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kolla 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 11-Aug-2021 7:05:03
#41 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Aug-2003
Posts: 2859
From: Trondheim, Norway

@matthey

The CPU isn’t what makes Amiga, “banging the hardware” is all about the chipset. If you wish to prevent it, you don’t need just a faster CPU, you need a better OS, one that has a very rich abstraction layer for the chipset and that will not allow direct “banging”. Such operating systems do exist, but you loath them :)

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saimo 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 11-Aug-2021 11:29:20
#42 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Mar-2003
Posts: 2450
From: Unknown

@matthey

Quote:
I wish we had 68k hardware which was powerful enough (68060+ performance) and cheap enough (less than $100 for a board) to upgrade the Amiga base so banging the hardware is unnecessary.

Kolla provided a good answer and my previous posts also should have addressed this, but anyway...
* raw CPU power alone doesn't allow to unlock all the possibilities of the chipset if they are hidden behind the OS - in that case, the chipset can't be made to do more than the OS, more or less indirectly, allows;
* the OS cannot be expected to cover all the possible cases and would hinder innovation;
* the execution speed depends heavily on the chipset, so, no matter how powerful the CPU is, the additional overhead of the OS might make it impossible to achieve some effects (for example, the timing-critical ones);
* not all users can be expected to buy (powerful) expansions;
* even if there had been a magic expansion hardware and a magic OS that made hardware banging "unnecessary", how about the personal fun and satisfaction factors I already talked about? Those are completely "necessary" to me and many others.


EDIT:

@noXLar @emeck

Last edited by saimo on 11-Aug-2021 at 11:30 AM.

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ppcamiga1 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 12-Aug-2021 20:27:05
#43 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 23-Aug-2015
Posts: 762
From: Unknown

@saimo

Quote:

the only crusade is topic of writing code that bangs the hardware, my believe is that should always have a software API, in between the hardware and software, I believe allows for flexibility and allows users to take advantage of addons, highend sound card, graphic cards, and USB controllers, or other upgrades like scsi / sata / sas or whatever. If take over the OS, and stop multitasking, then you kill all drivers and upgrades.


You have problem with that? It is pure truth.
Problem with hardware banging software it works only on specific hardware.
It is big problem when this hardware is hard to get,
underpowered and overpriced beyond rationality.
Prices of AGA hardware today are pure BS.
It is ok to say use os.
SAGA is little better but not so much.




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saimo 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 12-Aug-2021 21:36:40
#44 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Mar-2003
Posts: 2450
From: Unknown

@ppcamiga1

Quote:
You have problem with that? It is pure truth.
Problem with hardware banging software it works only on specific hardware.
It is big problem when this hardware is hard to get,
underpowered and overpriced beyond rationality.
Prices of AGA hardware today are pure BS.
It is ok to say use os.
SAGA is little better but not so much.

Everything you say has already been addressed, but you ignored all that has been said and again rehash the usual flawed arguments. I'm not going to waste further time with who doesn't want or isn't capable to have a proper conversation.

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amigadave 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 12-Aug-2021 22:36:09
#45 ]
Super Member
Joined: 18-Jul-2005
Posts: 1731
From: Lake Shastina, Northern Calif.

@saimo

Quote:

saimo wrote:
@ppcamiga1
Everything you say has already been addressed, but you ignored all that has been said and again rehash the usual flawed arguments. I'm not going to waste further time with who doesn't want or isn't capable to have a proper conversation.


In other words, DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!

ppcamiga1's arguments are so predictable and laughable.

Last edited by amigadave on 12-Aug-2021 at 10:36 PM.

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matthey 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 13-Aug-2021 1:47:52
#46 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

kolla Quote:

The CPU isn’t what makes Amiga, “banging the hardware” is all about the chipset. If you wish to prevent it, you don’t need just a faster CPU, you need a better OS, one that has a very rich abstraction layer for the chipset and that will not allow direct “banging”. Such operating systems do exist, but you loath them :)


It was lack of CPU power which often required banging the hardware on the Amiga. It is lack of CPU power by the average Amiga 68k user base that still requires banging the hardware. Super cheap hardware and much improved CPU performance should allow the average Amiga user base hardware performance to increase so banging the hardware is not necessary. A rich "abstraction layer" and memory protection would have meant that fewer games would have been created for the Amiga due to decreased system performance.

