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/  Forum Index
   /  Classic Amiga Hardware
      /  Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
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Poll : Can we kick start new 68k designs using TSMC Fabs?
Yes, FPGA was fun but let's take this to the next level!
Yes, but I'm not sure this is scalable
Maybe but Amiga is not ready for a 68k relaunch with the IP issues
No, Vampire and 080 type chip designs are a cottage industry IMHO
No, 68k had its chance and now ARM is the future.
No, everything is x86-64 or ARM now so why go against that?
Pancakes!
 
PosterThread
Rose 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 15-Jun-2021 13:57:07
#41 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 5-Nov-2009
Posts: 982
From: Unknown

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote:
@Rose

Atari is very unlikely to get their branding back! We are nearly there! Therefore we at least have a chance at some limited growth. The Atari community is destined to fade away accept FireBee diehards IMHO.


And you are completly missing the point of other communities not giving a flying F about comeback.

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BigD 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 15-Jun-2021 15:52:45
#42 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@Rose

The point is that we have the potential to be unified around a brand that directly relates to the Amiga of the 80s and 90s. Atari have no chance of that.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

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bennymee 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 15-Jun-2021 16:30:10
#43 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 19-Aug-2003
Posts: 696
From: Netherlands

@ne_one

No, no emulation please :(

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matthey 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 16-Jun-2021 0:36:53
#44 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

BigD Quote:

The point is that we have the potential to be unified around a brand that directly relates to the Amiga of the 80s and 90s. Atari have no chance of that.


Jay Miner came from Atari which made game machines and was asked to create a game machine. He made an expandable general purpose computer. Jay Miner gave Carl Sassenrath the OS manual for the Atari hardware which was only a few pages and expected the Amiga OS to be like the Atari OS. Carl made an elegant minimal preemptive multitasking OS based on a microkernel with dynamic shared libraries and a dynamic memory map. Yes, the Amiga is different because extraordinary people like Jay and Carl were given the freedom to create something special.

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pixie 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 16-Jun-2021 12:24:45
#45 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 3115
From: Figueira da Foz - Portugal

@matthey

in an alternate reality we would have had an Atari Amiga and a Commodore 520 where Commodore would still be run by Jack Tramiel.

_________________
Indigo 3D Lounge, my second home.
The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

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Hammer 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 4:53:58
#46 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@Rose

Quote:

Rose wrote:
@BigD

Me: Members of Atari community are sane.

You: Full on ramble about random things about current copyright holder.

I wonder why Amigans are laughed at....

The new Atari VCS is powered by AMD’s Ryzen R1606G APU.

Ryzen R1606G APU is similar to Ryzen 3 2200U mobile APU.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

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LarsB 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 12:48:19
#47 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 29-Jul-2019
Posts: 104
From: Unknown

@Hammer I dont think that it is a question of sanity or not. If you are looking at the history fo the new VCS you will find that it was announced several times and delayed later. New Hardware, developpers left, because they havent been paid. Whats the big difference? Maybe you say you can buy it now. Can you? Maybe only in USA and this is not clear.

https://atarivcs.com/ vs https://atarivcs.com/products

or

https://www.gamestop.com/video-games/arcade/products/atari-vcs-800-onyx-all-in-system-bundle/11094776.html

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Rose 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 18-Jun-2021 12:53:26
#48 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 5-Nov-2009
Posts: 982
From: Unknown

@LarsB

Original point was that you don't see retro Atari users rambling how 68k should make comeback with state of the art manufacturing process.

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bhabbott 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 6-Jul-2021 5:51:31
#49 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 6-Jun-2018
Posts: 330
From: Aotearoa

@simplex

Quote:
Commodore didn't love the Amiga at all, really: in 1991 or 1992, an A500 was more or less state of the art Amiga... and was replaced shortly after by the "new, improved" A600.
No, the A500 was the 'entry-level' model. The A3000 was Commodore's 'state of the art' machine in 1990 (I got one in 1991). The A2000 was available since 1987 and could be upgraded to whatever the 'state of the art' was at the time with cards from Commodore and 3rd party manufacturers.

