@TheDaddy

Quote:

Quote: >>8-32 MB very fast CHIP MEM was the idea, I think. 32MB Chip Ram? WOW! Yep the motherboard should come with 32MB Chip!!!

Its a price question in the end.

Quote:

Quote: >>I think the 68060 CPU card should mave 512 MB. I presume a Coldfire or PPC (Cell) card could host more?

CELL is XDR Mem. A CELL CPU board will become very big if you have more than 512 MB.
XDR Mem is expensive and an size increased CPU board will be very expensive too.
Lets say the CELL CPU board with 500 MB does cost 600 Euro.
Would you pay 1100 Euro for a CELL board with 1 GB ?


Quote:

>>>Serial/parallel? >>YES >A better/faster version than the ones found on classic Amigas?

Don't know.
Get someone do update Thomas website and ask him


Quote:

>>>Amiga HD disks >Would this allow to use pc floppies like the catweasel?

Sure.
Thomas has build the real Amiga HD floppy drive.
The one that was sold by Amtrade on the old days.



Cheers

_________________
APOLLO the new 68K : www.apollo-core.com

@BigGun

>>CELL is XDR Mem. A CELL CPU board will become very big if you have more than 512 MB.
XDR Mem is expensive and an size increased CPU board will be very expensive too.
Lets say the CELL CPU board with 500 MB does cost 600 Euro.
Would you pay 1100 Euro for a CELL board with 1 GB ?

It depends, I mean if lots of people are ready to buy it maybe the price would go down...or we should just start with a PPC mayeb...


>>>Amiga HD disks
>Would this allow to use pc floppies like the catweasel?
>>Sure.
>>Thomas has build the real Amiga HD floppy drive.
>>The one that was sold by Amtrade on the old days.

Excellent!

Also the OS will play a vital part in this, OS4 running on it would be the answer to everything!

Last edited by TheDaddy on 19-Jan-2008 at 12:56 PM.

_________________
www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

NatAmi keeps on sounding better and better!

I notice that on http://www.natami.net/ the front page says the website is under reconstruction (message posted on 17/01/08). I hope someone has offered to help Thomas do this.

@BigGun
This super low latency RAM (for the AGA+), can you point to chipsets that can currently use it? POWER6? Cell? Does the RAM technology have a name?

Last edited by HenryCase on 19-Jan-2008 at 01:24 PM.

@TheDaddy
Quote:

>>Video Out YES Would this support HDTV?

What do you mean? Resolution, connector or something else?
NatAmi seems to be capable of 1280x1024 non interlaced, and with overscan 1440x??? (wasn't that mode flickering badly?

So it should at least support 720p 4:3 (960 × 720) and 16:9 (1280 × 720), 1080(p?/i?) 4:3 (1440 × 1080) may be possible with overscan, you fall short off 16:9 (1920 × 1080)

On the connector side i could only think about (DualLink) DVI,VGA,Component or RGB no HDMI.

Last edited by Donar on 19-Jan-2008 at 01:28 PM.
Last edited by Donar on 19-Jan-2008 at 01:28 PM.

_________________
<- Amiga 1260 / CD ->
Looking for:
A1200/CF CFV4/@200,256MB,eAGA,SATA,120GB,AROS

@Donar

>>What do you mean? Resolution, connector or something else?

Connector.

Thanks for the explanation.

Last edited by TheDaddy on 19-Jan-2008 at 01:37 PM.

_________________
www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

@TheDaddy
If a driver was written this device would give you DVI output:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119218
I wouldn't want to rely on a PCI card though, better to have something built in if HDTV resolutions are needed.

@BigGun

Who is running the NatAmi project??

_________________

@HenryCase

Quote:

HenryCase wrote: @TheDaddy If a driver was written this device would give you DVI output: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119218 I wouldn't want to rely on a PCI card though, better to have something built in if HDTV resolutions are needed.

UGH! Please NOT a Radeon 7000. I've got two of those, one in my PC and one on my underpowered MicroA1-c motherboard. You can't even get LINUX 3d drivers for it it's so old!

@AmigaMac
Thomas Hirsch is the designer of the NatAmi.

@Samurai_Crow
I don't particularly want HDTV outputs, I was just pointing to a way it could be done. I agree it would be better to use a more modern board.

@BigGun
Any more pictures of the NatAmi from MeKa 2008?