I don't loath Unix like OSs. They are valuable tools for desktops and servers. They are the wrong tools for most embedded systems though. Free OSs have taken market share from and sometimes destroyed development of OSs which are superior for embedded systems to be displaced by an OS inferior for those systems and applications. Part of the problem is the lack of a standard embedded hardware target, other than the Raspberry Pi recently, while standard desktop and server x86-64 hardware provided a better software development target. Some of this software has been ported to embedded systems giving Unix like systems an advantage. Unix like and Windows OSs should not be used in 80% of the embedded market!

saimo Quote:

Kolla provided a good answer and my previous posts also should have addressed this, but anyway...
* raw CPU power alone doesn't allow to unlock all the possibilities of the chipset if they are hidden behind the OS - in that case, the chipset can't be made to do more than the OS, more or less indirectly, allows;


The AmigaOS tried to provide support for mid level access to the hardware using libraries and devices and lower level access using resources. Some Amiga programmers would say the developers didn't optimize the AmigaOS enough but the primary problem was a lack of CPU performance. Later, the Amiga chipset hardware was not upgraded adequately compounding the problem even when the CPU was upgraded. There were areas where the AmigaOS needed improvement like the audio.device. There were areas where the AmigaOS had trouble efficiently providing support like shared access to the copper. I still think better CPU performance did the most to improve this situation and with the least amount of effort. The base Amiga system standard moved up to a 68020+AGA which was a significantly less restrictive standard even though it was too little too late.

saimo Quote:

* the OS cannot be expected to cover all the possible cases and would hinder innovation;


Programs in other more controlled and secure OSs don't typically try to hack their way into control to innovate. Are you suggesting the Amiga allows more innovation because it gives the freedom to do anything? Linux like systems are oppressive and suppressive of innvoation?

saimo Quote:

* the execution speed depends heavily on the chipset, so, no matter how powerful the CPU is, the additional overhead of the OS might make it impossible to achieve some effects (for example, the timing-critical ones);


A 68060 with OCS is likely a bigger improvement than 68000 with AGA. Granted, CBM used the cheapest possible chip memory throughout the life of the Amiga which slowed down the fastest processors. The 68060 allowed to bypass the slow hardware blitter and render directly to a chunky buffer which could be converted with C2P on the fly. I already mentioned the CPU is easier to upgrade too.

saimo Quote:

* not all users can be expected to buy (powerful) expansions;


Never all users would upgrade. I believe most would upgrade if hardware was cheap and powerful enough. The original hardware would still have a coolness factor but more modern and powerful hardware does too and should be easier to use. I expect a large percent of the active C64 market has upgraded to the full sized THEC64 hardware. I couldn't find sales numbers but prices of original C64 hardware have dropped out of orbit according to collectors. The Amiga would need better hardware to do the same in the Amiga market but it should be more upgradeable and usable hardware that would appeal to a larger part of the retro market.

saimo Quote:

* even if there had been a magic expansion hardware and a magic OS that made hardware banging "unnecessary", how about the personal fun and satisfaction factors I already talked about? Those are completely "necessary" to me and many others.


I'm not talking about taking anyone's freedom away but about giving more and better choices.

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Hammer 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 13-Aug-2021 8:03:31
#47 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@matthey

Quote:

A 680x0 core in an FPGA is at slower clock speeds because of routing and resource limitations in a FPGA. The Motorola/Freescale 680x0 chips are at slower clock speeds because of the old chip fab process used. Complexity can improve performance which is why modern desktop processors often have more complexity than the 68060 and use many times the number of transistors. The 1994 68060 was ~2,500,000 transistors while a 2019 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X is ~9,890,000,000 transistors which is ~3956 times the number of transistors.

FYI, the second 2nd gen classic Pentium 75 to 120 Mhz has the same 0.6 µm process node as Rev 1 XC68060.

68060 reached 0.42 µm process node. 68060 mask 71E41J can reach 133 Mhz.

Pentium 120 to 233 has 0.35 µm process node.

Pentium II 300 "Klamath" has 300 Mhz with 0.35 µm process node.

Performance per watt and clock speed can improve within the same process node.

PS; Ryzen 9 3900X has the same transistor count as Ryzen 9 3950X i.e. they are the same chips with different active CPU core counts.

Ryzen 9 3900X is nearly SoC without iGP. 68060 CPU doesn't have northbridge and southbridge functions. 8 cores Zen 2 chiplet has about 3.8 billion transistors.

Last edited by Hammer on 13-Aug-2021 at 03:53 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 13-Aug-2021 at 08:46 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 13-Aug-2021 at 08:41 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 13-Aug-2021 at 08:11 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 13-Aug-2021 at 08:09 AM.

