X1000 xmos

[Karlos]

@Kesa

Sometimes the Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.....

XMOS is a wonderful microcontroller, but attaching it to a 1700 quid computer doesn't add anything to either XMOS or the computer.  A food processor is a wonderful invention, so is a TV, but attaching the food processor to the TV doesn't give extra value to either the TV or Food Processor.

Well, with all the cooking programs on TV these days....

Besides, you probably said the same thing about alarm clocks and radios.

:lol:

[Haranguer]

Here's a whitepaper about XMOS
https://www.xmos.com/download/public/XMOS-Technology-Whitepaper%281.0%29.pdf

Here's a language reference guide
https://www.xmos.com/download/public/XC-Programming-Guide%28X1009C%29.pdf

 and here's some projects thyat other people have designed for it
https://www.xcore.com/projects

XMOS is far from useless, but it's not the same kind of thing as FPGA.  in FPGA, you use VHDL to design and connect logic gates.

XC, on the other hand, is similar to C, but it has easier ways to set up parallel threads and access I/O.

I'm not an expert.  I've just been doing a little research in preparation for getting my new X1000.  I'd like to put an FPGA card in it too.  I can think of lots of uses for FPGA, but I'm still looking for an application that can use the massive parallelism that XMOS provides.

[AmigaNG]

Just wondering what about just emulating one of Amiga classic chipset on it, say the Paula. Why Paula well it was the one chip used in all classic amigas, it powered the audio, Xmos seams to be strong at handling sound, so having perfectly emulated sound would be good and maybe help speed up and improve emulation of classic amiga and not only that it handled the floppy controller, so it be pretty neat if you installed a floppy disk drive, the xmos chip could read classic amiga formatted disks. I know there is the Catweasel solution but it be pretty neat doing it on the xmos. PS: its just an idea.

[bbond007]

@Kesa

Sometimes the Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.....

XMOS is a wonderful microcontroller, but attaching it to a 1700 quid computer doesn't add anything to either XMOS or the computer.  A food processor is a wonderful invention, so is a TV, but attaching the food processor to the TV doesn't give extra value to either the TV or Food Processor.

well, its a good thing they left it open for expansion - so you can add additional XMOS modules...

[Tripitaka]

Begin rant  :madashell:

This is funny. Just because you guys can't think of any uses for it doesn't mean it is "worthless".

A telescope? is that the best idea you can come up with?

I think the problem here is not the Xena itself it is just a lack of imagination. What you guys lack in imagination you make up for with obnoxious remarks. I don't like this "i can't think of anything to do with it that means it is a flawed design" attitude.

I have decided to ignore Kofters "expertise" in all things xmos and Piru's "not enough bandwidth" remarks and instead sit back and see how it turns out in a few years from now when people have actually had time to experiment with it. I mean, the thing isn't even out yet and you already have your minds made up.

Rant over

I feel much better now. Thanks

Hey don't bite my head off. I would love to hear of a worthy use for it and I did say that over the coming years we may be thankful for it providing an (as yet not thought of) expansion option. It's just that I can't find one yet....

..and neither can anyone else so it seems.

[takemehomegrandma]

We simply don't know what standards will become popular over the next few years.

True, but one thing is for sure, it won't be "Xorro"... :p

I don't know, to be honest. Koaftder would be the guy to ask, he's done some work with XMOS chips I believe.

The hardware designers must have had some intended use in mind.

Are you sure about that?

To me, it looks rather like a marketing gimmick, something to artificially create an emotional connection to the Amiga. "Zorro" became "Xorro", the X1000 got "custom HW" like the Amiga. That seems to be the main point to me?

Begin rant  :madashell:

This is funny. Just because you guys can't think of any uses for it doesn't mean it is "worthless".

Problem is that it adds complexity and cost to an already complex and über-expensive motherboard, for no obvious reason. What does this do that couldn't be done better with the PCI-express or USB2 already present?

