Any news?

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A1200 + (looking for bppc060) + bvppc + Indivision AGA MKII + OS 3.9
A3000 + OS 3.9

@coriolis

It is dead.

@pavlor

Sorry, I mean news about TiNA

There are a lot of vaporware Amiga products which was developed for a long time, had hardware/software prototypes but never released. For example - Phase 5 A/Box. A lot of money and time was spent for R&D works. So I really can't understand why all of development information (source codes, PCB projects etc) always disappeared after project crash?

People really burn its time and money.

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A1200 + (looking for bppc060) + bvppc + Indivision AGA MKII + OS 3.9
A3000 + OS 3.9

@coriolis

Quote:

I mean news about TiNA

As stated on their page latest news are from May 2013. June just started so be patient

@coriolis

Quote:

Sorry, I mean news about TiNA

They seem to be alive and progressing well. However, TiNA is in some aspects even more ambitious than Natami.

@pavlor

progressing well? what is this knowledge based on?

@RNS-Amiga-Scientist

Quote:

As stated on their page latest news are from May 2013. June just started so be patient

nice picture on website

@wawa

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progressing well? what is this knowledge based on?

That is what they say on their forum. Is it really so? I don´t know.

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pavlor wrote: @coriolis It is dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGWwiqbBZzM

@OlafS25

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OlafS25 wrote: @ErikBauer I hope that the people who have already started such a project or even finished come and work together to create something really big and make the right (in the sense of realistic) decisions

I'd like to see one of these FPGA boards made with Zorro & Video slots.

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Quote:

coriolis wrote: @pavlor Sorry, I mean news about TiNA There are a lot of vaporware Amiga products which was developed for a long time, had hardware/software prototypes but never released. For example - Phase 5 A/Box. A lot of money and time was spent for R&D works. So I really can't understand why all of development information (source codes, PCB projects etc) always disappeared after project crash? People really burn its time and money.

Yes, we know that the Amiga community had experiences with projects that claimed big things, and then disappeared.

With TiNA we have decided to release news only when some goal is met. For example, recently we have moved from a custom daughter board to the regular SODIMMs, dropping also the SDRAM and using DDR2 as memory type, and you see it in the news in our site.

The engineers now are working to check the maximum speed that can be reached. We are still trying to keep the 128-bit memory bus (to gain a massive bandwidth), and personally I'm thinking about the protocol for a couple of parallel, independent, buses to let the FPGAs communicate without using the memory bus for this operation.

Anyway, the project will be open sourced. May be after we have the first working boards. We think that a collaborative approach with the Amiga community is a must have, if we want to reach goals sooner. As a "side effect", the community will have the project in his hands. ;)

@cdimauro

the board itself will be opensourced too?

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Yes, an MMU can help, but AmigaOS doesn't support it very well. Thats a good thing, as you are basically free to do what ever you like.

Yes.
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Extending the CPU ISA might also be possible in the FPGA, but it harder thing to do, and you need complete OS rewrite to take full advantage,

I don't think so. You can recompile the o.s., once you have the source code. AROS makes it possible.
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Way not just simply forget the 680x0 in FPGA, and go for PowerPC 64bit whit 680x0 JIT.

Erik already answered.

Anyway, I wouldn't go for a PowerPC, since it's a dead platform. The available cores have poor single-thread performance, which is a must have for this particular task (emulation; even using a JIT).

Also 64 bits are useless for this purpose, especially for PowerPCs, since there's a loss on performance operating in this mode (larger pointers and usually larger integers; all this stresses the data cache/L2/L3/memory and the TLB cache).

ARMs aren't better, since they haven't good single-thread performance.

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @cdimauro the board itself will be opensourced too?

I don't know it. I can't answer right now.

@coriolis

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coriolis wrote: What about donations for this new Amiga-clone project? I think that it will be right to have a milestones which will have a money rewards for the tasks.

It's quite premature. Let the board be available first.

After that, I think that donations can be used for bounties, to address specific needs.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Anyway, I wouldn't go for a PowerPC, since it's a dead platform. The available cores have poor single-thread performance, which is a must have for this particular task (emulation; even using a JIT).

Good old 750FX 800 MHz can reach 300+ MHz 68060 performance with Petunia JIT. Your FPGA 68k core will be faster? Good luck!

@pavlor

You hafta emulate the chipset with the CPU also.

Once you actually emuiate a real Amiga then you don't get such amazing cpu speeds.

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@ChaosLord

Quote:

Once you actually emuiate a real Amiga then you don't get such amazing cpu speeds.

Why? Old OCS/AGA games usually don´t need more than 68030 (there are exceptions like AB3D2 - but that was fully playable with JIT even on old P4 1.4 GHz). RTG compliant applications (and some games) work faaaast with current Petunia or Trance JIT.

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Anyway, I wouldn't go for a PowerPC, since it's a dead platform. The available cores have poor single-thread performance, which is a must have for this particular task (emulation; even using a JIT). Good old 750FX 800 MHz can reach 300+ MHz 68060 performance with Petunia JIT. Your FPGA 68k core will be faster? Good luck!

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @ChaosLord Quote: Once you actually emuiate a real Amiga then you don't get such amazing cpu speeds. Why? Old OCS/AGA games usually don´t need more than 68030 (there are exceptions like AB3D2 - but that was fully playable with JIT even on old P4 1.4 GHz). RTG compliant applications (and some games) work faaaast with current Petunia or Trance JIT.

Please, don't mix the two things: they are different and unrelated.

I've stated that PowerPC is a dead platform, and it can be questionable: you can have a different idea. No problem here.

Then I said the most important thing: available PowerPC cores have poor single-thread performance. This isn't questionable: it's a fact. How can a simple dual-issue PowerPC core (e6500, which is the most modern stuff) compete with authentic monsters that are available for other microprocessor families?
OK, G4s can do better, but they have an old design and limited frequencies, so the overall speed isn't great.

If you can have very good performance in a specific, limited, scenario (mostly RTG / not hardware-hitting software) with a 750FX model, it doesn't change what I described above.

Also, you "forgot" the originating (sub)discussion: we were talking about a complete (and compatible) Amiga system. Petunia can't run hardware-hitting stuff (albeit for some very limited cases, if I remember correctly). So citing Petunia in this context is irrelevant: you're comparing apples and oranges.

Last but not least, PowerPCs are so "fast" that even a 460 running at 1,13Ghz isn't capable to emulate (with good accuracy) a complete Amiga 1200 (from what I've read).

Frankly speaking, I can't understand why so many peoples request new, more powerful, PowerPC hardware, if they already have very capable processors available...

@cdimauro

Wow, this looks like a neat project. Please learn from the mistakes of the natami team and don't let the feature list grow for years.

On the topic of learning from others' mistakes: I'm a bit concerned by the move from SDRAM to DDR memory. What steps are you taking to make sure that you won't have the same memory module compatibility problems that the AmigaOne SE/XE did? From the various forum discussions back then it came out that DDR is notoriously fickle and it takes someone with the resources of Intel or AMD to make a memory controller that will work reliably with most store-bought RAM (MAI Logic didn't...) I myself had to re-buy my RAM twice, eventually what worked was a module I bought from an AW forum member who'd done the research and worked out which specific memory chips worked with the XE's memory controller.

Last edited by CodeSmith on 09-Jun-2013 at 10:37 PM.