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saimo 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 13-Aug-2021 13:03:49
#48 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Mar-2003
Posts: 2450
From: Unknown

@matthey

Quote:
Quote:

Kolla provided a good answer and my previous posts also should have addressed this, but anyway...
* raw CPU power alone doesn't allow to unlock all the possibilities of the chipset if they are hidden behind the OS - in that case, the chipset can't be made to do more than the OS, more or less indirectly, allows;

The AmigaOS tried to provide support for mid level access to the hardware using libraries and devices and lower level access using resources. Some Amiga programmers would say the developers didn't optimize the AmigaOS enough but the primary problem was a lack of CPU performance. Later, the Amiga chipset hardware was not upgraded adequately compounding the problem even when the CPU was upgraded. There were areas where the AmigaOS needed improvement like the audio.device. There were areas where the AmigaOS had trouble efficiently providing support like shared access to the copper. I still think better CPU performance did the most to improve this situation and with the least amount of effort. The base Amiga system standard moved up to a 68020+AGA which was a significantly less restrictive standard even though it was too little too late.

The fact alone that, as you correctly pointed out, the OS provides a few methods to use the hardware more or less directly is a proof that:
* the OS doesn't provide enough functionality to get the hardware to do all that it is capable of;
* to get the most out of the hardware OS abstraction is not the way to go.
In theory, the OS could be continuously improved to offer more and more functionality, but it will never allow to get the hardware to do all that it is capable of for technical limitations and because the OS developers can't possibly think of all the uses and cases game/demo/application developers can come up with.
A better CPU helps without doubt, but, as already said, raw CPU power (which is hindered by the slow bus access to CHIP RAM and chipset anyway) isn't all there is to it.

Quote:
Quote:

* the OS cannot be expected to cover all the possible cases and would hinder innovation;

Programs in other more controlled and secure OSs don't typically try to hack their way into control to innovate. Are you suggesting the Amiga allows more innovation because it gives the freedom to do anything? Linux like systems are oppressive and suppressive of innvoation?

I couldn't care less about what is done on other systems based on a totally different philosophy. What I meant - and it should have been clear from the context where my statement is - is that if the hardware gets totally hidden behind the OS API, then it isn't possible to come up with new tricks that exploit the hardware features (and maybe even bugs). The C64 is older and much simpler than the Amiga, and still, to this day, new discoveries are made, new tricks are invented, new technicques are developed, new barriers are broken. The same - and probably even more, considering its greater complexity - can be and is done with the Amiga. The moment direct access to hardware gets inhibited, it isn't any longer possible to innovate in that way/sense.

Quote:
Quote:

* the execution speed depends heavily on the chipset, so, no matter how powerful the CPU is, the additional overhead of the OS might make it impossible to achieve some effects (for example, the timing-critical ones);

A 68060 with OCS is likely a bigger improvement than 68000 with AGA. Granted, CBM used the cheapest possible chip memory throughout the life of the Amiga which slowed down the fastest processors. The 68060 allowed to bypass the slow hardware blitter and render directly to a chunky buffer which could be converted with C2P on the fly. I already mentioned the CPU is easier to upgrade too.

You know what? I knew that such suggestion would come up sooner or later In fact, I had even started anticipating the answer to it, but eventually I decided not to complicate things before strictly necessary.
Anyway, sure, it is well possible to do what you say; it's also possible to mount a monster CPU with the fastest RAM possible, and maybe a powerful GPU, and maybe even a controller that automatically fetches the video data from the local RAM and pushes it to the CHIP RAM to have it displayed through the Amiga video out; and why not a complete system virtually capable of running the whole OS on its own? The point is: what for? The Amiga would end up being just an I/O interface. As nice-looking and heart-warming as you want, but still it wouldn't do much beyond working as an I/O passthrough. Just add an HDMI out and some USB ports for input devices to a expansion board of that kind and you don't need the Amiga anymore - wait, the Vampire isn't that far from that, is it?
Now, whoever likes such concept: no problem! Go for it. Just don't ask me to go that route too and don't try to convince me that such solution makes hardware-banging "unnecessary" (because it's dead false).

Quote:
Quote:

* not all users can be expected to buy (powerful) expansions;

Never all users would upgrade.

Exactly. Therefore, such mystical cheap hardware expansion that would make hardware-banging "unnecessary" wouldn't actually achieve such an objective (and this is just one of the reasons of the failure - the rest is covered by the previous replies) - don't forget that this is all that's being discussed here.

