ARM or x86 with FPGA emulator

[dammy]

Adding x86 or arm to the fpga to emulate 68k/powerpc is a bad idea.

No one will make software for the emulator.

Amiga 68k is not a bad computer, but 68k is too slow.
 
What we really need is to add powerpc to fpga.

Fast 68k does not exist, the mythical 68k from natami exists only in a sick imagination of gunnar von boehn.

x86 and arm as litte endian processors do not allow for integration with existing software.

SPARC, Itanium, Z * from IBM are too expensive.

MIPS, SH4 are too slow.

PowerPC is the only reasonable solution for the Amiga in an FPGA.

Just run 68K code in UAE and use AROS for the ARM/x86.   Might not be the perfect solution, but considering cost and man power, it's the only viable solution.

[matthey]

That speed... is it because of the better memory speed or is it because the core has been optimized?

It's impressive.

The memory speed and bandwidth are good but the fast memory is only 16 bit and the chip memory is still super slow. Optimizations can get around some of these barriers obviously. I would say a good design and some optimizations help to minimize the bottlenecks. My understanding is incomplete though.

[Hattig]

Are there any details of what the Phoenix core is, compared to the Apollo core?

Getting ~140MHz '060 performance is amazing, if true. Maybe this benchmark is rather slanted towards running well on the Phoenix core, which may be very fast at specific operations that normal 68k processors aren't fast in.

[Iggy]

Petunia (OS4) or Trance (in MorphOS)  is more of a binary translator/recompiler than it is a emulator/simulator; it basically recompile the 68k bytestream into native PPC code. This makes sense on a big endian HW architecture like PPC, because it makes it possible to mix "68k code" with PPC code in the same environment and run old and new programs (and OS components as well, like ARexx for examples) in the same environment as they were no different to each other. In fact they *aren't* different, both 68k and PPC apps are all de-facto PPC native at runtime, being scheduled by the same scheduler, sharing the same memory and system resources, etc. In this way, both MorphOS and OS4 *is* the native Amiga environment, where both new and old applications runs side by side, but on a different HW platform.

This isn't really possible on a little endian platform though, and AROS has a different approach where UAE is used to emulate a complete Amiga machine (with 68k CPU, custom chips and the whole shebang). The upside of this is an improved compatibility with very old SW and/or HW hitting applications, but the downside (compared to the MorphOS/OS4 approach) is that the Amiga apps runs "sandboxed" inside this emulated Amiga, and the AROS native ARM/x86 apps runs outside this box under AROS.



A terrible idea if you ask me. There are mainly two groups of Amiga users today, those who are here for the "classic", who are more of retro fans today, and those who are here for "NG", which is more about evolution than retro. The retro people use real Amigas, or emulators, or "new classic" HW like Minimig.

A product like you are talking about would not suit the retro fans, since they are more interested in "the real deal" and 100% compatibility (and like it or not, new HW compromises backwards compatibility). And the "NG" fans will feel the platform is being held back by 20 year old museum level technology. So it would be stuck in the middle, not really satisfying any of the groups.

IMHO of course!

I'm not sure where MorphOS fits into this discussion, as should it move to ARM it will probably have a lot less legacy compatibility.
Currently, NG OS' focus on a familiar environment and API support.
As they advance, these features are likely to be broken.

[matthey]

Are there any details of what the Phoenix core is, compared to the Apollo core?

Getting ~140MHz '060 performance is amazing, if true. Maybe this benchmark is rather slanted towards running well on the Phoenix core, which may be very fast at specific operations that normal 68k processors aren't fast in.

I don't expect the single integer pipe Phoenix to normally outperform a 68060 at the same clock speed. It's more comparable to a 68040 and was clocked around 90-100MHz last I checked. However, the 68060 has some bottlenecks which make it underperform a 68040 at the same clock speed in some cases. I didn't post to compare the overall performance of Phoenix by this early demo but rather to show that the 68k can have good performance in a fpga. Much more is possible in a larger but still affordable fpga. I think the performance of a 68060 can be exceeded. Apollo is designed for superscalar with 2-3 integer pipes that are each stronger than the 68060 and without the bottlenecks. From my limited understanding, the potential looks amazing.

[takemehomegrandma]

I'm not sure where MorphOS [OS4] fits into this discussion

Read the thread backwards from my post, and it should become clear to you!

[SamuraiCrow]

A 1GHz Cubox i-series ARM machine can hit 30fps when streaming 1080p from the Internet.  Why put an FPGA on it?

I like the FPGAArcade Replay board but it would never complete with the Cubox in price.

The Replay will go for $299 and the Cubox-i1 goes for $59.  The quad-core Cubox-i4Pro is $139.  All we really need is a multithreaded AGA core in the emulator and AROS/ARIX will do the rest.

[bloodline]

A 1GHz Cubox i-series ARM machine can hit 30fps when streaming 1080p from the Internet.  Why put an FPGA on it?

I like the FPGAArcade Replay board but it would never complete with the Cubox in price.