Commodore sold the A2500 (first with a 68020 processor + 68881, later with a 68030 + 68882) from 1989. In the same year GVP introduced their A3001 accelerator card with up to 50MHz 68030+68882, 8MB RAM and built in hard drive controller. The Commodore A2410 graphics card, introduced in 1991, had a 50MHz Texas Instruments TMS34010 and 2MB RAM, producing 256+3 colors from a 24 bit palette at up to 1024x768 non-interlace. In 1992 GVP's EGS 110/24 had 8MB RAM and produced 24 bit color at 1600x1200. This clipped onto their G-Force accelerator cards for full 32 bit access at 50MB/s. A number of 24 bit 'frame buffer' cards were also produced that 'genlocked' their image onto the screen, eg. the Harlequin which had 31 kHz non-interlaced output in all resolutions.

Several of my friends had A2000s during this period, and upgraded their machines as the latest hardware became available just like PC owners did. Calling a base model A500 'state of the art' when all this stuff was available and being used by hobbyists is a gross misrepresentation of the truth.

The A600 was indeed "new and improved'. I never owned an A500 because I didn't like the case design, but when the A600 came out I had to have one. The improved form factor and inbuilt IDE and PCMCIA interfaces were a winner for me. The only down-side was the lack of an accelerator slot, but then few A500 owners had accelerator cards and faster machines had compatibility issues. Of course that didn't stop innovative hardware developers. In 1995 I got an Apollo 620 with 25MHz 68020, then later a Viper 630 with 40MHz 68030, and today I have a Vampire V2. My A600 is now the most 'state of the art' Amiga I have ever owned!

The A4000/040 and A1200 were released in October 1992, becoming the new 'professional' and 'entry-level' machines to replace the A2000 and A500. The A1200 was a huge improvement on the A500, with much faster CPU, much better graphics and a 32 bit accelerator slot, as well as the improvements introduced in the A600. It's an awesome machine, which proves that Commodore did 'love' the Amiga in 1992. Only an Amiga fan suffering from PC envy would say otherwise.

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bhabbott 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 6-Jul-2021 6:34:46
#50 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 6-Jun-2018
Posts: 330
From: Aotearoa

@BigD

Quote:
Is there any way to harness this new powerhouse in global chip technology? We are all seemingly hoping for a port of AmigaOS to x86-64 and/or ARM but maybe we can now design a new 68k chip and get TSMC to mass produce it? Could the Apollo Team do this if they wanted? What is possible with 68k?


IMO ASICs are both to expensive and too limiting for our small market. The Apollo team are showing the way forward with their new FireBird and IceDrake designs.

The lower performance of FPGA is offset by the ability to easily upgrade the core as improvements are made, or even just to have different options. In some ways the 'limited' performance is a good thing, because it means 060 and existing Vampire users are not left behind. If your code needs more power than a Vampire can deliver then perhaps you shouldn't be running it on 'classic' Amiga hardware.

Why do I say that? I have a PC with 2.8GHz dual core CPU and 1GB of RAM, and yet it isn't powerful enough to keep up with the content of some modern websites. Because I run Windows XP (can't stand Windows 10, and Linux is clunky in comparison) my web browser is 2 years old and now has trouble rendering some pages correctly. If even older PCs have that problem, imagine what it will be like for any Amiga we create, no matter how powerful?

Even Linux has its issues. I have a Linux box dedicated to streaming TV programs because my main PC can't do it. Every now and then the content providers make some some change to their protocols that breaks Firefox on Linux, and I have to wait a few weeks for the 'fix'. The last time it happened I had to set up a new machine because 32 bit support has ended. The old computer was plenty powerful enough to do the job, but is no longer compatible.

Last edited by bhabbott on 06-Jul-2021 at 06:37 AM.
Last edited by bhabbott on 06-Jul-2021 at 06:36 AM.

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matthey 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 6-Jul-2021 15:06:34
#51 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

bhabbott Quote:

IMO ASICs are both to expensive and too limiting for our small market. The Apollo team are showing the way forward with their new FireBird and IceDrake designs.