@BigGun

very cool project! It would be cool if somebody could update the website and put all the specs on it. A blog would also be cool to have some updates about the progress.

cheers

@biggun

my question on the post #155 is to be possible to found also the P96 resolutions for PC/P96 (80x600,1024x768,11xx.....) on the AGA+++ or just the AGA resolutions enhanced.

- The screen size resolutions on the AGA+++ also have the P96/PC between ???
(I like the lots of resolution available on P96 and just think there will be too few on the AGA+++).

This is really a good project, amiga AGA enhanced feeling and with PCI, ethernet, processor slot inside......


My question is AOS4 is PPC, the natami need a PPC for AOS4. The development on the amiga are more PPC than 68k, the natami need PPC.


Honestly, with a speed processor and all amiga fan dreaming inside, no problem of the prize for me. A speed 68060 for the old amiga and a PPC for AOS4 !!!!! Great !!!

BTW: thomas allready answer on this thread:

http://www.amiga.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=42691&forum=8&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0


and at the end, a french guy called frenchshark make the same. There are suddenly lots of interest to improve the amiga chip set with actual technology !! .

Last edited by Mrodfr on 20-Jan-2008 at 06:43 AM.
Last edited by Mrodfr on 20-Jan-2008 at 06:34 AM.
Last edited by Mrodfr on 20-Jan-2008 at 06:32 AM.

_________________
BTW, what you have done for the amiga today ????

-A1200+Mediator+VooDoo3+060/50+96mo+SCSI-KIT
-SAM440EP-667mhz-on MapowerKC3000+AOS4.1

Amiga Docs Disks Preservation Project

@Mrodfr

And what would be the point ?

Putting 2 (different CPUs) onto one board is pure nonsense, as best seen by the way the 603/604s are crippled on the P5-cards. Now imagine how bad it would be for a modern PPC to be dragged down by an 68k.

Combining a PPC with AGA also doesn't make sense, as you still won't be able to run games on it directly and if I'm useing UAE I have no need for AGA. PPC-"Amigas" should be legacy free boards like the Pegs, the SAM and the Efika.

On top of that we have the legal death-lock surounding OS4, pretty much invalidading you statement about development being more PPC than 68k atleast for the moment.

Natami needs 68k, a 68k as fast as possible ....... thinking bout that (question to the experts), would it be possible to utilize the FPGA to trap the misbehaving opcodes in a ColdFire ? I was thinling about something like snopping on every opcode loaded, and triggering an exception whenever needed.

There would have course be a problem with the cache, or even how to tell whats data and whats code.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

you know kronos, I'm just dreaming with my fingers in realtime when answering my previous post about natami

I have just said thousand of time: If the A1200 will have a new enhanced motherboard !!!!.

I'm pushed to put a lots of hardware compoment on even if I'm not the best for making the good choice).

_________________
BTW, what you have done for the amiga today ????

-A1200+Mediator+VooDoo3+060/50+96mo+SCSI-KIT
-SAM440EP-667mhz-on MapowerKC3000+AOS4.1

Amiga Docs Disks Preservation Project

@BigGun

Hello,

I haven't posted on this subject (my favourite at the moment) for two whole days!

Any news? Pictures? Videos? More Specs?

I can't wait!

_________________
www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

@TheDaddy
I know how you feel man, I need my next NatAmi fix!
You can see some pictures here:
http://www.amiga.org/modules/myalbum/viewcat.php?uid=12976
Note that the screenshot is from 2006, and it sounds like it's running much better now.

Tried to do some searching on Google, found these projects by the same engineer...
http://www.bluea.de/
http://aminet.net/package/comm/www/chameleon

@BigGun

Quote:

Thomas will need help of Amiga developers for creating drivers for PCI cards.

OpenPCI would make a good foundation for this.

@HenryCase

Thanks this should keep me going for a bit...I will pop in later for the next fix!

Dream mode on - New Amiga - Dream mode off

_________________
www.loriano.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

@BigGun

Quote:

The Amiga chipram always was so fast that you could put a program in chip mem.

"Chip Ram" is like UMA i.e. unified memory architecture as used in PC's IGPs and XBOX. 68K's "Fast Ram" is noted to be faster than "Chip Ram" hence "Fast Ram" label i.e. shared memory architecture is ussually $uck compared discrete memory architecture.

UMA is used for cost reduction reasons e.g. low end Amigas, low end PCs and XBox.

Quote:

This is something that you would not want to try in the PC world.

Erm, note why the modern PC has cache coherent hardware features i.e. you have DMA operations from non-CPU sources writing to main memory.

