

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=546480&postcount=222

See the NEXT part... meaning it has not been done... if it ever is done then there is a chance someone might make an FPGA accelerator card... but unlikely. At that point you may as well replace the whole Amiga.

[Khephren]

See the NEXT part... meaning it has not been done... if it ever is done then there is a chance someone might make an FPGA accelerator card... but unlikely. At that point you may as well replace the whole Amiga.

If it runs all my Amiga software, hardware, reads my disks, and is 100% compatible (and a lot faster), then i'd be quite happy to replace my Amiga, because that's what iv'e wanted since 1994, a new Amiga!

[alexh]

and is 100% compatible (and a lot faster)

Why even bother posting stats like that? Never going to happen.
Compatibility with the OCS core is getting much better thanks to Yaqube's hard work but lots of subtle undocumented "features" must be implemented. Not to mention similar things for AGA. High compatibility can be aimed for... but in the short term.... you'll have to live with gfx & sound glitches and crashes not present on the real Amiga.

Plus when you go "faster" in a system like the Amiga you're going to lower compatibility. There is no getting around it.

[runequester]

Why even bother posting stats like that. Never going to happen. Compatibility with the OCS core is getting much better thanks to Yaqube's hard work but lots of subtle undocumented "features" must be implemented. Not to mention similar things for AGA. High compatibility can be aimed for... but in the short term.... you'll have to live with gfx & sound glitches and crashes not present on the real Amiga.

Thats one of the things people tend to miss. You need to account for the bugs as well as the features, in order to emulate correctly

[Crom00]

I think we Amigans suffer from analasys paralasys... it will take one pioneering individual to make an FPGA CPU card. When that happens the maker of the card will discover that even though there are better solutions out there the FPGA fills a need that many ignore...

There is no standard Next Gen Amiga that offers 100% backwards offical compatibility from a stable manufacturer. Until then we want to hang onto what we have and run our classic apps....

When someone gets their act together and makes a good cost effective solution Amiga users will jump on it, until then we poder about FPGA cpu cards for wedge shaped Amigas.

Think back to before MiniMIG many folks said it was impossible/not cost effective/ to reverse engineer an AMIGA into an FPGA. Dennis proved not only is it possible but a sell-able product.

[Kronos]

Too lazy to read the whole thread.


http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20223&highlight=tg68

Yep that is an A500 running with the 68k-core in the FPGA-board.

So sure it's possible, wether it's (commercially) viable is another question.

[Belial6]

Why even bother posting stats like that? Never going to happen.
Compatibility with the OCS core is getting much better thanks to Yaqube's hard work but lots of subtle undocumented "features" must be implemented. Not to mention similar things for AGA. High compatibility can be aimed for... but in the short term.... you'll have to live with gfx & sound glitches and crashes not present on the real Amiga.

Plus when you go "faster" in a system like the Amiga you're going to lower compatibility. There is no getting around it.

The 100% compatibility is likely a misstatement of "so compatibly that I cannot tell it isn't the real thing".  After all, even the real Amigas produced by Commodore were not 100% compatible with "Amiga", since each model had it's own idiosyncrasies.  At this time, a PC running WinUAE is the most compatible Amiga ever built.  There is no reason to believe that FPGAs will not eventually reach the same level of compatibility.  They might not be 100% compatible, but they will likely end up more compatible than original hardware.

You don't have to lower compatibility to increase speed.  You just have to keep all of the parts in sync.  Because of that it just means that all of the timing sensitive chips need to be inside the FPGA.

[SamuraiCrow]

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20223&highlight=tg68

Yep that is an A500 running with the 68k-core in the FPGA-board.

So sure it's possible, wether it's (commercially) viable is another question.

It's hard to imagine why anyone would want to keep using old 3.5 MHz graphics chips when SuperAGA is slated to run quite a bit faster.  The basic idea is that replacing the entire motherboard with an FPGA-based board would be more practical and cost effective than replacing only the CPU.

It will take some time before we get to that stage but things are looking toward the full motherboard replacement avenue and will be the most practical at least for the NatAmi MX board.

[Khephren]

Why even bother posting stats like that? Never going to happen.
.

Perhaps I should say, as good as a current accelerator card. I see no reason why that would not be (theoretically) possible, especially with WHDload in the equation.
They also said Amiga emulation would not happen.