ASICs are cheap not expensive. An Amiga SoC ASIC chip could be produced for less than $1 U.S and Joe Pillow could fit on a fingertip today. ASICs are less limiting also. They can have many more transistors due to them being practically free. Some of the original and CBM Amiga developers have referred to transistors being free today and they practically are in an ASIC. FPGAs have several commonly used constructs and some have less commonly used constructs but are much more expensive while an ASIC can have everything a FPGA has and more, in the proportions desired and costing less to produce in volume.

bhabbott Quote:

The lower performance of FPGA is offset by the ability to easily upgrade the core as improvements are made, or even just to have different options. In some ways the 'limited' performance is a good thing, because it means 060 and existing Vampire users are not left behind. If your code needs more power than a Vampire can deliver then perhaps you shouldn't be running it on 'classic' Amiga hardware.


Flexibility is the big advantage of FPGAs. They are a great development tool and the small FPGAs are cheap enough to use directly in products. However, anything but primitive CPU and GPU cores need more transistors than FPGAs can provide in low cost FPGAs. The "limited" CPU and GPU performance of a FPGA is *not* a good thing. Leaving the 68060 and existing Vampire users in the dust with much higher performance, a much cheaper price and better availability should be the goal! Standalone boards make more sense but an ASIC SoC with a good performance/price could easily sell in the tens of thousands for 3rd party accelerators too. The performance would leave less users behind than today's high prices for low performance hardware and compatibility would be better than next generation hardware.

bhabbott Quote:

Why do I say that? I have a PC with 2.8GHz dual core CPU and 1GB of RAM, and yet it isn't powerful enough to keep up with the content of some modern websites. Because I run Windows XP (can't stand Windows 10, and Linux is clunky in comparison) my web browser is 2 years old and now has trouble rendering some pages correctly. If even older PCs have that problem, imagine what it will be like for any Amiga we create, no matter how powerful?


I understand. I finally upgraded my Windows XP to Windows 7 which is slower and more wasteful of resources but at least it is similar to XP, has better security and 3rd party software support. I actually would prefer a higher powered more affordable Amiga here to be able to use on the internet that wouldn't require upgrading to a slower OS periodically. Of course we need better browser support but that comes with more users and better developer support from cheaper prices. There are embedded market opportunities in this space for a full browser with descent performance using the least amount of resources. Many of the CBM employees left for companies creating embedded products and some even recreated OSs similar to AmigaOS because the AmigaOS was not available and Amiga hardware was too expensive or not available.

https://youtu.be/fur2quOIufs?t=1774

bhabbott Quote:

Even Linux has its issues. I have a Linux box dedicated to streaming TV programs because my main PC can't do it. Every now and then the content providers make some change to their protocols that breaks Firefox on Linux, and I have to wait a few weeks for the 'fix'. The last time it happened I had to set up a new machine because 32 bit support has ended. The old computer was plenty powerful enough to do the job, but is no longer compatible.


At least newer x86-64 hardware has a better performance/price but you don't want that for the Amiga so you could use it as a streaming TV box.

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Hammer 
Re: Future 68k development and TMSC Fabs
Posted on 7-Jul-2021 2:22:01
#52 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote:
@simplex

Quote:
Commodore didn't love the Amiga at all, really: in 1991 or 1992, an A500 was more or less state of the art Amiga... and was replaced shortly after by the "new, improved" A600.
No, the A500 was the 'entry-level' model. The A3000 was Commodore's 'state of the art' machine in 1990 (I got one in 1991). The A2000 was available since 1987 and could be upgraded to whatever the 'state of the art' was at the time with cards from Commodore and 3rd party manufacturers.

Commodore sold the A2500 (first with a 68020 processor + 68881, later with a 68030 + 68882) from 1989. In the same year GVP introduced their A3001 accelerator card with up to 50MHz 68030+68882, 8MB RAM and built in hard drive controller. The Commodore A2410 graphics card, introduced in 1991, had a 50MHz Texas Instruments TMS34010 and 2MB RAM, producing 256+3 colors from a 24 bit palette at up to 1024x768 non-interlace. In 1992 GVP's EGS 110/24 had 8MB RAM and produced 24 bit color at 1600x1200. This clipped onto their G-Force accelerator cards for full 32 bit access at 50MB/s. A number of 24 bit 'frame buffer' cards were also produced that 'genlocked' their image onto the screen, eg. the Harlequin which had 31 kHz non-interlaced output in all resolutions.