Also, PC IGPs** and GPUs** shares main memory with the CPU. **Refer to ATI's Hyper-Memory or NV's Turbo-Cache.

Quote:

The Natami chipram is faster than the 2nd Level cache of your x86, PPC or CELL CPU

Define faster? Any memory test benchmark results?

PC's "RightMark Memory Analyzer" benchmark test memory in random mode.
One of the methods to minimise latency in the modern X86s and PPCs is to implement pre-fetch techniques.

Lower latency is not a silver bullet, e.g. AMD K8’s lower memory latency didn’t save it from being crushed by Core 2 i.e. Core 2 has speculative pre-fetch for both instructions and data.

Quote:

Then 800 means that this memory can transmit 1 word in 800 MHz in a burst.

That 800Mhz is not a true 800Mhz i.e. 400Mhz double rate. Mainstream architecture leans towards streaming computation.

To lower latency, some modern PC NB and MCHs has pre-fetch techniques e.g. nVidia's nForce 600i (with DASP 4.0) Series For Intel and Intel 840.

nVidia's nForce 600i's DASP has both NB cache, NB pipelining and NB pre-fetch techniques. nForce 680iSLI with DDR2 800(4,4,4,T1) has 27.2 ns @400Mhz.

**Intel 965**, 975**, P35**, P38** has Intel FMA (Fast Memory Access) i.e. out-of-order processing.
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/q965_q963/demo/demo.html

In real world application benchmarks, there's very little gain in nForce 600i's DASP vs Intel 965.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2008 at 12:17 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2008 at 11:04 AM.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@BigGun


Quote:

BigGun wrote: @NutsAboutAmiga Quote: NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @BigGun Well you have AGA is planar graphics so 8 bits graphics is 1bit on 8 bytes, thats 8 write operations to set one single pixel (10ns * 8 = 80ns) PC gfx cards might have more latency but uses chunky graphics one 8 bit pixel equals 8 bits on 1 byte. (56ns * 1 = 56ns) Yes PC GFX card has advantages over old AGA in some points. But Natami has AGA++ AGA ++ supports both planer and CHUNKY modes. You can use Chunky mode on Natami with setting 8/16 or 32bit pixel for 10 NS on Natami. Quote: On old AGA mode if you wnat to set a single pixel you would need a bit set (which is read +write operation) So with old Amiga chipset this is 8 x read + 8 x write (80ns * 8 *2 = 1280 ns) On a CyberGFX card you could get this with one write. (Which would be ZORRO delay + 80ns) On a PCIe card you will get this for: PCI overhead + memlatency + access (200 NS + 55ns + 1 = 256 ns) On the NATAMI you will get this for (10 ns) ! [quoe] As any one can see planar graphics is dated, and only really fast from 1 plan to 4 plans (64 colors). Well as we all know modern graphics cards are organized in 16bits in little endien, resulting pixels being swapped, and on hi resolutions colors like RED / GREEN / BLUE are swapped. Yes, chunky with correct endian setting has nice advantages over Planar. This is why AGA++ supports both planar and chunky. AGA++ gives you the best of both. Free smooth AMIGA scrolling compared with simple to blit chunky modes. And Natami has of course CORRECT ENDIAN CHIPMEM ! So there is no color swapping needed of course You are right that using PC GFX chips in AMIGA big endian world is problematic. On little endian GFX chips the pixels might by swapped because of endian. And as you said correctly the FPGA Natami chipse as many advantages over on little endian PC GFX chip. You save one endian conversion of the whole screen per frame. Cheers Gunnar

In Xbox 360, both the CPU and GPU process memory in big-endian mode.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@BigGun

Quote:

Amiga programs and demos could always do direct access to chipram.

Factor in cache coherency issues..

Quote:

The memory on the GFX card might have a response time of 55 ns only but in addition to this you have several hundred NS protocol overhead

Not quite several hundred NS. Note why you have GpGPU (e.g. G80) caching. GpGPUs are designed for stream processing.

Without caching, it will yield "200 to 300 clock cycles of memory latency (according to CUDA with G80). Refer to G80's GigaThreads and L1/L2 caches in reducing latency.

http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US2005225558&F=0
Two level cache memory architecture for ATI GPU (dated 2005).

http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US2007028029&F=0
This lowers the turn-around latency (2007-02-01, ATI).

Quote:

10ns is a guaranteed responsetime for minimum 100Mhz!

In modern memory modules, memory timings can be lower with lower clock speeds.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2008 at 01:09 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2008 at 12:55 PM.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB