Ok Apollo Vampire is very good project although it is hardware for me it is still kind of emulator technology. And limited future besides hobby.

So i am wondering is not it better to have x86/x64 intel or amd based accelerator with special UAE kernel? So we may have option to increase our classic speeds to 68080 or PPC. Besides we have chance to run some windows or macos based programs.

@aracnet

1. It's not emulator technology in any way shape or form. That's just not what FPGA's are.

2. PC add-in cards are something that were made for classic macs a long time ago. Technically, it's possible, but it would need to have a large enough demand.

@aracnet

Quote:

So i am wondering is not it better to have x86/x64 intel or amd based accelerator with special UAE kernel?

If you would plug such a device into an OCS/ECS/AGA Amiga wouldn't you just want to emulate the 68k?

@Rob

Not only for that, you will have also chance to emulate ppc means os4, you can also emulate Windows or osX.

Nobe of fpga can reach same speeds with simillar price range.

@WolfpackN64

Are there any PCI cpu cards beside the 'Sonnet Crescendo' ??

according to person behind fpga arcade, this system will offer an expansion with 68k emulation running on arm processor as accelaration inclusive jit, as long as mmu capabilities are not required.
this is probably the closest to what the original poster is asking for.

@aracnet

Just yesterday I was asking the almost same thing in a random comment in the C=Amiga Facebook group. Except was thinking x86 or ARM. I don't think UAE is needed as it would just need to emulate CPU. Even an interpretive emulator would be fast I think. What it would need to do is be able to simulate the code so that memory reads and writes would access the amiga adddress bus and data lines. Possibly it could do this by brute force and check it manually or program the MMU. But it would IMHO need to treat the memory like a 32bit I/O port mapped to specific addresses. 6502 and 6800 used memory mapped I/O but Z80 and 8086 used specific instructions for it. Be interesting to see if possible though.

@Hypex
My starting point was if amigan are paying to none 68k cpu since ppc line is too expensive, why we wouldn't use cheap and more powerful cpu than fgpa?

Because according to reviews winuae or raspberrypi based amiga emulations are more powerful than real 68k or vampire amigas.also they have chance to emulate ppc os.

Ps: i have no idea how % performance of speed of real intel cpu for ppc emulation. Does anybody test it? Can it be close tı sam or a1k?

You do realise you're kinda contradicting yourself:

Quote:

Ok Apollo Vampire is very good project although it is hardware for me it is still kind of emulator technology

. No it is not. It's actually creating real electronic circuits in a chip. Compare it with a rewritable CD/DVD, this is not emulating an audio cd/cd rom, it can actually hav a 1 to 1 copy of a real CD. And after erasing you can burn another CD. Similar with reprogramming the FPGA with a different circuit.

Quote:

So i am wondering is not it better to have x86/x64 intel or amd based accelerator with special UAE kernel

This will require emulation of 68x/PPC in the software that runs natively on the x86 or ARM cpu.

So apart from x86/ARM maybe being more value/speed for money the FPGA approach is much more efficient

Last edited by spud101 on 04-Sep-2017 at 09:55 PM.

@spud101

If an x86 processor emulating a 68k/PPC is cheaper and faster how is it less efficient? Power? If you assume that a low end Intel processor uses 15W but is 50x faster instead of 1-2W it's still more power efficient. On a low end laptop running UAE you can get 1600 MIPS / 700 MFLOPS, that's 10x faster in Integer than a Vampire and at least 140x faster in FPU, they say with emulation Vampire V2 might someday reach 5 MFLOPS.

@Goodtar

I am curious, what are you want to use such CPU power for a classic Amiga?
Are you going to write OS3.x softwares that needs that speed?
Or do you working on a new full blown OS maybe with compatibility?

@Goodtar
I totally agree with you, please somebody explain me what is more efficient?

If we have faster speeds with emulation than fpga "real cpu" with same price levels, why we are sticking to fpga?

With more speed you can do whatever vampires can not do, plus better AROS performance, better PC and mac emulation, better Linux performance even chance to work with AmigaOS4.

@aracnet

Quote:

So i am wondering is not it better to have x86/x64 intel or amd based accelerator with special UAE kernel?

Main cost of an accelerator for an Amiga are not dependent on the CPU.

Such an accelerator board will still cost more than a VampireV4 a PC will be cheaper.

@aracnet

Are you basically suggesting an updated version of Amithlon?

@ne_one

Quote:

ne_one wrote: @aracnet Are you basically suggesting an updated version of Amithlon?

Sounds like it to me too! So you still need someone to write the emulator to run with the 68k MotherBoard. Sounds tricky and expensive.

@QuikSanz

Probably yes but for custom hardware and capability to emulate ppc too.

How much money do you expect such an operation?

@aracnet

more money that it is worth to discuss.

@aracnet

There'd be no point in using UAE. You might as well just get an off the shelf PC to do that since there would be no communication between the PC and Amiga apart from a serial link or ethernet. You could possibly fit a higher performance ITX board in the same case as an Amiga. Years ago Eyetech sold a PC in a tower that could accommodate an A1200, it came supplied with a PCMCIA NIC and the Siamese software to do exacly that.

Really you'd want a minimal Linux kernel with just a CPU emulator. I'm not sure what hardware and software trickery would be required to make the Amiga think it was just another 68k series processor card and RAM but it bound to add a significant cost to an expensive low volume board. Adding PowerPC emulation to the mix would likely push it past the purchase price of an X5000 and it still wouldn't be capable of running Warp3D Nova, although a Mediator would at least allow you to use a Radeon 9200 making it better than UAE.

@aracnet

Quote:

Probably yes but for custom hardware and capability to emulate ppc too. How much money do you expect such an operation?

The time and cost to develop such a solution would be beyond comprehension and you would still just end up with faster version of UAE.

@aracnet

Yes I could see your point. I'm sure this is an old idea. But putting a PPC on board and emulating the 68K with that might seem a more logical choice. Infact I wonder if a cheap PPC SoC could be fitted to an accelerator board that would match the Vampire on price and emulate code faster? Didn't we already have a PPC board in the works?

The idea could be extended to replacing a PowerPC chip. But I suspect that even without thinking about the emulation that implementing the logic required to convert an x86 board into a plug in PPC replacement board would not be worth it. And you might as well customise a PC with custom firmware that has an embedded PPC emulator which simulates a UBoot enviroment so it can boot OS4.