AROS68K and the Freescale Coldfire CPU

[Iggy]

Well, this would be a fun project aimed entirely at classic hardware and aimed for AROS68K only.

But... if it's 540 MHz passive cooling, then greater speeds might be possible with fan cooling. Also, it supports DDR2 RAM(more then 4 GB RAM is possivble with V5e)... this would be a pretty decent computer in any way. Add AGP graphics and it'd be great for upgrading 68K systems(though I suspect it would have to be a towered system for it to fit). Don't know, maybe a standalone board which would fit inside any Amiga + FPGA makes more sense?

V5e is an enhanced V5e core. Unfortunately, there's very, very little info about these even on Freescale's webpage. That's why I asked about documentation. Even so, a V5e is fully superscalar and could be fully pipelined. At 540 MHz, it should run above 060 speeds even in 68K emulation mode.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, and I'd urge you to explore this idea fully.
My only reservation, as I've sort of stated before, is that if emulation is required then solutions we already have may work just as well (or better).

[WolfToTheMoon]

I appreciate your enthusiasm, and I'd urge you to explore this idea fully.
My only reservation, as I've sort of stated before, is that if emulation is required then solutions we already have may work just as well (or better).

I cannot be more specific on emulation because there's no info on what instructions are added/omitted from V5(e) and what's the difference to 68K or prior CF chips. None that I could find...

Also, there's no C68Klib for V5 and V5e cores... I wonder if it is because they're more compatible with 68K or there's no demand for it since V5 and V5e are only sold to big hardware manufacturers. We'll see..

[Linde]

This project seems like a pipe dream to me (though I'm always open to surprises!), but if you're going to upgrade the Amiga with a processor that needs an emulation layer in the end anyway, why not go for something other that Coldfire? The Atom series have built in Intel graphics, as far as I understand, which seems like a huge advantage. Of course, then it'll be Intel Inside

Regarding monster accelerators in general, I don't understand why it isn't done the other way around. Like, a PCI card with the Amiga specifics on it (implemented in FPGA?) and the host computer would slave as a peripheral interface and 68k emulator.

By now, people might consider directing me to WinUAE or similar emulators, but ultimately, WinUAE isn't as responsive as a real Amiga, which is pretty much the only reason I still have an A1200 on my desk. Relatively small delays in keyboard/mouse input and sound/video output add up and detract from the experience I'm looking for.

[WolfToTheMoon]

This project seems like a pipe dream to me (though I'm always open to surprises!), but if you're going to upgrade the Amiga with a processor that needs an emulation layer in the end anyway, why not go for something other that Coldfire? The Atom series have built in Intel graphics, as far as I understand, which seems like a huge advantage. Of course, then it'll be Intel Inside

Regarding monster accelerators in general, I don't understand why it isn't done the other way around. Like, a PCI card with the Amiga specifics on it (implemented in FPGA?) and the host computer would slave as a peripheral interface and 68k emulator.

By now, people might consider directing me to WinUAE or similar emulators, but ultimately, WinUAE isn't as responsive as a real Amiga, which is pretty much the only reason I still have an A1200 on my desk. Relatively small delays in keyboard/mouse input and sound/video output add up and detract from the experience I'm looking for.

Again, this would not be directed at AmigaOS, but AROS68K. I wouldn't even be talking about this for Os 3.x because it's too much of a hassle for not much speed up.
Emulation layer would be needed for those apps/games that call 68K specific instruction that are absent from CF. With the V5e core, even those apps would probably run far faster then on real 68060. On V4e core, they would run somewhere between 030 and 040 speeds.
For apps compiled on CF and newly written apps, they would run completely native on CF and at full speed.

But the key point here is that 68060 costs a LOT of money, while CFs are dirt cheap. And they enable modern peripherals, DDR RAM, ATA, even Wi-Fi.

This is only an idea currently.

[Iggy]

Again, this would not be directed at AmigaOS, but AROS68K. I wouldn't even be talking about this for Os 3.x because it's too much of a hassle for not much speed up.
Emulation layer would be needed for those apps/games that call 68K specific instruction that are absent from CF. With the V5e core, even those apps would probably run far faster then on real 68060. On V4e core, they would run somewhere between 030 and 040 speeds.
For apps compiled on CF and newly written apps, they would run completely native on CF and at full speed.

But the key point here is that 68060 costs a LOT of money, while CFs are dirt cheap. And they enable modern peripherals, DDR RAM, ATA, even Wi-Fi.

This is only an idea currently.

Yes, Coldfire is cheap and it would add a PCI interface and USB ports (as well as some other feature I haven't reviewed yet). The emulation (or JIT interpretation) would have to function on all 68K code and not just for missing instructions, but also for instructions that operate differently (on Coldtfire than the 68K).
It might be hard to get the V5s, so don't give up on the V4s yet.
I'd love to see this combined with a FPGA emulating the Amiga chipset.

