@damocles

So basically, the article writer had about as much info as us.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil: but conclusions are the same, obvious, ones.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: @olegil: but conclusions are the same, obvious, ones.

Obvious my arse.

Freescale would be crazy not to invest in ARM, and certainly trying to move their new products out the door is the smart thing to do. That takes money and hype.

They have also said PPC is in their future and just because those chips are languishing pretty much at this time does not mean the product line, nor the architecture, is dead. At one time in the 90's Acorn Risc Machines were also pronounced dead. Time moves on and what was once out of favor finds new beginnings, no matter what the local sooth sayers blabber on about.

Me? I cannot see the future, and I don't believe or trust anyone that says they can.

_________________
Tinkering with computers.

@Signal: ARM is evolving, whereas PowerPCs are not. So, yes, I can see the future: for ARM, but NOT for PowerPCs. PowerPCs are dead.

@cdimauro

Quote:

PowerPCs are dead.

What do you think you will reach repeating such sentence endlessly ? Make yourself feeling easier ? Suddenly 1 million ex-Amigans coming back to the platform who left it 20 years ago and moved to Windows ? That brings rich investors pouring millions of money to Amiga business suddenly ?

_________________
Rock lobster bit me. My Workbench has always preferences. X1000 + AmigaOS4.1 FE
"Anyone can build a fast CPU. The trick is to build a fast system." -Seymour Cray

@Tomppeli: no. It's just fact checking. Do you think that something will change sticking to a dead platform?

So, what are the prospects of emulating PowerPC on an ARM, as part of a hypothetical ARM-based Amiga? Would a relatively-low-priced ARM-based processor run PowerPC emulation at at least native-PowerPC speeds? Maybe for cheaper than an existing PowerPC-based Amiga?

_________________
"I love peacenicks, they're so easy to conquer." --Ivan J Ironfist, the Dictator

Interesting about Freescale & NXP merge and some tough comments:
http://electronicdesign.com/embedded/qa-tom-starnes-examines-nxp-freescale-union

Other recent writing:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2880772/defections-to-arm-hurt-powerpc-mips.html

Last edited by KimmoK on 02-Jul-2015 at 08:00 AM.

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

@NomadOfNorad

>So, what are the prospects of emulating PowerPC on an ARM, as part of a hypothetical ARM-based Amiga?

So far ARM CPUs have been slower than PowerPC ones, while now the fastest ARM cores (available beyond Apple) are roughly equall to PPC core in performance per Mhz.
Then one must remember that ARM and PPC perform maximum of 50% of the performance / Mhz of i7 CPU.

And I read that with a very fast intel CPU, one gets some 700Mhz single core PPC speed to run AOS4 via WinUAE.

So, for example with some 900Mhz RPi2 I would expect the emulation speed to be around 100Mhz PPC.

>Would a relatively-low-priced ARM-based processor run PowerPC emulation at at least native-PowerPC speeds?

No. (see above)

>Maybe for cheaper than an existing PowerPC-based Amiga?

Cheaper but only 1/10 of the native performance = unusefull.


(too) Simple math:

Cheapest Quadcore 1,4 Ghz PPC parts cost EUR60 or so but I do not have a price for similarly usefull ARM SoC. But in practice, if (imaginary) A1X600 would costs EUR1000 with PPC, the same design would cost more than EUR940 with ARM.

On the other hand.
Some 1,7Ghz ARM devices have been sold for EUR65 or so.
To manufacture identical HW with PPC SoC costs EUR125 or so.

Price difference of EUR125 vs our current HW is huge, that gap must be filled (while we wait for the death of the PPC... )

Last edited by KimmoK on 02-Jul-2015 at 07:40 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 02-Jul-2015 at 07:34 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 02-Jul-2015 at 07:34 AM.

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

@Signal

Quote:

At one time in the 90's Acorn Risc Machines were also pronounced dead.