Quote:
I believe most would upgrade if hardware was cheap and powerful enough. The original hardware would still have a coolness factor but more modern and powerful hardware does too and should be easier to use.

No problem with anyone wanting a more modern and powerful hardware, but who prefers to stick to the original Amiga and to enojoy programming its hardware directly shouldn't be a victim of any crusade. Personally, I'm not interested at all in an Amiga that does more that its original design allows it to: if I wanted a powerful CPU, chunky graphics, 3D, etc. I could simply turn on any PC to get all of that and even more. So, why should anyone come and tell me how I have to enjoy my Amiga?

Quote:
I expect a large percent of the active C64 market has upgraded to the full sized THEC64 hardware. I couldn't find sales numbers but prices of original C64 hardware have dropped out of orbit according to collectors. The Amiga would need better hardware to do the same in the Amiga market but it should be more upgradeable and usable hardware that would appeal to a larger part of the retro market.

Sorry, but I'm not interested in this hardware market talk. All I'm saying is: the crusade against hardware-banging software isn't acceptable (for the reasons already explained) and certainly whatever happens in the hardware market doesn't make it more acceptable.

Quote:
Quote:

* even if there had been a magic expansion hardware and a magic OS that made hardware banging "unnecessary", how about the personal fun and satisfaction factors I already talked about? Those are completely "necessary" to me and many others.

I'm not talking about taking anyone's freedom away but about giving more and better choices.

The problem is that what you said is quite the opposite:
* you wished that there was an expansion that would make hardware-banging "unnecessary" (which indirectly means that you are against hardware banging);
* your wish implies that everybody should upgrade (otherwise hardware-banging would remain necessary).
Basically, you assumed that your view is the better one and you wish that everybody shared it (and, just to be clear, you're entitled to do that). Sure, you're not demanding others to agree, but basically your vision is that of an Amiga world with less choice.

To avoid misunderstandings: I'm not saying you're being a crusader I'm just pointing out that your vision, which you're fully entitled to, has some flaws and isn't shared by everybody.


EDIT:

@AmigaDave

Yeah, basically that.

Last edited by saimo on 13-Aug-2021 at 10:06 PM.
Last edited by saimo on 13-Aug-2021 at 02:04 PM.
Last edited by saimo on 13-Aug-2021 at 02:02 PM.
Last edited by saimo on 13-Aug-2021 at 02:01 PM.

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kolla 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 14-Aug-2021 5:05:17
#49 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Aug-2003
Posts: 2859
From: Trondheim, Norway

@matthey

You keep bringing up THEC64 again, so I presume you again have forgotten that it is just another embedded system running Linux?

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Hammer 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 16-Aug-2021 17:38:28
#50 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@IridiumFX

Quote:

IridiumFX wrote:
@ppcamiga1

But you may have to remember this is not a commercial venue. The Amiga if fundamentally individuals having fun with what they have.

There's no commercial venue, no support, no sales model, heck there's not even a company producing new models on a regular basis (note, sporadic 1 in a decade don't count).

You cannot dictate how a private wants to have fun in his own free time, on his own ideas.
The fact Saimo or Arne spend their time and share something (or sell, as an artesan manifactured item ...) is a plus

@Arne, Gunnar & Saimo, you guys rock. Keep up the incredible efforts, each of you on what makes you feel happy

After the VGA standard, there were many wannabe successors such as TIGA, IBM XGA, and many different SVGA/VESA BIOS implementations. PC's hit-the-metal died due to many hardware directions after the VGA standard. DirectDraw replaced PC's hit-the-metal frame buffer.

Amiga's OCS/ECS/AGA are similar to PC's DOS EGA/VGA hit-the-metal programming.

SAGA is just one of many wannabe successors.

Commodore's Amiga Hombre has OpenGL.

For modern hardware example, hit-the-metal acts like a boat anchor and imposes restrictions with hardware evolution path e.g. PS4-->PS4 Pro-->PS5 i.e. 36 CU divides evenly with PS4's 18 CU. Xbox doesn't have hardware evolution limitations like on PS4/PS4 Pro/PS5.

Last edited by Hammer on 16-Aug-2021 at 05:46 PM.

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 16-Aug-2021 18:28:17
#51 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@Hammer

Quote:
Amiga's OCS/ECS/AGA are similar to PC's DOS EGA/VGA hit-the-metal programming.


