@Hypex

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Hypex wrote: @cdimauro Quote: ARM is evolving, whereas PowerPCs are not. So, yes, I can see the future: for ARM, but NOT for PowerPCs. PowerPCs are dead. Maybe but to match PowerPC or it's parent CPU ARM needs to be in super computers. Intel would be on top. Power used to be up there. But I don't see ARM in the list.

And it doesn't have to be, because this has nothing to do with the fact that PowerPC is a dead platform.

To be more clear, POWER is here to stay because IBM has (big) customers (servers, HPC, supercomputers), but PowerPC (desktop, embedded) is just legacy. Like many other old architectures.
@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @NomadOfNorad Quote: So, what are the prospects of emulating PowerPC on an ARM, as part of a hypothetical ARM-based Amiga? I've looked into this from a slightly technical level. The code format between ARM and PPC is very similar. Including the load/store set up.

Well, they are RISCs, and both have complicated instructions, like the multiple regs load/store.

But there are also many differences.
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There's only one major problem I see, where ARM is inferior; ARM has less registers. Same problem as on x86[]. PPC has a superior 32 register count.

ARMv8, the 64-bit architecture, has 32 (31, in reality) general purpose registers, and 32 float point / vector registers.

It should be enough to decently emulate a PowerPC processor from this point of view.
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Perhaps registers these days are thought to be an obsolete concept along with absolute hardware sprites.

Not a simple dilemma. It depends on how the ISA is organized. For example, if there are instructions that help on load big constants without incurring in a load... but requiring some extra register.
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And if code doesn't use the upper registers it won't matter much.

It depends also if the upper part of registers is cleared or left unchanged. It might require some extra effort, if the emulated architecture has a different behavior from this PoV.
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But the fact is for emulation that these registers must be stored somewhere and that means RAM. Given that registers are loaded from variables sitting in memory a lot this may not matter that much. But it will impact on performance since there is no space for register only emulation and it will need to be mapped in and out as needed.

First, see above: ARMv8 has plenty of registers.
Second: x64 emulates decently PowerPCs (take a look at Apple's Rosetta), having only half the registers.
Third: processors have caches (up to L4 even in the "desktop" market. Take a look at Intel's CPU with Iris Pro iGPUs, which have up to 128MB of eDRAM), which can mitigate the lack of registers.
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Unless multiple cores can be used as a work around and another core or few used to cache the other set of registers.

Doesn't make sense talking of emulating another processor/ISA.

@iggy

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iggy wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Do you think that something will change sticking to a Do you think that something will change sticking to a dead platform ? You seem fixated on that term. But its just your opinion.

Correct me if I'm wrong: isn't it a forum? Wasn't it made to... exchange opinions?
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PowerPC cpus are incorporated into Power8 and 9 cpus as power and temperature monitors and controllers. And Power cpus (which run PPC software without a hitch) continue to be developed.

See above.

BTW, starting with POWER8, the POWER family moved to little-endian, and the most decent Linux distros only support this mode.
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While I support a shift to X64, your BS about "dead platforms" is tired and basically wrong.

First, be educated and polite: I haven't insulted your mother.
Second, I've expressed my legitimate opinion.
Third, whatever you like it or not, it's many years that there is NO new micro-architecture development on the PowerPC front. NOTHING. The core is the same, and the 6500 family is the last one. Yes, probably you'll see new chips with something different (for example a SoC with DDR4 support, PCI-Express 3.0, etc.), but re-using the same core. The same thing happened to the legacy architectures, which had updated the "peripheral" (uncore) part, while keeping the core more or less the same.
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PowerPC is not seeing significant investment, because the last cpus resemble Power4, while the Power line itself is now up to Power8 and 9. Not dead...moved on.

Move on the dark side, with the little-endian wide adoption. And since all relevant architectures are now LE, there'll less interest and less, and less, and less support for big-endian, with the conclusion that you can imagine.

Anyway, I don't think that you'll see a POWER processor on a post-Amiga PC, due to the high price. A simple PowerPC SoC in the $100 range is already sold in motherboards that cost plenty of $$$$, so I don't think that there'll be many post-Amiga fanatics that will ask for a mortgage to buy a POWER-based post-Amiga PC...

@WolfToTheMoon

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WolfToTheMoon wrote: I don't expect any new PowerPC designs from Qualcomm. They'll keep supplying current chips for years to come, but eventually it will become too expensive to use them as basis for new Aone computers. ARM is not a desktop chip, so, really, there's only one player in town.

*
@WolfpackN64

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WolfpackN64 wrote: @WolfToTheMoon Neither are the QorIQ chips used by NXP, they're embedded CPU's. It'll all depend if Qualcomm would want in on the defense market, since they are heavily reliant on PowerPC chips.