The Replay will go for $299 and the Cubox-i1 goes for $59.  The quad-core Cubox-i4Pro is $139.  All we really need is a multithreaded AGA core in the emulator and AROS/ARIX will do the rest.

I have to agree here, that said I find the FPGA projects really fun

[IanP]

Sounds like the Phoenix core is looking good. Shame if the Replay FPGA is too small to include it, I assume that's the case with the rest of the current "Amiga" FPGA boards (MCC216, MiST, Chameleon). What about the Acube Minimig+ is that big enough, I assume the Phoenix core could outperform the Dragonball on it. To get back on topic what we need is an "Amiga" FPGA board with a Cyclone 5 SoC FPGA. Has anybody ported Minimig to one of the dev boards like the SOCkit yet?

[matthey]

Sounds like the Phoenix core is looking good. Shame if the Replay FPGA is too small to include it, I assume that's the case with the rest of the current "Amiga" FPGA boards (MCC216, MiST, Chameleon). What about the Acube Minimig+ is that big enough, I assume the Phoenix core could outperform the Dragonball on it. To get back on topic what we need is an "Amiga" FPGA board with a Cyclone 5 SoC FPGA. Has anybody ported Minimig to one of the dev boards like the SOCkit yet?

The newest version Mist board has a large enough fpga and it's Altera which we prefer (Altera Cyclone III with 25k LE). The board has some other limitations and otherwise offers less value than the fpga Arcade. The MiniMig+ fpga is less than half the size of the fpga Arcade fpga. I expect the Phoenix core will outperform the Dragonball CPU. The MCC216 and Chameleon have too small of fpga. Natami would have been a perfect development environment with a large enough fpga to play.

We also looked at making a retro I/O expansion board for standard fpga developer boards. It would be cheap to make. The fpga developer boards have modern I/O themselves but some is not easy to use from the fpga and may require accessing with an on board ARM processor.

[ppcamiga1]

A1200/1260@80MHZ = ~19 fps A600/Phoenix = 31 fps

 So there was no progress in the past three years, and as three years ago NatAmi 68k performance reaches only 060 120 Mhz.

 http://wap.amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=33800&forum=25&start=80&viewmode=flat&order=0

 It's not enough. Amiga powerpc accelerators achieve better performance 17 years ago.

It does not make sense. The best solution for the Amiga FPGA would be adding powerpc processor to FPGA or using an FPGA with an already built in powerpc.

[wawrzon]

funny enough the only ppc accelerator attempt in the last years has been given up exactly like the coldfire projects. perhaps 68k emulation on a foreign processor is the only suitable way, but i doubt it will be ppc. one way or another one can be forced to do anything about the issue and since the only projects in progress at this time seems to be either fpga or genuine cpus any further talk about ppc leads to nothing. who wants ppc may go os4 or mos  any time.

[matthey]

So there was no progress in the past three years, and as three years ago NatAmi 68k performance reaches only 060 120 Mhz.

Of course there was progress all along but many CPU units have to be working correctly to make visible progress. How many man years do you think it takes to produce a modern processor? How how long do you think it takes for 3 knowledgeable people to make a modern processor in their spare time?

 It's not enough. Amiga powerpc accelerators achieve better performance 17 years ago.

It does not make sense. The best solution for the Amiga FPGA would be adding powerpc processor to FPGA or using an FPGA with an already built in powerpc.

What makes sense is debatable and depends on the application. A PowerPC chip with a small fpga for the Amiga custom chips could give good performance and compatibility with a good 68k emulator. The disadvantages are lack of control over the processor ISA and availability and the 68k emulation may be limiting. Designing a 68k in fpga gives full control to the designers. There can be advantages for integrating Amiga buses in a more compatible way and maybe even helping with SMT on the Amiga (duplicating cores in an fpga is easy). This makes a SoC design easier. The 68k has advantages in ease of programming, code density and working in memory over the PowerPC. Of course an fpga core would not be as fast as a professionally designed hard processor but I like this path. I have nothing against the PPC but I like 68k. I would like to see what it is capable of if Motorola hadn't abandoned it and had tried to improve it. You are free to develop your PPC project your way and I wish you luck. I may even buy it in the end if you make something nice for a reasonable price.

[psxphill]

Why put an FPGA on it?

because emulating aga in software introduces lag.

[wawrzon]

@matt, trying this phoenix demo under winuae on my surface pro gave me around 37fps. isnt that a little low in comparison? probably it rather reflects memory throughput than cpu speed, gunnars favorite argument if i recall well.

[matthey]

@matt, trying this phoenix demo under winuae on my surface pro gave me around 37fps. isnt that a little low in comparison? probably it rather reflects memory throughput than cpu speed, gunnars favorite argument if i recall well.

The Phoenix demo is not a very good test of CPU speed. However, a certain amount of processing power is needed to have a good frame rate. The demo shows that Phoenix has good performance and potential despite the scaled down core. It makes me wonder how much performance the full Apollo core would have in a larger fpga. Then I wonder how much rendering power the Apollo core would have with a fast fpga Amiga chipset like the Natami would have been. I don't think the 37 fps of UAE would be very difficult to beat.