Same here. We have two boards, and total costs are above that price. We could probably merge one into the FPGA completely, strip out what we don't need. Currently we run a Celeron at 533 and a M6. Go 667, passive cooling, M9 and the production cost down to $200, and there we go. OpenGL would be a must, though. And dual DVI (but that is usually supported by the M9 directly, at least if the littel white connector on the board is what I guess it is. An internal LVDS/DVI connector).

But then, we already have a new PentiumM 1.6GHz design (with some intel northbridge integrated gfx). And a second PPC8xx controller board (afaik), but I'm not involved in the our next gen projects (any more). Costs are higher, though, I'm pretty sure.

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AmigaOne XE G3/933/VIA/FM801/R200 (fixed),
G3SE/600/Voodoo3/Sil680/RTL8139/SBLive! (noiseless!)
µA1-MK2/G3/933/R200/CMI8738
XE/G4 (broken 7450/800)

Looks really nice. If it will run OS4 then I want one of those

@Jorge
Yeah, basically our current board is basically an Altera FPGA, some glue logic, and some stuff to drive high current devices such as lamps. Its pretty cheap, and it does enough for 2D fruit machines.

The game designers would like to have 3D, and MPEG playback on top of what we have now, but i'm hesitant to go for a PC based platform because:

A) If you buy a £100 PC board from someone like Dell, or even just an online computer shop like ebuyer, it won't be the same PC board in 3 months time
B) At the moment there is not much of an OS between the game and the hardware; just a few drivers. Having the whole of linux and windows running underneath your code means there is a lot more that can go wrong.
C) The boards have to cope with being powered down whenever the arcade owner, or even some players trying to "frig" the board decide to turn it off. In fact, some people even use stun guns on grounded parts of the machine to try and cause software glitches!

So something like Samantha which is a fixed platform, with a minimal OS on top of it would be a good way to get 3D and MPEG capability, with the ability to be shut down and rebooted quickly and without problem. Also, having CCTalk designed into it is a big plus.

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Playstation Network ID: xeron6

Quote:

For amiga/linux/bsd users it is enough since it has a good FPU!!! No altivec but I do not think it is an issue. The PPC assembly is fantastic. Very useful and competitive solution. Better than Intel's and AMD 's toasters and also one generation behind VIA C7.

As for toasters remarks...

Note that AMD sells 3DNow SIMD enabled Geode GX, LX, NX (with SSE), Efficeon (with AMD64), Athlon 64 1500+@1Ghz (90nm Venice core, can be passive cooled), ATI MIPS-Based Xilleon* and ATI GPUs*.

*Assimilated by AMD.

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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

@Jorge

Quote:

And one more thing. Are there CD ROMs with SATA out now ? Will always be possible to hook up a USB Burner/Drive, I'd guess.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812206002

I was concerned about the lack of PATA connectors and the use of optical drives on a Samantha, but I've just been shown this convertor:
http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/AM1010.php

Also, theres SATA optical drives starting to come out apparently.

Quote:

Considering the G3 Amiga Ones run at only 600Mhz, I would surely imagine so

But you need to remember that this is *not* a CPU made for the desktop. It's a CPU designed for price and integration.

Have a look at the EEMBC website which has benchmarks for all sorts of embedded tasks on a variety of CPUs, including both a 667MHz 440EP system and a 1GHz 750GX system. For most of these embedded tasks, the 440 reaches roughly half the performance of the 1GHz 750GX, and would thus be roughly equivalent to a 500MHz 750GX (the 750 is unlikely to ever go off-chip for any of those tasks, so it should scale fairly linearly).

These tasks, however, are chosen from an embedded workload friendly to low-cache CPUs. The 32k of L1 data cache (64 way associative, essentially round-robin replacement policy) can usually fit the working data set. That's *NOT* the case for your average desktop application.
The "Networking 1.1" benchmark contains the "Packet Flow" test, which comes in three sizes. According to the description, the "1MB" test has a working set just over 32k, and given the description, the "512k" test should be just over 16k, with the "2M" test just over 64k. So this provides some insight into how well the 440EP does when the working set (a) fits, (b) just doesn't fit, and (c) really doesn't fit into L1 cache; Given that the 750GX has the same L1 size, the comparison becomes even more interesting (see for yourself by ticking the radio boxes and then choosing "Show Reports"):

The 750GX can handle 512k 38,000 times, or 1M 17,000 times, or 2M 8,500 times. So when moving from scenario (a) to (b), it lost about 10% of perormance, (b) to (c) performance stayed the same. That's a desktop CPU.