*

They have to keep it for legacy and legal (binding-contracts) reasons.

Aside that, PowerPC is in a dead-end even in the embedded front, due to ARM and Intel. Even NXP talks/ed of Intel has THE competitor.

@iggy

Quote:

iggy wrote: @WolfpackN64 Quote: ...QorIQ chips used by NXP... And that family was migrating to ARM before the NXP buyout of Freescale (let alone the Qualcomm buyout of NXP). ARM makes more sense for Qualcomm, considering their traditional market (although QorlQ is aimed at communications applications as well). And Qualcomm is not likely to become a partner with IBM in the development of Power processors (which are currently aimed solely at server applications). Its outside of their market. So...unless Power8/9 migrates down to humbler applications, ARM or better yet X64 DOES make more sense. We have a good ten years or so where the current cpus will still be available, but we DO need to plan ahead.

That's the only thing that you can expect: having PowerPCs SoCs available for several years.

But NOT new cores: the evolution is stopped. And already from a while.

It's only a matter to become conscious of that.

@nxp PPC news

I think Power Architecture will disappear from NXP roadmaps.
https://community.nxp.com/thread/459628

Higher clock rates or less power consumption to be expected, but no totally new chips.

Last edited by KimmoK on 17-Oct-2017 at 10:41 AM.

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

No surprise

they have shifted to ARM and will produce existing PPC chips as long there is enough need for it but not invest in new chip generations. It was easy predictable when you look at the company they now belong to.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 17-Oct-2017 at 12:36 PM.

@OlafS25

Yep.

In 2016 they had some "hints" of some new Power Architecture based layerscape chip.
But now it would seem there won't be any.

To me it seems Qoriq chips are selling ok, but it seems they consider ARM will deliver the same in the long run. Interesting to see if Open Power deliver any new low...mid range chip. Most likely not.

PowerPC chips will continue to be available for 10 years or so, but that's it.
(plenty to play with, then I hope there will be nice host for AOS4 SW on some other CPU architecture... is it AROS or MorphOS... we'll see.)

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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Yes, PPCs are part of their long term availability plan because they are being used in communications and military applications that also have a long life, but the writing is on the wall.

Switch to ARM, X64, or Power because PPCs are going to disappear in about a decade or so.

Plenty of time for us all to transition.

AROS is already X86/X64.

It is the stated intention of the MorphOS development team to move to that ISA.

OS4.X could be moved to ARM, X64, or Power.
Its all up to what the OS and the hardware vendor decides.

Personally I'll miss PPC, and I was a big advocate of ARM for MorphOS until that matter was decided (as its still RISC).
Maybe OS4.X/5 could move to ARM.
After all, the future IS compact, low power draw devices.

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@Beans

I've only ever used a G4 933Mhz chip in an iBook G4. Still working as a means to talk to an old scanner but I can't really stomach single core performance these days using MacOS!! I guess MorphOS and AmigaOS can still get away with it due to better efficiency! Enjoying my introduction to Quad Core computing

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@BigD

I have a late 2005 quad G5 that I run Linux on.
Its still reasonably competent and powerful.

And I can run newer video cards than Apple ever considered.
I'd love to have MorphOS support for this system, but the developers want to focus on the XS64 fork, and not on supporting additional PPC systems.
And MorphOS PPC doesn't have SMP support so 3/4 of the cpu power would go to waste.

My X64 systems start with a quad core laptop, I have an eight core desktop, and I'm thinking of upgrading to a Ryzen based system which while it would still only have eight cores, it would support sixteen threads.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@Beans

"Personally I'll miss PPC, and I was a big advocate of ARM for MorphOS until that matter was decided (as its still RISC).Maybe OS4.X/5 could move to ARM."

My crystal ball is fuzzy vs what CPU architecture is the best option in the long run.
Ideally OS should be fully and easily portable and application binary independent (etc).
But I'm afraid it might result in bloated and slow OS, unlike AmigaOS.

Previously x64 seemed like the best option.
But the cancellation of Atom series and other changes, I'm not sure if it's best for a small niche. (AMD chips with embedded Radeon seem cool, but will AMD "stand the test of time"?)

Also, previously ARM has not had useable options for desktop use. Not sure if there now is. But ARM's at least should be available "forever", IMO, now even more likely than x64. It seems even Microsoft is going to support ARM for laptop use.

Anyway... PPC is ok for now ... untill 24thread 64bit T4 SoCs become too slow for our SW needs or those become not available.

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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Quote:

Anyway... PPC is ok for now ... untill 24thread 64bit T4 SoCs become too slow for our SW needs or those become not available.

