@Rose

There is difference between officially supported and unofficially supported, just because something is dropped, does not stop the older version of GCC from working, nor does it prevent merging in older code into newer GCC 9 unofficially, however keeping this up to date will be harder and harder the more things change, it does require that someone is willing to maintain it, and I guess the Amiga community is maybe more motivated than other communities. My guess is it will require some a little above average coding skills and dedication, and there are not that many.

SPE was also used in PS3, so there might some hacking community also interested keeping SPE support going.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 14-Dec-2020 at 06:34 PM.

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So PowerPC SPE can never be supported in the current version again?

Rust for something newer? (unofficially anyway)

https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/rustc/platform-support.html

I'm only C++, so I'd be stuck on gcc9. Should still be good for a long while though right?

Plaz

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

There is difference between officially supported and unofficially supported, just because something is dropped, does not stop the older version of GCC from working, nor does it prevent merging in older code into newer GCC 9 unofficially, however keeping this up to date will be harder and harder the more things change, it does require that someone is willing to maintain it

The difference between being officially supported and "unofficially supported" in the way you describe, is that the former will be alive and continue to evolve and prosper, while the latter will never even come into fruition outside your pipe dreams.

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I guess the Amiga community is maybe more motivated than other communities.

The Amiga community at large couldn't care less. Not even the NG community at large. Not even the OS4 community at large. A future (one year from now, two years?) "Tabor" community would be an appendix community to the already diminished OS4 community of today where not much remains, practically all skilled people left many many years ago and all development of the OS has been apparently terminated since half a decade.

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My guess is it will require some a little above average coding skills and dedication, and there are not that many.

Yeah...

And from this population you would have to find someone willing to spend a huge effort and amount of time for a futile, dead-end project that leads nowhere and means nothing.

It's dead.

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SPE was also used in PS3, so there might some hacking community also interested keeping SPE support going.

It's not the same...

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=81084 tells story about the state of SPE port in general. It was already declared obsolete/nonsupported on gcc8.

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Big pushback; people still want SPE, they just don't want to spend work on it. Well neither do we, it's been enough. So I spent a week splitting off the port (also tested removing VSX etc.; removing unused code does not take that long; I just have no way to *test* it so that was not included). It was agreed the powerpcspe port would be maintained or it would be removed. Now a year later GCC 8 is on the horizon, and the powerpcspe port is still not maintained.

Sounds familiar? That's from 2018 and F all has happened.

Why they (aeon/amikit) can't just accept that Tabor was a fail from the beginning. IF it was released when it was announced - 5 years ago, then it can be just a bit of interest, while, it still will be crap because of incompatible FPU, which was the #1 reason to drop it all in the first place, even if some beta-boards were produced. But instead, they keep jerking on all this year after year and lose time, resources, money, the patience of customers... Damn, they even do that crappy stuff about pre-orders! Like in good old scamming amiga days full of pre-orders for things never happen! :)

Who needs that board today, which will have all the problems of incompatibility with FPU? It's much better to take even second-hand SAM (especially that all of them now can handle RadeonHD). Sadly SAMs is not on-sold, that one surely the best choice for ones who want os4 and don't want to spend 2000$

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@kas1e: FPU is not everything, from what some developers said, Tabor is at least as powerful as a SAM460x with one core (and Tabor has two cores).

I agree, that there where many failures in the developing-process (including the CPU-choice, the delay etc.), but Tabor isn't "crap" for sure.

At the end of the day it will be a new option for AmigaOS4 for a decent prize and with an interesting form-factor (at least for me).

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@AP

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Tabor isn't "crap" for sure.

But it's close. OS4 support is really the only thing it has going for it. Evaluated on its own merits, it's just not very good.

Last edited by bison on 15-Dec-2020 at 04:21 PM.

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@bison: Let's wait for benchmarks. The main-purpose of Tabor was/is to sell a new affordable AOS4-system. If it's (overall) at least as powerful as a SAM460ex, it's ok for me.

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@TRIPOS

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appendix community...

Good description, blue camp doesn't intend to have an sppendix.

@AP

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The main-purpose of Tabor was/is to sell a new affordable AOS4-system

Well, they've picked just about the worst system for it.

Last night I was wasting time on eBay and stumbled upon cheap used Power 7/8/9 CPUs. Like 30-40 EUR a piece.