[dammy]

Here's a whitepaper about XMOS
https://www.xmos.com/download/public/XMOS-Technology-Whitepaper%281.0%29.pdf

Here's a language reference guide
https://www.xmos.com/download/public/XC-Programming-Guide%28X1009C%29.pdf

 and here's some projects thyat other people have designed for it
https://www.xcore.com/projects

XMOS is far from useless, but it's not the same kind of thing as FPGA.  in FPGA, you use VHDL to design and connect logic gates.

XC, on the other hand, is similar to C, but it has easier ways to set up parallel threads and access I/O.

I'm not an expert.  I've just been doing a little research in preparation for getting my new X1000.  I'd like to put an FPGA card in it too.  I can think of lots of uses for FPGA, but I'm still looking for an application that can use the massive parallelism that XMOS provides.

It's a controller, end of story.  If you want to create a system that gives it full control over your house lights, this might be a key component.  I can think of cheaper solutions then a $3K computer to do that type of work.  The only reason I can possibly think on why someone would bolt this on a computer would be as a marketing ploy that sounds great but meaningless to the end user.

[vidarh]

It's only interesting in applications that are external to a desktop computer. It has no value bolted onto the gpio pins of a 2GHz dual core beast. There is absolutely nothing this microcontroller can do that the host processor isn't capable of exceeding.

Try to get the latency guarantees the XMOS chips offer from a desktop CPU running a multitasking OS. Just a plain context switch in most OS's takes many times longer than it takes the XMOS to handle IO. Modern CPU's have high throughput, but their latency for the CPU to respond is still abysmal.

Now, you might never need anything that requires those kind of low latency guarantees, but that doesn't mean nobody else can come up with uses for it.

I'd be surprised if anyone did anything with it at all considering that there's been nothing stopping people interested in xcore microcontrollers from having a go at it for the low price of 100 USD with kit directly from XMOS. We've had what, two years now since this was all announced? I've seen nothing from the hobby hackers.

That's meaningless. The appeal of its inclusion in the X1000 is that it's integrated in the X1000. While that may not be a rational response, the Amiga market is hardly rational - it is largely emotional.

We'll see once the X1000 is in the hands of more people whether or not people come up with something interesting - until then, the absence of Amiga-focused hacks hacks tells us nothing.

The programming language created for this family of microcontrollers (XC) is proprietary and closed source.  You won't even get to invoke it from the command line in AOS4. Their tool chain and development environment (centered around eclipse) is high class stuff, you'd simply be wasting your time and doing yourself a disservice if you didn't use it anyway.

There's no need to use XC. The only functionality XC offers over plain C is some basic syntax support for channels that you can trivially do with a few lines of inline asm if you don't mind a slightly uglier syntax - their asm manuals are easily available.

And Eclipse is a pile of junk. I'll use a command line + my preferred editors over Eclipse any day.

[nikodr]

Explain something to me,x1000 would cost a lot of money,and i mean a LOT.A very expensive computer why hack it and make it compatible with old stuff like that,i heard stuff such as "emulate paula,gary etc".Even a 150$ dollar notebook can outperform a real amiga with uae,i mean a very expensive machine wouldn't it be able to run linux or even amiga os and then run uae in there?Is there any point in trying to make it emulate paula???

Is that why people would have to pay 1700 euros?for paula support?come on people,better spend your cash on cyberstorm ppc 233,at least the word rarity and value for rarity could come first,but for paula emulation?1700??? not me folks...sorry ,and i hate xena,her boobs do not have enough silicone stuff,and by the way i prefer gary and ramsey,sounds so much more masculine names....

[AmigaNG]

Is that why people would have to pay 1700 euros?for paula support?come on people

No, I bought it because i wanted the fastest and best AmigaOS4 system, I have a PC for UAE, and actually a real classic Amiga, Xmos is a nice extra to play with and see what happens, and it would be cool to do this kind of stuff with it. I doubt adding the xmos chip to the board raise the cost that much, the reason it cost this much is largely the small production run and I guess the CPU and OS4 development costs.

[commodorejohn]

I doubt adding the xmos chip to the board raise the cost that much, the reason it cost this much is largely the small production run and I guess the CPU and OS4 development costs.