Yes, I'm working with Roberto Innocenti and the T2080 laptop group, and our plan is to get a T4 based laptop designed and prototyped (the T2080 being a low cost variant of the T4 e6500 cored cpus).
Those do top out at a slightly slower max frequency than the e5500 cored P5020 and P5040 (only 1.8 GHz vs 2.2 GHz), but they have a slightly higher MIPS rating and include AltiVec instructions the e5500 cored cpus do not.

Anyway, we have at least ten years before we hit a wall with this.

Its a shame NXP isn't going to advance their PPCs further.
They now have 64 bit cpus, they can operate in little endian mode, and they were enhancing AltiVec before this decision was made.
If they'd adopted the additional IBM VMX instructions, they could continue to use the latest Linux releases.
And with the advances they have made in process technology, scaling the operating frequencies shouldn't be that hard.
There are even a few of the later releases that support DDR4.
But...it is what it is.

As to Ryzen and AMD, I'm all for that with the X64 fork of MorphOS. The APUs that are slated for introduction will feature Ryzen cores combined with Radeon graphics. They could make an interesting basis for our new systems.
And I've been using AMD processor since before the first Athlon cpus were introduced.
While some of the processors before the Ryzen core were not as competitive as Intel cpus, they've still been quite solid, and AMD looks like they are firing on all cylinders right now.
Also, the added pressure on Intel will only force them to be more innovative.

Last edited by Beans on 18-Oct-2017 at 12:27 PM.

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@Beans

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Ryzen cores combined with Radeon graphics. They could make an interesting basis for our new systems.

My friends are complaining how AMD CPU's needs noisy coolers and makes noisy machines. Well, I don't have experience of Ryzen's.

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Also, the added pressure on Intel will only force them to be more innovative

Yes, putting pressure to competition is good always anywhere.

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@KimmoK

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Ideally OS should be fully and easily portable and application binary independent

I don't know if GCC can compile directly from memory to memory or if it's disk based only. But I've been trying to think how to make tokenized source code which is compiled to machine code at runtime.

Last edited by Tomppeli on 18-Oct-2017 at 01:52 PM.

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@Tomppeli

Quote:

But I've been trying to think how to make tokenized source code which is compiled to machine code at runtime.

Hmmm.. I guess everyone needs a hobby or is it just better than counting sheep?

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John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@KimmoK

Sigh. As always IBM create something interesting that soon after throw it to the IT big recycle bin.
Happened with OS/2, Visual Age for Basic, Visual Age for C, Lotus Smartsuite, PowerPC and so on...

With the Power 9 processor companies have the opportunity to build their own power 9 core...

Who knows, maybe someone in the Amiga land already have a Power 9

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@Tomppeli

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AMD CPU's needs noisy coolers and makes noisy machines.

My 8 core FX8350 based system is not particularly noisy.
I have a large heatsink with a over-sized low speed fan on it and the loudest thing in the system is my Radeon HD video card.

Ryzen does not significant improve on the thermal properties of previous AMD processors, but the APU I mentioned will make nice laptop processors and in that application should be no noisier than Intel based machines.

And yes, competition is really important to the market or we would still be suffering with processors like the P4.

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@AmigaBlitter

Quote:

Sigh. As always IBM create something interesting that soon after throw it to the IT big recycle bin. Happened with OS/2, Visual Age for Basic, Visual Age for C, Lotus Smartsuite, PowerPC and so on... With the Power 9 processor companies have the opportunity to build their own power 9 core... Who knows, maybe someone in the Amiga land already have a Power 9

Well, OS2 struggles on.
Lotus SmartSuite WAS interesting, I had a copy of that and preferred it to Office.
PowerPC had a good run, considering it was just a subset of Power, which continues to be developed.

And Raptor Engineering has offered relatively affordable Power9 based TalosII boards (only a few hundred more than the X5000 and much more powerful).

Amiga could move to Power 9, but its unlikely as the bulk of the community appears to want more affordable hardware (even if it leads to systems that have performance and compatibility issues).

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Amiga! "Our appeal has become more selective"

@Beans

"My 8 core FX8350 based system is not particularly noisy."

Same for FX4300. But, IIRC I changed better than standard fan to the cooler.
I have passively cooled nvidia GPU in the box, so I can not fully silence the case.

About CPUs... I's a shame if in future we have only one or two available CPU ISA.
CPU innovation might die and the life of niches might become harder.

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@Tomppeli

"complaining how AMD CPU's"

I would nag about instability. So far I have no stable linux distro on any of my AMD HW systems.
(I imagine, it is partly because there exist billion of HW combinations to support in x64 arena, developers face impossible situation to support them all, so, it is lottery to try find stable combination.)

Last edited by KimmoK on 19-Oct-2017 at 08:03 AM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?