[WolfToTheMoon]

I'd love to see this combined with a FPGA emulating the Amiga chipset.

Me too... I'd prefer it to be an acc. card(towered 1200 or 4000) because of price, but if it is not to be for this or that reason, a standalone motherboard with FPGA could be made.

But I'd like to avoid a standalone option, because it would be pricier, competing with NATAMI and while it would probably be somewhat cheaper, we do not need 2 very similar products with a similar price on this very small market.

[Iggy]

Me too... I'd prefer it to be an acc. card(towered 1200 or 4000) because of price, but if it is not to be for this or that reason, a standalone motherboard with FPGA could be made.

But I'd like to avoid a standalone option, because it would be pricier, competing with NATAMI and while it would probably be somewhat cheaper, we do not need 2 very similar products with a similar price on this very small market.

Actually, it would be a fourth system in a limited market. First the Minimig, then the FPGA Arcade, then the Natami, and finally this system.
So you're right, it would be better to keep the price down (by avoiding a FPGA).

[Digiman]

The 68060 is already about the same MIPS/MHz as the V4 ColdFire with smaller caches, no link stack, etc. The 68060 can do more per cycle than the V4 ColdFire. Multilplication, division, shifting is all faster on the 68060. The 68060 has useful instructions that are missing on the ColdFire. Granted, the ColdFire has some useful instruction additions also. The N68k has everything except clock speed. None of the instructions are missing, ColdFire additions are included, other instruction additions are useful, multiple instructions per clock are possible, large caches, link stack, predicated branches, byte and word instructions are as fast as long, bitfield instructions are fast, large instruction prefetch, etc. The V4 ColdFire is nothing special. It's on par with a very fast 68040 with larger caches and a few other enhancements. The V5 ColdFire is a different story. It's more like a 68060 from what little information I could find on it. It would very likely be faster than the N68070 will be in fpga. The ColdFire does need optimized code and would be harder to get max performance from than the N68070 as currently planned. It's easy enough to say, just compile new code for it, but that's where a lot of the problem is. Compilers generate poor code especially on the 68k. I have a library that started out at 67648 bytes and I have optimized down to 39824 bytes so far. I think 1/2 the original size is possible although I'm optimizing for speed and not size. Before you say that this must have been some poor C coders, I'll tell you that this piece of work was done by a fairly famous pair of brothers (in Amiga land) who now work for Hyperion. I hope there PPC optimizing is better because the PPC is not nearly as forgiving of crap code.

Or RISC vs CISC lol

Acorn Archimedes had the same issue, and people all said 'whatever' 'what happens when you need to divide?'

Truth was when you all paid 1000s for crapp 7mhz A2000s and then played a 16 colour game called Virus at 10-15FPS the Archimedes did it in 256 colours and 30+ FPS in 1987

RISC is better, and a Coldfire v4 + AROS specific kernal recompile + UAE = Rocket Ranger running 100%.

Why do people have to make it so difficult. AROS Coldfire for legal Amiga apps written in guidelines, AROS+UAE for legacy/games stuff.

It's not like MorphOS does it any better, or OS4 come to that At least Coldfire is dirt cheap unlike way OTT priced PPC boards to run OS4/MOS

[WolfToTheMoon]

Actually, it would be a fourth system in a limited market. First the Minimig, then the FPGA Arcade, then the Natami, and finally this system.
So you're right, it would be better to keep the price down (by avoiding a FPGA).

I wouldn't consider Minimig or FPGA arcade as competitors to Natami or my proposed CF machine. Sure, there is some common ground between them, but my idea is more of a next-gen 68K like Natami.

If I cannot get this my idea for under 400-500 euros, I will not do it. Primarily because then, IMHO, it becomes too expensive to be called hobby(even so, I'm sure some people might still want to buy a machine like that) and it would be too close to natami to justify it for me personally.

[Iggy]

Or RISC vs CISC lol

Acorn Archimedes had the same issue, and people all said 'whatever' 'what happens when you need to divide?'

Truth was when you all paid 1000s for crapp 7mhz A2000s and then played a 16 colour game called Virus at 10-15FPS the Archimedes did it in 256 colours and 30+ FPS in 1987

RISC is better, and a Coldfire v4 + AROS specific kernal recompile + UAE = Rocket Ranger running 100%.

Why do people have to make it so difficult. AROS Coldfire for legal Amiga apps written in guidelines, AROS+UAE for legacy/games stuff.

It's not like MorphOS does it any better, or OS4 come to that At least Coldfire is dirt cheap unlike way OTT priced PPC boards to run OS4/MOS

Actually, if you look at the benchmarks, MorphOS does do better in a lot of areas. X86 definitely has more horsepower to run 68K emulation, but in most other areas MorphOS has an edge.

http://www.lukysoft.cz/?page=benchmarks

And since Coldfire is a CISC, I suspect that RISCs like ARM and PPC might outperform it.
PPCs are expensive, but ARM and Coldfire are not so we'll just have to see.

