@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: PiStorm with Emu68, the built-in audio solution is Paula. The Amiga chipset effectively turned into a south bridge role.

PiStorm was designed to simply be a CPU with on-board RAM, nothing more. The Amiga has had those since 1986. That the CPU is created by running software on an ARM SoC is irrelevant, it's just a cheap flexible way to do it that has traditionally been used when developing actual CPU chips (commonly called an In Circuit Emulator or ICE).

This 'northbridge/southbridge' nomenclature is a modern thing that has no place in discussions of Amiga architecture. We didn't start calling the Amiga motherboard a 'southbridge' after plugging an accelerator card into the CPU socket or slot, even when the CPU card had onboard graphics, hard drive interface and I/O ports.

@bhabbott

Quote:

We didn't start calling the Amiga motherboard a 'southbridge' after plugging an accelerator card into the CPU socket or slot, even when the CPU card had onboard graphics, hard drive interface and I/O ports.

We didn't, but maybe we should have. After all, in a configuration like that, especially when not relying on the custom chipset for any significant functionality beyond the keyboard and mouse port, what have we reduced it to?

I take your point though, even in that config, the original hardware all still can be used by software that needs it.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

In the future, I would like to run Amiga programs on easily obtainable commodity hardware, such as Raspberry Pi or ARM or X86 or whatever else is most common at the time. If possible, I would like to run the programs with no emulator between me and the underlying OS.


redfox

Last edited by redfox on 16-Dec-2023 at 05:34 PM.
Last edited by redfox on 16-Dec-2023 at 05:31 PM.

@Matt3k

Quote:

The next Amiga is already among us and working great. No need for pipe dreams...

If you are talking about MorphOS, then I agree that is a great alternative to what I have now.


redfox

Last edited by redfox on 16-Dec-2023 at 05:44 PM.

@kolla

Yeh.. that two things on my wish list for Christmas..

* New better TCP/IP stack that has future.
* A fixed version of Amiga Input that does not crash, when I unplug USB joysticks.
* A new version of H2 that be great.
* StarCarft II for AmigaOS4.1
* New version of Clib4

Annoying bug fixes in AmigaOS4.1, like ScreenOpen not being 68K friendly.
(Perhaps I should write patch for that issue today, this should allow VistaPro to work)

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 16-Dec-2023 at 06:22 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 16-Dec-2023 at 06:22 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 16-Dec-2023 at 06:20 PM.

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http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

Karlos Quote:

Is that with or without a dedicated swizzle unit?

There is no swizzle "unit". The cache units swizzle the data lines for endianess that requires it. I expect changing the endianess of RISC-V hardware designs to be a minor change. The cache units may already have an endianess select line even though RISC-V can't take advantage of it currently. What changes would be required for a 68k U74 core?

o change default cache access to big endian
o add 68k decoding/dispatch support (U74 already supports 16 bit VLE with RVC)
o load/store hardware in each execution unit needs to support reg-mem accesses
o add 68k exception handling

Some other core changes may be necessary like a larger instruction buffer, fewer registers with more read and write ports, an extended precision FPU, etc., but the basic core design could likely be reused. The in-order design resembles the 68060 design. The 68k ISA has a significant performance advantage with this design over the RISC-V ISA as an addressing mode EA calc can be performed in the same pipeline as the executed instruction potentially doubling performance. Is 3 DMIPS/MHz from an in-order core possible with a higher performance ISA like the 68k?



The SiFive designs look very good and licensing appears to be reasonable. I believe the SiFive hardware designs are programmed in Verilog and the license allows customization. Making customizations is part of their business and not just for the RISC-V ISA.

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20210205PD217.html Quote:

Yes, that's a very good observation. We do have a broad portfolio of non- RISC-V core IPs through our business unit, OpenFive. OpenFive is based on the Open-Silicon acquisition now developed into a full design house. They can build a chip for any customer, from specification written on a napkin and turn it into a design. They are ISA agnostic, so they can work with any ISA. To do that we need to have capabilities for multi-die and chiplet aggregate-disaggregation products, die-to-die as well as chiplet interface IP and memory IP.

Obtaining a license and HDL code for the 68060 core and other 68k cores would be very helpful. These are considered old obsolete cores and would likely require considerable modernization but the 68060 is a fully "MC" qualified design which deserves respect. The code is likely written in Verilog judging by the licensing of ColdFire cores.

https://silvaco.com/design-ip/embedded-processors/

Silvaco (sub?) licenses some old Motorola/Freescale/NXP designs making it more likely that similar licensing for 68k cores may be possible. Getting a license directly from NXP for 68k cores could cost millions but then it may be possible to (sub)license the cores like Silvaco. It would be convenient to others to make 68k cores available to (sub)license and it fits with the retro IP available from Amiga Corporation allowing for a complete one stop retro Amiga solution (68k+chipset+AmigaOS).