Probably. I do wonder, though, how much could've been saved by not bothering. On the other hand, by $2000 you've probably reached a pricing saturation point... :/

[Piru]

I'm still looking for an application that can use the massive parallelism that XMOS provides.

Calling XMOS parallelism massive is quite a stretch.

GPUs have that, however. My ATI Radeon HD 6970 has 1536 cores and total 2.7 TFLOPS (sp), and it's rather easy to utilize it with OpenCL.

[Piru]

Just wondering what about just emulating one of Amiga classic chipset on it, say the Paula. Why Paula well it was the one chip used in all classic amigas, it powered the audio, Xmos seams to be strong at handling sound, so having perfectly emulated sound would be good and maybe help speed up and improve emulation of classic amiga and not only that it handled the floppy controller, so it be pretty neat if you installed a floppy disk drive, the xmos chip could read classic amiga formatted disks. I know there is the Catweasel solution but it be pretty neat doing it on the xmos. PS: its just an idea.

Paula emulation needs to access memory all the time (fetching sample data, outputting the generated audio waveform), and thus is quite inefficient to implement with XMOS. I'd say you're far better off by implementing paula emulation with the main CPU: You don't need to worry about synchronization issues or how to deal with transmitting the data to/from the XMOS.

[Karlos]

Calling XMOS parallelism massive is quite a stretch.

GPUs have that, however. My ATI Radeon HD 6970 has 1536 cores and total 2.7 TFLOPS (sp), and it's rather easy to utilize it with OpenCL.

Boooo! nVidia+CUDA 4.x FTW :lol:

I'd always be careful quoting teraflop values for graphics cards. They're almost always unattainable in real code, even code that is explicitly parallel by nature. Unless your code is a perfectly structured sequence of fused multiply-add without any memory accesses, branches or scheduling overhead, at any rate.

[koaftder]

Try to get the latency guarantees the XMOS chips offer from a desktop CPU running a multitasking OS. Just a plain context switch in most OS's takes many times longer than it takes the XMOS to handle IO. Modern CPU's have high throughput, but their latency for the CPU to respond is still abysmal.

You do have an entire processor core in the A1X1K doing nothing clipping along at 2GHz.

Now, you might never need anything that requires those kind of low latency guarantees, but that doesn't mean nobody else can come up with uses for it.

Sure, it's quite possible someone could come up with a use for it. That doesn't mean it makes any sense.  

That's meaningless. The appeal of its inclusion in the X1000 is that it's integrated in the X1000. While that may not be a rational response, the Amiga market is hardly rational - it is largely emotional.

Highly emotional Amiga users doesn't mean it makes any sense

We'll see once the X1000 is in the hands of more people whether or not people come up with something interesting - until then, the absence of Amiga-focused hacks hacks tells us nothing.

It is absolutely telling. It tells us that people aren't actually interested in this enough to start hacking.

There's no need to use XC. The only functionality XC offers over plain C is some basic syntax support for channels that you can trivially do with a few lines of inline asm if you don't mind a slightly uglier syntax - their asm manuals are easily available.

You're right that you don't need XC, but you're wasting your time and making trouble for your self for no good reason by ignoring it. You'd also be shutting yourself off from using a large base of library code the Xcore community has developed and put out for others to use. The ASM documentation sucks, you'll find yourself on the forums begging XMos engineers for help.

And Eclipse is a pile of junk. I'll use a command line + my preferred editors over Eclipse any day.

Good for you, and you'll not have access to the simulator and code profiling tools. But who are we kidding here, you've never used this stuff and you'll never do any of the things you mentioned in the previous paragraph. Haven't we had this conversation before on that other site... like a year ago?

[koaftder]

I doubt adding the xmos chip to the board raise the cost that much, the reason it cost this much is largely the small production run and I guess the CPU and OS4 development costs.

In parts, may about 15 USD. Some people have mentioned an increase in design complexity, I don't really agree with that. There's nothing to it. I doubt it had anything to do with causing the project to be delayed. For sure there's some work to be done on the software side of the fence, but given ssolie's last conference, i get the impression that support will be minimal, if there's anything at all.