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      /  100mhz 6502
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hardwaretech 
100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 10:10:10
#1 ]
Member
Joined: 5-May-2010
Posts: 60
From: blaine minnesota usa

http://www.e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/#supported-host-systems
info on 100mhz 6502

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Samurai_Crow 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 10:53:34
#2 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Jan-2003
Posts: 2320
From: Minnesota, USA

@hardwaretech

Yep, it's an FPGA on a small PCB.

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bennymee 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 12:33:56
#3 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 19-Aug-2003
Posts: 696
From: Netherlands

@Samurai_Crow

Like many or every other!

On the Apollo forum was written that their goal is to go to ASIC, but are there any old cpu's allready recreated with ASIC ?

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Samurai_Crow 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 13:07:14
#4 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Jan-2003
Posts: 2320
From: Minnesota, USA

@bennymee

Nope. Too expensive and the chip shortage made it worse.

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Trekiej 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 16:54:58
#5 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 17-Oct-2006
Posts: 890
From: Unknown

@hardwaretech

I hope to see this in action.

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Kronos 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 19:17:13
#6 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@bennymee

Quote:


On the Apollo forum was written that their goal is to go to ASIC, but are there any old cpu's allready recreated with ASIC ?


Would only make sense if you manage to sell 5 or better 6 figures of these CPUs, and there just isn't any market even remotely that big for any retro CPU.

Those consumer products that do play on the retro edge are more than fine with either doing it in SW or with a very basic (and cheap) FPGA.

As for the chip shortage being part of, any such CPU would still be done of (near) obsolete nodes which aren't that heavily affected.

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matthey 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 20:44:46
#7 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

bennymee Quote:

On the Apollo forum was written that their goal is to go to ASIC, but are there any old cpu's allready recreated with ASIC ?


Funny considering the Apollo core design and ISA are extensively optimized for FPGAs and, from my understanding as an ex-Apollo team member who tried to push the project toward being ASIC ready, little was done in preparation for an eventual ASIC. Furthermore, one person on the "team", has managed to alienate the project from a significant portion of the Amiga developer community and potential developer support.

Kronos Quote:

Would only make sense if you manage to sell 5 or better 6 figures of these CPUs, and there just isn't any market even remotely that big for any retro CPU.


The NES classic mini sold at least 3.6 million units. They used ARM emulation but it is likely the profit margin and compatibility would have been higher if they had used an ASIC with a 6502 CPU inside. The primary advantage of the ARM hardware was faster development as working with a 6502 CPU is primitive and restrictive even when it can be clocked to 100MHz. This is not true of a 68k CPU which is easier to use than an ARM processor and has similar limitations. The only question is whether a 68k ASIC could sell enough units for retro use of the Amiga, Atari ST, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, X68000, etc. There is also interesting possibilities with a fully static design (like the 68060) to allow a variable clock rate for retro use and a high clock rate many times that of the retro hardware in a similar way to that of a 100MHz 6502. The Amiga at least is more likely to use vertical blank gfx timing rather than CPU timing loops which would allow better software compatibility when clocked up than the 6502 timing kludges for retro compatibility.

Kronos Quote:

Those consumer products that do play on the retro edge are more than fine with either doing it in SW or with a very basic (and cheap) FPGA.


The 6502 is minimal logic. A $10 FPGA can simulate a 6502 and even up to about a 68020. Creating an ASIC is a cost reduction step and can allow greater performance while reducing power at the cost of flexibility. Much of the retro recreation hardware has used cheap and dirty one and done ARM emulation only to be surprised by 6 and 7 figure sales and sometimes disappointed customers because of reduced compatibility and sluggish controls due to higher latencies. Many customers have wished for more expandability which can be seen in many of the retro recreations being hacked where building in the expandibility offers more value to customers.

Kronos Quote:

As for the chip shortage being part of, any such CPU would still be done of (near) obsolete nodes which aren't that heavily affected.


From what I have read, the older chip foundries are seeing increased demand too as customers can't get or can't afford the newer chips so are falling back to older designs. While chip shortages and higher prices are likely to continue for some time, in the longer run, governments are subsidizing in and businesses are investing in foundries which should allow costs to fall to at least where they were, and perhaps to lower costs especially for newer processes albeit adjusted for inflation which is expected with global deficit spending by governments.

