ADOOM on A600 running 22-35 FPS

[ppcamiga1]

if this crap natami have to be useful for anything other than amiga os, it must have MMU.

This MMU does not have to be existing 68k MMU compatible, of course.

kleine-gun where is my natami?

[guest11527]

if this crap natami have to be useful for anything other than amiga os, it must have MMU.

This crap natami has a standard 68060 CPU on board, and hence a standard 68060 MMU.

This MMU does not have to be existing 68k MMU compatible, of course.

kleine-gun where is my natami?

This crappy natami is on my crappy desk. Here you go.

[OlafS3]

if this crap natami have to be useful for anything other than amiga os, it must have MMU.

This MMU does not have to be existing 68k MMU compatible, of course.

kleine-gun where is my natami?

if you really think that your "crap" motivates anyone to use PPC you are on the wrong planet

[wawrzon]

@olaf
thats a false flag op.

[kolla]

Gunnar, providing cards for old computers was not in my agenda. While building acc cards for old systems is pretty cool, it's the stand alone systems that are of main interest, at least for me. The question is if you can reimplement a lot of old hardware using an FPGA, so that the old operating systems will be able to run on them.

[biggun]

Gunnar, providing cards for old computers was not in my agenda. While building acc cards for old systems is pretty cool, it's the stand alone systems that are of main interest, at least for me. The question is if you can reimplement a lot of old hardware using an FPGA, so that the old operating systems will be able to run on them.

Not sure I understand the question.
If we would not put SAGA into the FPGA how could we run Amiga OS?

[wawrzon]

Not sure I understand the question.
If we would not put SAGA into the FPGA how could we run Amiga OS?

i think the only sensible might be is licensing the core to other fpga hardware providers for the time being. as example, if not for vampire the core woulnt probably be available to testers-users till now. doing everything by yourself will drain your capabilities quickly. this way also the support for other systems could be hierarchically outsourced to interested parties.

[OlafS3]

Gunnar, providing cards for old computers was not in my agenda. While building acc cards for old systems is pretty cool, it's the stand alone systems that are of main interest, at least for me. The question is if you can reimplement a lot of old hardware using an FPGA, so that the old operating systems will be able to run on them.

Offering accellerators using A600 or A500 is only the first step. The Vampire is too small for the whole chipset but the card for A500 will be big enough and has both LAN and its own modern interface to monitors so processor, RTG and the chipset will then run on the card and the host hardware will be only used for keyboard and some of the old ports. The idea is to have something soon and then (after that) continue with developing a standalone hardware (that is more complicated, needs more drivers and so on).

[biggun]

i think the only sensible might be is licensing the core to other fpga hardware providers for the time being. as example, if not for vampire the core woulnt probably be available to testers-users till now. doing everything by yourself will drain your capabilities quickly.

Our new cards are in testing already ....

 this way also the support for other systems could be hierarchically outsourced to interested parties.

I do not see the scaling benefit of this.

If you license the core to 3 different parties then this does not save you time this creates more work for you. You have to support them. Each partner might use a different FPGA, different memory. So you need to help them to interface and to test/fine tune the memory controller.
Even is you provide standard industry bus interfaces - as Apollo does.
They will have many questions which you need to answer.

I have no secretary which could answer all these customer questions.
Therefore to be honest - I do not think that this will save me time but cost me time.

[eliyahu]

@ppcamiga1

knock it off. now. this is your only warning. keep up with the abusive and trolling posts and you'll earn a vacation from the site.

-- eliyahu

[wawrzon]

I have no secretary which could answer all these customer questions.

one day you might need one anyway;)
but sure you know best yourself.

[vxm]

Everything else, like filling the page table, or replacing descriptors in the page, can be done entirely in software. This software can do the table walk and emulate whatever 68K MMU there is.

I like the idea of a software solution but I think it could add an extra workload for the CPU.

[guest11527]

I like the idea of a software solution but I think it could add an extra workload for the CPU.

It's a matter of finding the right balance, and the size of the cache. The current core already requires software support for integer arithmetic and - quite like the 68060 - does not suffer from that because only exotic instructions require emlation that are rarely ever needed.

Consider an ATC of 256 entries, 4K per entry. This is already pretty small. The core could then address 1MB of memory without ever requiring a table walk. Put this into perspective to the typical Amiga program, probably at one tenth of this size.

Thus, the core would at worst initiate a table walk when loading a program.

Anyhow, this is all theory. I'm not saying that anyone should focus on this right now. There are more serious matters.

[ChaosLord]

If you license the core to 3 different parties then this does not save you time this creates more work for you. You have to support them. Each partner might use a different FPGA, different memory. So you need to help them to interface and to test/fine tune the memory controller.
Even is you provide standard industry bus interfaces - as Apollo does.
They will have many questions which you need to answer.

I have no secretary which could answer all these customer questions.
Therefore to be honest - I do not think that this will save me time but cost me time.

+1

[biggun]

+1

To prevent misunderstandings.
There is a lot of proting work going on already.
Right now people port/test the core to the following systems already.

Vampire-600 - CPU Accelerator for A600  - Status working
Vampire-500 - CPU Accelerator for A500  - Status testing
Apollo-Phoenix - CPU Accelerator for A500  - Status testing
HighEndC5 - Standalone System  - Status porting
Natami - everyone knows this  - Status porting
Vampire 2 - CPU Acclerator - Status in delevopment

As you see we support already 5 FPGA systems, and the 6th is current in development

I think we are already quite thin spread with our man power to support all 6 systems in parallel

[vxm]

It's a matter of finding the right balance, and the size of the cache. The current core already requires software support for integer arithmetic and - quite like the 68060 - does not suffer from that because only exotic instructions require emlation that are rarely ever needed.

Consider an ATC of 256 entries, 4K per entry. This is already pretty small. The core could then address 1MB of memory without ever requiring a table walk. Put this into perspective to the typical Amiga program, probably at one tenth of this size.

Thus, the core would at worst initiate a table walk when loading a program.

Anyhow, this is all theory. I'm not saying that anyone should focus on this right now. There are more serious matters.

In an AMP context, your idea seems very promising. Especially as the architecture of the Amiga should facilitate this development.
And no, I have not forgotten the many discussions around a possible AMP based solution. In fact, I quietly waiting it.