The AC68080 core is another option for a high performance 68k core. It would also take considerable work to prepare for a professional quality ASIC. The sources are in VHDL so it may be more difficult to use with SiFive IP but there is some open hardware IP available like a L2 cache design. Jens Kuenzer is a microprocessor developer at IBM and created the base Natami/AC design as well as helped Gunnar von Boehn who is less experienced. Thomas Hirsch who designed the Natami boards is also on the team. While this is a talented and capable team, Gunnar has adopted the AC core as his "toy" FPGA project and made most of the decisions including some poor ones. Gunnar assumed that the AC core would be FPGA only forever and optimized for this including the ISA. As a previous AC team member, Gunnar dominates team decisions and in my experience there are leadership issues.

There are other options as far as potential 68k cores and developers but these are some potential options. There are more options as far as an integrated GPU. I expect big endian support in GPUs will not be difficult to find but better GPUs may require royalties on top of licensing. Imagination Technologies is an option for low power and ray tracing for a budget console and an AMD GPU may allow existing W3D Nova drivers to be used (AMD GPUs support ray tracing but they may use too much power for a budget console). Ray tracing may sound like a marketing gimmick for the Amiga as it uses more power than traditional rendering but it is more natural for some things like lighting. Creating a professional retro+budget 68k Amiga console would certainly cost millions of USDs but it is not rocket science and a mass produced SBC should cost less than $100 USD. The original Amiga Corporation was started with about $7 million USD in investment which was a lot more money back then and not nearly enough to develop and bring the Amiga to market. Development and production is much cheaper today where $7 million would go a long way. A kickstarter for the $99 USD Ouya console raised $8,596,475 USD in 2012. The problem is all these useless Amiga related businesses that throw money away on lawsuits, expensive PPC hardware and poor ARM hardware that has no Amiga future.

@matthey

Quote:

There is no swizzle "unit"

For God's sake man, learn to recognise when your chain is being yanked

Honestly, it's like talking to a LLM...

MattGPT ?

Last edited by Karlos on 16-Dec-2023 at 08:05 PM.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@redfox

Thanks for the kind words!

Yes, indeed I was referring to MorphOS.

I find it hard to believe what it can do at this point, if you look at the items listed one might think it was a wish list as appose to something already here.

You should pick up a PowerMac, for at most $300 in with the OS you will have the fastest PPC hardware available in AmigaLand and a great OS experience. Give it a shot, would love to have you enjoy it as I have!

For next Amiga, I picture…
* a “HAT” for Raspberry Pi with FPGA, essentially pistorm+minimig in one.
* alternatively, a MiST clone with pistorm built in, GPIO pins or CM4 socket.
* break-out bords for above with connectors that fit the various Amiga cases.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kolla

Quote:

For next Amiga, I picture… * a “HAT” for Raspberry Pi with FPGA, essentially pistorm+minimig in one. * alternatively, a MiST clone with pistorm built in, GPIO pins or CM4 socket. * break-out bords for above with connectors that fit the various Amiga cases.

+

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

@kolla

At some point, I think an expanded custom chipset on FPGA / PiStorm 68k on steroids hybrid is inevitable.

I can't wait.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

Quote:

kolla wrote: For next Amiga, I picture… * a “HAT” for Raspberry Pi with FPGA, ....

Well, you could use a RaspberryPI without a head as an Amiga replacement, maybe a hat with 2 9-pin joystick plugs would be a good solution for most 68k fans. There might be something similar inside the A500 mini:
https://youtu.be/igEpW8QJFQ4?t=662

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 18-Dec-2023 at 11:54 AM.

@OneTimer1

I already have more than enough hardware to run UAE on, the point of FPGA attached to an RPi is of course Minimig+ Emu68

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

my dream amiga. fpga with 68k and ppc core.
finally united classic and ng.
real no emulator no pc.
no x86 no arm no riscv.

Last edited by ppcamiga1 on 18-Dec-2023 at 06:32 PM.

@ppcamiga1

I don’t think you really want PowerPC softcore on FPGA.

Almost all FPGA systems have ARM chips as well, to run the administration interface and do provide I/O, interfacing the FPGA with for example storage devices, USB etc.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @kolla At some point, I think an expanded custom chipset on FPGA / PiStorm 68k on steroids hybrid is inevitable. I can't wait.

I second that motion.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@thread

The poll results show a nice little bell-curve distribution, and realistically there's nothing that says it can't be all three:

New low-cost hardware (after almost 15 years or ridiculously overpriced PPC hardware, everything is low cost by comparison) like a Raspberry Pi 5 or similar price/performance ARM SBC, with added FPGA to make it a retro-puting dream, orchestrated by a new Unix/Linux based "Amiga X" operating system.

And all the chunky pixels anyone could want.

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All the way, with 68k

Quote:

kolla wrote: I already have ...

This thread was started by Hondo who never had