Last edited by matthey on 14-Oct-2021 at 08:49 PM.

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gonegahgah 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 14-Oct-2021 23:32:38
#8 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 5-Dec-2008
Posts: 148
From: Australia

@bennymee

Quote:
On the Apollo forum was written that their goal is to go to ASIC...

I think it would be more a case of how 'final' you could make your design and how long you would be able to comfortably sell it over.

It comes down to how long a time you can afford to make your money back over and whether that happens before something else that beats it comes along.

The time frame has an effect on the price you are willing to sell it at. If you want money in quicker then a higher price is going to make it less attractive. If you can afford to sell it over a a longer period, and competition permits, you can sell it closer to its cost.

Amiga users will buy a faster CPU for their Classic machines if they see it as affordable and beneficial. And generally, not just one CPU if they have mutliple machines. And even if they have bought past accelerators when something compelling comes along. Many existing Apollo fpga owners would even upgrade!

Various accelerators are being made presently, and possibly will continue to do so, because they can compete on features presently. But an asic, especially an Apollo asic, would probably hold market primacy for quite a while; unless it failed in important areas including performance vs price attractiveness, unfortunate fatal errors, and/or was outpaced by other advancing technologies.

An ASIC would tend to blow anything else out of the water speed wise, and the Apollo feature set would boost the specification of older Amigas as a complete bonus. The speed increase would even allow for higher spec features (only if its possible to pretest) which if so would make the product even more compelling.

At an competitive price an effective Apollo asic would become the default CPU for all forseeable future endeavours, including a home console retro market, all accelerators, and even possibly some other embedded systems (from past experience with the resourcefulness that people have shown).

So it comes down to unit price, specific market areas and dominance, endurance of the market, and endurance of the seller.

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Hammer 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 15-Oct-2021 4:15:25
#9 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@bennymee

AC68080 doesn't have 68K MMU, hence no Linux, no modern embedded.

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Kronos 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 15-Oct-2021 7:15:19
#10 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 2553
From: Unknown

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote:

The NES classic mini sold at least 3.6 million units. They used ARM emulation but it is likely the profit margin and compatibility would have been higher if they had used an ASIC with a 6502 CPU inside. The primary advantage of the ARM hardware was faster development as working with a 6502 CPU is primitive and restrictive even when it can be clocked to 100MHz.


Unless you are able to do a transistor by transistor replacement in FPGA/ASIC compatibility is really the same. You are looking at a chip/system from the outside and try to mimic it in code. The mini NES has no use for a 100MHz 6502, all it needs is something that is as fast as the real thing, replacement for every other chip that was in there and some headroom to run a menu.
All that can be had for free when using a SW emulator, just a few tweaks and a barebones ARM board bought in bulk and you are done.
Going HW mean massive development, testing and it being almost impossible to fix bugs after the fact.
Quote:

This is not true of a 68k CPU which is easier to use than an ARM processor and has similar limitations. The only question is whether a 68k ASIC could sell enough units for retro use of the Amiga, Atari ST, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, X68000, etc.

To what point? Most of these use cases can easily be dealt with a Minimig.
A faster 68k make no sense for running retro games and with all these different platforms you would either need to build several different variants or include a FPGA to emulate the chipset.
Or just do the whol thing in SW which is good enough for 99.9% of the potential user base.

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- blame Canada

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Hammer 
Re: 100mhz 6502
Posted on 15-Oct-2021 16:20:56
#11 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@matthey

Nintendo Classic Mini NES and Mini: SNES used the Allwinner R16 system on a chip (SoC) with four ARM Cortex-A7 central processing cores and an ARM Mali 400 MP2 graphics processing unit.

Combined sales of the NES and SNES Classic Mini editions by September 30, 2018 exceeded 10 million units.

Custom hardware development work requires additional investment that needs to be spread across multiple units.

Nintendo (JP) has outsourced its hardware R&D to companies like NVIDIA (USA) and Allwinner (China). Nintendo is focused on delivering Nintendo's end-user experience with Nintendo's game IP.

Mini hardware handles modern HDMI and modern GUI front-end.

Allwinner's ARM products have U-Boot.
Raspberry Pi has EEPROM bootloader.

Last edited by Hammer on 15-Oct-2021 at 04:33 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 15-Oct-2021 at 04:23 PM.

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Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
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