Well, not sure how comparable, the copper / sprite / blitter combo was pretty powerful 2D GPU, it was pretty nice 80’s, it allowed Amiga to have low-cost lazy CPU compared to computers.

Quote:
PC's hit-the-metal died due to many hardware directions after the VGA standard. DirectDraw replaced PC's hit-the-metal frame buffer.


But even before this PC games supported many different graphic formats in MSDOS, PC’s where not standard, and PC developers put a bit more work in support of CGA, EGA and VGA in the same game, that was pretty nice, and as well different sound cards. If anything was good about PC this was it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNcH2PuiHw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOi5p1UDppc

it looks like 1988 was year that MSDOS/PC had few games to show, but in all 3D games the MSDOS/PC games are faster, 1990 was year PC games stoped looking like crap.

Quote:
Commodore's Amiga Hombre has OpenGL


Not sure OpenGL was a thing back, then but if had become something it need to compete with 3dfx glide (1996), and PS1 (1995).
https://www.reddit.com/r/3dfx/comments/c9ianx/some_later_msdos_games_with_3dfx_glide_support/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTehcvSgyWI

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Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 16-Aug-2021 at 06:29 PM.

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Hammer 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 17-Aug-2021 3:25:06
#52 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

Well, not sure how comparable, the copper / sprite / blitter combo was pretty powerful 2D GPU, it was pretty nice 80’s, it allowed Amiga to have low-cost lazy CPU compared to computers.

FYI, S3 Trio 64 has 64-bit blitter hardware and other 2D lines draw acceleration.

Quote:

But even before this PC games supported many different graphic formats in MSDOS, PC’s where not standard, and PC developers put a bit more work in support of CGA, EGA and VGA in the same game, that was pretty nice, and as well different sound cards. If anything was good about PC this was it.

IBM's MDA, CGA, EGA, and VGA are well-defined defacto PC standards that range from the VIC-20 era to VGA's 1987 release. IBM couldn't establish XGA as a defacto PC standard.

The following functions were built-in with the XGA:
• PEL-block and bit-block transfers (PxBlt)
• Line drawing
• Area filling
• Logical and arithmetic mixing
• Map masking
• Scissoring
• X and Y-axis addressing.

The following functions were built-in with the VGA:
Hardware smooth scrolling support,
No Blitter, Supports fast data transfers via "VGA latch" registers, the latches allowed video-to-video transfers, pattern and raster operations, as well as supplying original data for doing partial writes
Barrel shifter,
Split-screen support,
Single-color polygon filling could be accelerated due to the ability to set four pixels with a single write to the hardware.

----
My Yamaha 16 bit sound card has up to SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 compatibility.

Quote:

Not sure OpenGL was a thing back, then but if had become something it need to compete with 3dfx glide (1996), and PS1 (1995).
https://www.reddit.com/r/3dfx/comments/c9ianx/some_later_msdos_games_with_3dfx_glide_support/

GLQuake (major OpenGL game) and Direct3D killed IHV-specific graphics APIs such as 3DFX's Glide and S3 ViRGE/Metal.

https://ctrl-alt-rees.com/2020-12-06-s3-virge-officially-supported-games-and-s3d-patch-downloads.html

3DFX's Glide is based on the basic geometry and "world view" of OpenGL 1.1. There are wrappers available that allow older Glide API games to run on non-Voodoo hardware.


Sony's PS1 has strong 1st party game studios and DRM protections which attracts 3rd party developers. PlayStation is a "walled garden" platform with a low entry cost.

In modern times, AMD submitted the Mantle API into Khronos which evolved into the Vulkan API.

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Samurai_Crow 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 17-Aug-2021 6:07:29
#53 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Jan-2003
Posts: 2320
From: Minnesota, USA

@Thread

I've identified 3 types of acceleration that could have been incorporated into the OS that weren't but could have made a difference when using the Amiga chipsets.

  1. Blitting directly to the sprite buffers

  2. Batch processing of blitter operations

  3. Copper operation sorting


The first one has limited usage but allows lots of split screen usage. It's also the easiest to implement. I've done it by pasting the sprite pointer from a SimpleSprite structure into a BitMap structure to make an interleaved 2 bitplane screen of 64 pixels across on AGA.

The second one is also simple but would require that QBlit-style operations be considered in good taste to perform and owning the blitter be disallowed completely. (OS 4 doesn't allow it, AFAIK.) The idea is that if you batch all the related operations in a linked-list of blit nodes, adding them to the blitter list en masse, you know then that the blitter shouldn't be accessed between blit nodes. This allows you to write only the registers that were known to have changed since the last blit. Batch processing multiple bitplanes becomes less of a pain automatically.