The A in ARM changed to "Advanced" in 1990, as Acorn spun it off into a separate company, and from there it only grew - no time during the 90's were the ARM architecture pronounced dead, on contrary, that was the decade it really grew into what it is today! Remember Apple Newton? Psion? Symbian/EPOC32? Sharp Zaurus? Windows CE? This is just from the top of my head, and all ARM. ARM is definitely the most popular architecture in my household since the late 90's.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kolla

Can you even buy new ARM or PPC CPUs anywhere ?

I thought that by today there would be some kind of
standardized socket for these but it seems that it will
never happen.

http://www.arm.com/products/buying-guide/index.php

I imagine it would be even harder for MIPS.

To clarify : I would like to buy 1 (one) with box cooler

@blizz1220

There is no market for socketed ARM & PPC chips, therefore they do not exist.

(unless AMD does it, IIRC, they were developing ARM chip to fit on their x64 chip socket)

Last edited by KimmoK on 02-Jul-2015 at 10:35 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 02-Jul-2015 at 10:34 AM.

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

@KimmoK

That would be interesting , I remember I had VIA C3
(I think) CPU motherboard at one point at it was nice
to see someone else can make their own CPUs (although
it was soldered on and slow).

Current model looks to me like it is made for big companies
that can license and manufacture and then smaller company
can buy parts and then again even smaller company can
buy again and sell to end user which won't really help any
of those CPUs ever reach desktop market.

Refresh...

NXP forums:
Q:
"On spec-wise LS1021A or P2020 could be a choice, but which one to go with, ARM or Power Architecture core ?
Does NXP continue freescale longevity program?
Is there plans to stop producing new Power Architecture processors, or is the ARM product line just a spin-off test?"
A:
"NET-N1863 What's Next for QorIQ - Portfolio and Roadmap.pdf ( https://community.nxp.com/docs/DOC-331653 )
According to pages 11 and 13, we are currently have roadmaps both Power-based and ARM-based solutions.
I'm not aware about any plans to stop producing new Power Architecture processors, but as you can see the next Power-based processor is not announced for this moment.
Currently, we offer ARM products for Mid-performance and Low-power networking product segments, Power-based solutions for High-performance networking segment."


Vague "next gen" info is shown for example here: (16Mar2016, page8)
https://freescale.jiveon.com/docs/DOC-330317

Freescale (with Arm and PPC knowhow) fused with NXP (with ARM knowhow) then they fused with Qualcomm (very strong ARM competence):
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2016/10/27/qualcomm-acquire-nxp

NXP is finacially "ok".
http://investors.nxp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=209114&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2269650
"Net income (loss) attributable to stockholders 1,3billion$"


If one would bet, ARM will be their future, even when PowerArchitecture is not dead yet.

http://www.kpda.ru/upload/iblock/4b0/akimenko_19.04.16.pdf (see page 12)
LS3XXXp (EE 3Q2017 LE 2Q2018), LT31xxP (EE 4Q2017 LE 3Q2018), LT10xxP(e6500based, EE 3Q2017 LE 1Q2018)


Latest:

Interestingly NXP ignores their e6500 when doing comparison that favors ARM:
http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/supporting-information/DN-Digital%20Networking%20solution-2017.pdf

10...15year longevity program at least ensure PPC availability.

Here, page 25, show NXP ARM chips closing up (and going beyond) vs NXP PPC in performance:
http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/supporting-information/DN-Robotics%20and%20LS104x.pdf

Unless NXP suddenly/unexpectedly puts out a 16nm PPC chip... I think we might not see any new PPC chip from NXP.

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

@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.

@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. 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. Perhaps registers these days are thought to be an obsolete concept along with absolute hardware sprites. And if code doesn't use the upper registers it won't matter much. 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. Unless multiple cores can be used as a work around and another core or few used to cache the other set of registers.

@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.

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.

While I support a shift to X64, your BS about "dead platforms" is tired and basically wrong.

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.

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.

_________________

@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.

@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.