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@WolfToTheMoon: Sure, in the meantime you will find better options (although we should look for new and not used CPUs to be fair).

And I agree, it wasn't the best choice, to choose a CPU with a incompatible FPU (most of all because of the additional effort to port AOS4 on this CPU, see Trampolin).

But the point is: You can't just put a different CPU on the Tabor-board, a whole new board-design is needed etc.

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@AP

Quote:

AP wrote: @WolfToTheMoon: Sure, in the meantime you will find better options (although we should look for new and not used CPUs to be fair). And I agree, it wasn't the best choice, to choose a CPU with a incompatible FPU (most of all because of the additional effort to port AOS4 on this CPU, see Trampolin). But the point is: You can't just put a different CPU on the Tabor-board, a whole new board-design is needed etc.

Person of Clue would have used T1020 which was also available around same time and weirdly enough cheaper price than P1022.

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Let's wait for benchmarks.

There has been already benchmarks of P1022. It's slighly slower than BCM2837B0 on Raspberry Pi 3B+. And that's when its running native code.

@NutsAboutAmiga

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NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @Rose There is difference between officially supported and unofficially supported, just because something is dropped, does not stop the older version of GCC from working, nor does it prevent merging in older code into newer GCC 9 unofficially, however keeping this up to date will be harder and harder the more things change, it does require that someone is willing to maintain it, and I guess the Amiga community is maybe more motivated than other communities. My guess is it will require some a little above average coding skills and dedication, and there are not that many. SPE was also used in PS3, so there might some hacking community also interested keeping SPE support going.

CELL's SPE has 128 128-bit SIMD registers with 128-bit wide SIMD FP hardware.


P1022 (e500v2)'s SPE recycles 32 GPR as 64-bit SIMD registers with 64 bit SIMD FP hardware.
READ https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/reference-manual/E500CORERM.pdf
Chapter 10 on Auxiliary Processing Units with Signal Processing Engine. e500v2's 64bit FP is NOT a normal PowerPC FPU!

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@AP

Quote:

AP wrote: @kas1e: FPU is not everything, from what some developers said, Tabor is at least as powerful as a SAM460x with one core (and Tabor has two cores). I agree, that there where many failures in the developing-process (including the CPU-choice, the delay etc.), but Tabor isn't "crap" for sure. At the end of the day it will be a new option for AmigaOS4 for a decent prize and with an interesting form-factor (at least for me) .

At the end of the day, an obsolete AMD Jaguar CPU with AVX 128 bit SIMD hardware murders Tabor's 64 bit SIMD hardware.

A competent SIMD hardware handles both integer and floating-point formats.

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@AP

But this is the 3rd revision of the board. When the problems with the FPU occured there had been 2 chances for another choice.

@LarsB

I think a large quantity of SoCs had already been purchased before the second revision was done.

Last edited by bison on 15-Dec-2020 at 06:19 PM.

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@LarsB

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LarsB wrote: @AP But this is the 3rd revision of the board. When the problems with the FPU occured there had been 2 chances for another choice.

A lot of more promising PPC projects that made a lot more sense than “Tabor” has been scrapped over the years (also pay attention to price quotes etc), like shown in this half a decade old post on this very topic:

https://amigaworld.net//modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=40622&forum=2&start=800&viewmode=flat&order=0#772269

@LarsB

Yep, T10xx, T2080, several other better choices.
Better, more powerful cores, 64 bit processors, a standard fpu...P1022 is just a bad choice.

@Rose

Quote:

Rose wrote: Person of Clue would have used T1020 which was also available around same time and weirdly enough cheaper price than P1022.

I can only guess, fact is that Trevor bought a batch of 1000 P1022. Maybe for a very good price (or someone tricked him into )


Quote:

There has been already benchmarks of P1022. It's slighly slower than BCM2837B0 on Raspberry Pi 3B+.

I mean benchmarks in comparison with other amigaOS4-systems (for example SAM 460).

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@JimIgou

Only the P1022 gives the price difference and lower CPU power to avoid under cutting
the X5000/020 . So design based on commercial reasons .
If The X5000/20 had been sold out then your list below could have been used for a new design without the undercut.

Quote:

JimIgou wrote: @LarsB Yep, T10xx, T2080, several other better choices. Better, more powerful cores, 64 bit processors, a standard fpu...P1022 is just a bad choice.

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