@ Matthey
Could you tell us why you need an ASIC so badly? There is only one coldfire accelerator card for an Atari.
Seriously a $50 ras pi, must be a better choice for embedded systems. I don't feel a sudden need to control something from AmigaOS
The Raspberry Pi is $50 because it is an ASIC and not an fpga. A $50 Amiga Pi using an ASIC could:
1) be easier to program (embedded applications often ditch the OS so this is important)
2) use less memory and need less caches
3) have stronger memory performance and single core performance than the Rasberry Pi
An fpga CPU can't compete against a hard (ASIC) CPU in performance or price. The ColdFire has nothing to do with an ASIC other than that an ASIC needs to be sold in quantity to reduce the price and ColdFire support would open up the embedded market more. Most of the ColdFire enhancements are good for the 68k as well improving performance and code density which are especially valuable in embedded applications. They would also be good for emulation as the functionionality is available in many modern processors (sign and zero extension, endian conversion, etc.). ColdFire support is already available in most 68k/ColdFire shared compiler backends so it would be very easy to impliment. Atari 68k/ColdFire, the TG68 and WinUAE could possibly all adopt one unifying 68k standard which I don't think will happen with Gunnar's ISA.
I actually don't doubt any of that and also think talk of ASIC or any other future step is premature. This is already likely to turn the amiga upgrade market upside down. When the board become available for all systems then we'll be able to see where to go next
The FPGA needs to improve before an ASIC is viable but the decisions today affect how easy it would be to make an ASIC in the future. An ISA that is not well received and a non-standard outside of the Amiga community would make the possibility of an ASIC highly unlikely. Too much internal FPGA optimization like combining units could make the source code more difficult to adapt to an ASIC as well.
Ok. I would like to read the instruction manual for the new MiniApollo that you have crammed into Majsta's board. Where is it at?
Does it contain any new instructions that I can use to produce the World's Best 2D Strategy Board Game(tm) ?
Have you left away any instructions that you are saving for the rumored future A1200 Apollo card?
I would like to see the ISA documentation and encoding maps also. I would like knowledgeable people to take a look at it and have a discussion about it.
What is wrong with having vector registers added?
Nothing if they are in a vector unit. Let's ask ThoR what he thinks about overlaying 64 128 bit wide vector registers on the integer register file.
I am trying to understand what is the problem with the new ISA.
Could you give me some example instructions that are critical and should be added, but Gunnar banned them?
Gunnar didn't ban anything. He used ColdFire encoding space to add more integer registers which he unilaterally decided was more important than anything else.
Did he add some good new instructions but chose stupid encodings for them?
He has some instructions which I think would be acceptable and some that are questionable to add to a standardized ISA (like planar gfx instructions which may be ok in the core or as optional).
Remember I have no idea what has been going on with this. The last thing I remember, I was telling Majsta what a good job he was doing in trying to cook up an FPGA 680x0 CPU (It wasn't very fast, he had just started) and now all of a sudden it seems Gunnar has taken over and Doom is running at 22fps on A600.
Let's do a little time warp back to a time you remember. We go back past when Hyperion was bankrupt...back when the Natami was at it's peak generating over 300,000 hits in a single thread while Hyperion was selling a few hundred copies of AmigaOS 4 for the PPC...back when Gunnar was still part of Natami...Ok. Here we start in September of 2010. Gunnar was working on the Apollo/Natami core as a Natami Team member and brain storming for an new ISA. You were a Natami moderator then TCL and very active then. Gunnar suggested adding more registers then when some big Amiga names were on the Natami forum. The thread follows:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=26237There were many suggestions about how to add more integer registers but the developers decision on more registers went something like this:
Gunnar von Boehn: yes, yes, yes
Ceti 331: yes, yes
Deep Sub Micron (Jens): no, maybe
Morgan Johansson: maybe
Claudio Wieland: maybe
Steve Thomas: maybe
Megol: maybe
ThoR: maybe, no
Phil "meynaf" G.: maybe, no
Cesare Di Mauro: no, no
Samuel D Crow: maybe, no
Marcel Verdaasdonk: maybe, no
Matt Hey: maybe, no
You were there TCL but you seemed to be moderating and didn't express an opinion that I could determine. By my count, I come up with 2 developers wanted it and 6 thought it was not a good idea. Note that Deep Sub Micron is one of the current Apollo developers and he could have been mildly in the no category but he still did try to come up with a workable solution to add more integer registers.
A 68k+ColdFire ISA was then developed with me documenting some of the better ideas and which was generally accepted as the Natami ISA. This is basically the 68kF ISA along with some ideas of my own and others since then. Gunnar left the Natami Team for reasons unknown (by some) and created the Apollo Team of which Meynaf and I were invited. Gunnar once again pushed adding registers but Meynaf and I didn't like the new idea preferring the 68k+ColdFire ideas better. Jens and Chris of the big 3 Apollo developers gave no input nor did anyone else have a major opinion. Gunner had free FPGA memory blocks to add more integer registers and determined that more registers were necessary for performance. Gunnar tried to get us to help encode and document this crazy ISA but we declined. It is true that I don't know the details of his ISA as it is less documented than the Natami ISA where there were encoding maps showing the 68k+ColdFire ISA. Rune Stensland even had enough info on the 68k+ColdFire ISA that he started adding support into the Asm Pro Assembler:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=6¬e=33870So I support much of what Gunnar has done with Phoenix but people need to realize that it is his pet/toy project. I'm not sure anyone with more Amiga clout than Meynaf or I could make a difference but I can say I tried. Maybe enough money could make a difference but I can't invest in his toy but only a community wide effort that is bigger than him. That is the end of story and maybe the end of the Amiga and 68k as well if some of the other important Amiga people don't change and begin cooperating very soon.