[Iggy]

I wouldn't consider Minimig or FPGA arcade as competitors to Natami or my proposed CF machine. Sure, there is some common ground between them, but my idea is more of a next-gen 68K like Natami.

If I cannot get this my idea for under 400-500 euros, I will not do it. Primarily because then, IMHO, it becomes too expensive to be called hobby(even so, I'm sure some people might still want to buy a machine like that) and it would be too close to natami to justify it for me personally.

Personally, I'd hope for an even lower price as 400-500 euros strikes me as a little high.
I could see that if it did incorporate a small FPGA, but if not I'd hope to see it for as little as half that figure.

[WolfToTheMoon]

Personally, I'd hope for an even lower price as 400-500 euros strikes me as a little high.
I could see that if it did incorporate a small FPGA, but if not I'd hope to see it for as little as half that figure.

Atari Coldfire is 599 euros(they have a expensive FPGA oboard), so you are right...
My goal would 300-350... But I have insufficient info to base that on any real life data. Especially the V5e price.

[Iggy]

Atari Coldfire is 599 euros(they have a expensive FPGA oboard), so you are right...
My goal would 300-350... But I have insufficient info to base that on any real life data. Especially the V5e price.

If the only way to get V5s is to salvage them and have the processors re-balled this could get expensive.
The V4 still might be an easier to obtain option.

[Digiman]

Actually, if you look at the benchmarks, MorphOS does do better in a lot of areas. X86 definitely has more horsepower to run 68K emulation, but in most other areas MorphOS has an edge.

http://www.lukysoft.cz/?page=benchmarks

And since Coldfire is a CISC, I suspect that RISCs like ARM and PPC might outperform it.
PPCs are expensive, but ARM and Coldfire are not so we'll just have to see.

MorphOS is no better than OS4/AROS in the context of my post. ALL use UAE to run legacy stuff like Rocket Ranger.

So OS + Emulator requirement is present on all 3 for REAL Amiga functionality.

My point about ARM or RISC was the removal of instructions to streamline the chip performance is exactly what ARM v1 did in 85 prototype and 87 retail machines. 400 MIPS is more than enough to emulate OCS or ECS and if you are writing a specific version of AROS for Coldfire and using something like Starscream to emulate 68000 then it is a non-issue.

We need to get off PoS PPC hardware that is overpriced AND underpowered. There is only an issue with getting KS/WB to run on Coldfire, if you are writing an OS version of AROS for it there is no issue whatsover.

[Iggy]

MorphOS is no better than OS4/AROS in the context of my post. ALL use UAE to run legacy stuff like Rocket Ranger.

So OS + Emulator requirement is present on all 3 for REAL Amiga functionality.

My point about ARM or RISC was the removal of instructions to streamline the chip performance is exactly what ARM v1 did in 85 prototype and 87 retail machines. 400 MIPS is more than enough to emulate OCS or ECS and if you are writing a specific version of AROS for Coldfire and using something like Starscream to emulate 68000 then it is a non-issue.

We need to get off PoS PPC hardware that is overpriced AND underpowered. There is only an issue with getting KS/WB to run on Coldfire, if you are writing an OS version of AROS for it there is no issue whatsover.

You're mistaken if you think we in any way disagree. I like my current PPC system because it is low cost and while I look forward to G5 Mac support I can't really justify the cost of new PPC hardware.
ARM would definitely be an improvement. They've already developed 2Ghz ARM processors, the current A9s should be good for 2.5Ghz, and I expect to see higher performance out of later introductions like Nvidia's Denver Project.

And yes, X86 emulation does seem to work fine. If you've got legacy apps its hard to argue with the performance advantage. I just pointed out those benchmarks because they point out pretty clearly that MorphOS does a fairly good job at 2D and other non CPU related tasks.
In the last few months I've been a pretty vocal advocate of moving to ARM.

Now Coldfire, the main thing that worries me (besides compatibility i ssues) is that its getting rather old and the fastest available version is the 266Mhz V4. That's a solid improvement over a 50Mhz 68060, but I'm still not sure it makes sense when compared to ARM or X86 (both of which can outperform this).

Anyway, lets see if there is some way to obtain V5es. If so (even in small quantities) this could offer the additional performance that would help justify this project.

[Zac67]

If you're breaking 68k compatability anyway - why not go for something that's available, fast and even cheap? If it's fast enough it's just a matter of emulation to get legacy software to decent speed while running recompiled / native code much faster still.

As much as I love the 68k family I totally fail to see the point in investing into dead ends with large price tags.