The last one exposes the weakness of the MrgCop() subroutine that is the bane of my existance. By batching all the CMove instructions in one node with a CWait implied by the raster position in the CopperNode structure, partial copper lists can be interleaved safely. This allows the copper to perform horizontal sprite muxing during the visible portion of the screen without having to sacrifice palette changes during the right border. If you choose not to do that, you can use the Copper as a feeder to write to Paula registers using raster positions as timing data for music and sound effect playback, freeing up CIA timers for use with timer.device for precise timing.

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Hammer 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 17-Aug-2021 15:13:44
#54 ]
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Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@Samurai_Crow

Unlike Sony's PS1 era, Commodore wasn't strong as a 1st party game studio to develop API optimized for gaming workloads.

When AmigaOS 3.x needs patch hacks like FBILT, CMQ030, and CopyMemAIO to optimize OS's functions for playing Doom, then there's something wrong with Commodore.


Microsoft's Xbox team effectively copied Sony's strong 1st party studio direction which helps with DirectX12's evolution.

Last edited by Hammer on 17-Aug-2021 at 03:41 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 17-Aug-2021 at 03:18 PM.

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Hammer 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 17-Aug-2021 15:24:16
#55 ]
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Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@matthey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7RSszCPt68
AMD's Shader Intrinsic Functions enables PC game developers to near "hit the metal" for the PC platform. AMD's Shader Intrinsic Functions launch game title was Doom 2016 Vulkan. It's DOOM again, LOL

The Vulkan API allows vendor-specific extensions.

Doom Eternal is a popular PC gaming benchmark since it includes vendor-specific optimizations for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.

Mainstream gaming development's drive for high-performance low-level API (such as DirectX12 and Vulkan) is winning the benchmark marketing race for GPU vendors and extracting all the performance from AMD-based game consoles.

Microsoft's DirectML has Intrinsic Functions that enable GPU vendors to expose extra GPU hardware features e.g. NVIDIA's Tensor cores, AMD's machine learning acceleration within certain RDNA 2 SKUs.


Last edited by Hammer on 17-Aug-2021 at 03:40 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 17-Aug-2021 at 03:31 PM.

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Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

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ppcamiga1 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 18-Aug-2021 7:12:37
#56 ]
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Joined: 23-Aug-2015
Posts: 762
From: Unknown

@saimo

None of arguments against hardware banging were adressed.
Price, performance, features, availability of AGA are so bad so it is better to avoid it.
Especially prices of AGA hardware are pure BS.



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ppcamiga1 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 18-Aug-2021 7:17:26
#57 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 23-Aug-2015
Posts: 762
From: Unknown

@Samurai_Crow

Amiga 1200 would be much better if Commodore instead of AGA
use good old ECS and add in parallel new chips with chunky pixels etc.

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OlafS25 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 18-Aug-2021 7:33:59
#58 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-May-2010
Posts: 6321
From: Unknown

@ppcamiga1

You forget that at that time VGA was standard on PC and most games used 256 colours

Every amiga version needed special graphics (=more efforts and thus costs) or some sort of conversion was used that looked bad

In my view A1200 was very important but "too little too late"

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OlafS25 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 18-Aug-2021 7:37:44
#59 ]
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Joined: 12-May-2010
Posts: 6321
From: Unknown

@ppcamiga1

And you not really reads what saimo writes. He does it for fun (programming) and it is part of the fun for him to fully exploit the hardware and even extend the limits. That would not be the case when using OS routines for it.

"If" Commodore would have survived we would use very different hardware now and a very different OS and of course noone would directly bang the hardware.

@slightly on topic ;)

Vampire is a niche product, it covers the idea "what could have been if..." Commodore would have survived and Motorola would continued to develop new processors.

It is not for everyone in the amiga community and of course not "sane decision" for many people outside with less interest in amiga. But still it can create some interest like any new product. The more the better. Similar as the A500-Clone now sold.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 18-Aug-2021 at 07:46 AM.

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bison 
Re: Arne and Gunnars ASM course Twitch video
Posted on 18-Aug-2021 15:32:11
#60 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Dec-2007
Posts: 2112
From: N-Space

@ppcamiga1

Quote:
Amiga 1200 would be much better if Commodore instead of AGA use good old ECS and add in parallel new chips with chunky pixels etc.

For once I agree with you.

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