Several of my friends had A2000s during this period, and upgraded their machines as the latest hardware became available just like PC owners did. Calling a base model A500 'state of the art' when all this stuff was available and being used by hobbyists is a gross misrepresentation of the truth.

The A600 was indeed "new and improved'. I never owned an A500 because I didn't like the case design, but when the A600 came out I had to have one. The improved form factor and inbuilt IDE and PCMCIA interfaces were a winner for me. The only down-side was the lack of an accelerator slot, but then few A500 owners had accelerator cards and faster machines had compatibility issues. Of course that didn't stop innovative hardware developers. In 1995 I got an Apollo 620 with 25MHz 68020, then later a Viper 630 with 40MHz 68030, and today I have a Vampire V2. My A600 is now the most 'state of the art' Amiga I have ever owned!

The A4000/040 and A1200 were released in October 1992, becoming the new 'professional' and 'entry-level' machines to replace the A2000 and A500. The A1200 was a huge improvement on the A500, with much faster CPU, much better graphics and a 32 bit accelerator slot, as well as the improvements introduced in the A600. It's an awesome machine, which proves that Commodore did 'love' the Amiga in 1992. Only an Amiga fan suffering from PC envy would say otherwise.


Apple's Macintosh Quadra 605 has an entry price of $1000 in October 1993 which includes 68LC040 CPU @ 25Mhz and it was ready for the official Doom port in 1994.

Macintosh Quadra 605 countered PC 486SX @25 Mhz in the $800 to $1000 price range in a similar Q4 1993 time frame. Commodore's 68040 with AGA SKU such as Amiga 4000 was NOT cost-competitive.

Against Amiga 2500UX, every 286 and 386 based PC can run MS Xenix since Intel didn't play MMU optional feature games like Motorola.

Early Amiga RTG system like EGS is disconnected from Amiga graphics ecosystem which is different from PC SVGA which supports common VGA.

Great Valley Products EGS 110/24 (used Inmos G364) is expensive and it cost more than Tseng Labs et4000 ISA/VLB ($129 in Q3-Q4 1993).

Workbench 2.xx didn't exist prior to Amiga 3000. Amiga RTG matured enough in the AmigaOS 3.X era.

PC's A2410 counterpart is known as Texas Instruments Graphics Architecture (TIGA) which is a failed standard. VESA and Super VGA became the de facto standard for PC graphics devices after the VGA.

Texas Instruments was pushing MS to support a flexible internal graphics interface for Windows 3.0 and MS ignored Texas Instruments. WinTel (supported by the gang of nine PC cloners and VESA founding members) told TI to f_ck-off.

Commodore dumped Amiga Ranger for Texas Instruments TIGA TMS34010 while Amiga Ranger evolved from Amiga OCS. Amiga Ranger (128 colors with 4096 color palette) is similar to C65's chipset (256 colors with 4096 color palette, completed in December 1990). C65's chipset is better than A600's ECS LOL. That's Commodore's misdirected company resources. LOL

Commodore didn't release A1200 with 68LC040 + 4 MB fast ram official SKU for about $800 in the 1993 time period. A3640 card's cost is about $400 and A1200's version doesn't need the extra glue logic on A3640.

For the 1992 to 1993 time period and when Commodore is compared to Apple, Commodore f_cked-up.

My Dad traded in our A500 Rev 6 and paid extra $$$ (~$900 AUD) for ex-corporate A3000/030 @ 25 Mhz (preloaded with video company projects, LOL) in early 1992. My Dad also bought 386DX33 with Tseng Labs et4000.

My Dad plays sports games on Amiga while PC is used for biz related work. I used 386DX33+et4000 for Doom.

For A500 KS 1.3 legacy support, A3000 has KS 1.3 loaded on the hard disk for software kickstart.

For Doom, Tseng Labs et4000 SVGA delivered very fast VGA 13h mode. TIGA and Inmos G364 graphics cards are niche graphics cards and they are not VGA/SVGA/VESA. Tseng Labs was bought by ATI in 1997.

Last edited by Hammer on 09-Jul-2021 at 04:47 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2021 at 03:52 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2021 at 03:47 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2021 at 03:41 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2021 at 02:52 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2021 at 02:46 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2021 at 02:43 AM.
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Last edited by Hammer on 07-Jul-2021 at 02:31 AM.

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Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

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