The 440EP can handle 512k 19,000 times, or 1M 3,500 times, or 2M 1,750 times. Going from (a) to (b) lowered performance by 60%; Going from (b) to (c) performance stayed the same.

In scenario (a), the "embedded market scenario", the 440EP is at 50% of the 750GX system. At (b) and (c), which are normality for many desktop uses, the 440EP sits at 20% of the 750GX system --- A 200MHz G3 equivalent (until you get to the point where you go beyone the G3's L2 cache, where thinsg start looking a tad better again).

@umisef

So, what you're saying (in a nutshell) is that you expect that for real-life tasks Samantha will have a performance roughly on a par with that of a CSPPC (604e @ 233MHz)?

As long as the included FPGA can be programmed to leave some intensive tasks outside of the cpu,i may be happy with the performance.

Let's say, a HW mpeg en/decoder,something else...

AmigaOS usage doesn't need so much horsepower to run smoothly.And intensive tasks may be sent to the FPGA.

Last edited by Ami603 on 24-Sep-2006 at 10:49 AM.

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Cuida tus piedras gordas.

A1200/030 32Mb
A4000D
A1-X1000.

Fruit Machines

Just read what you posted in the SAM thread - regarding the SAM board.
I was watching Dragons Den and some bloke had designed a card that would wirelessly transmit data from the fruit machines in real time to the owners PC and record stats..

The data would inform:

1) How much money is in machine
2) How much money goes out
3) Busy Times
4) If the door has been opened
5) If the machine has been powered down
6) If an attack has been made on the machine
7) Biggest pay out

etc..

Apparently there are machines that do this already - but they dont transmit the data, you have to manually go to the machine to check it out. Plus these machines are mega expensive. The beauty of there card was that it could fit in any slot machine.


The firmware was copyrighted - but the design was not patented.. they had told ppl about it so could not apply for patent. However, it would not be beyond the wit and wisdom of someone like yourself to engineer your own firmware to do the same.

Coupled with the SAM board..

What do you think?

@bobson

When we put new machines in site test in arcades (to tweak them before finalising them and offering them for sale), we put a box in there with a SIM card. You send it a text message, and it emails you back via GPRS and tells you all sorts of figures, like cash in, cash out, games played, and any debug data the programmer decides to include in the email.

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Playstation Network ID: xeron6

@umisef

looking at these benchmarks, performance seems comparible to a Freescale PowerPC 7400 @ 500mhz, it beats it in most cases. I have a 7400 in an old mac running at 458hmz that still makes a fine desktop even with OSX 10.4 and can do all but the most demanding tasks, i even use it for some photoshop work and watching DVDs. Looking at it like that makes it seem like SAM will be a fine low end board for those of us that want to be able to run OS4 or even Linux but dont want to invet too much.

I may be reading the numbers wrong though, you know more than me about these things so just wanted clarification.

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@Ami603

The ATI Mobility 9000 already has HW MPEG2 Decoding built in I believe.

Last edited by Rit on 24-Sep-2006 at 05:08 PM.

Looks like Samantha could be the perfect OS4 machine for many if the price is right for the spec. I know for myself and OS4 computer will not replace my Mac until there is some serious development in the apps department, e.g. web browser, office suite, printer, scanner support etc.

But as a second computer I could justify a Samantha based system (again as long as the price isn't OTT, i.e. significantly cheaper than a Mac mini) as a living room box for email, instant messenging, mp3 playing, hopefully DVD/VCD and some classic gaming emulation, all from the sofa with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

@Rit

you are correct: check here.

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La fortuna è cieca. La sfiga ci vede benissimo.

Thought so. Which means seamless DVD playback, potentially, which is cool. And potentially MPEG2 HD files too - I know my Radeon 9700 used to play them pretty well, although that was the R300 core as opposed to the 250.. Little bit of a shame it's not the newer AVIVO H264 technology though.

Last edited by Rit on 25-Sep-2006 at 11:47 AM.
Last edited by Rit on 24-Sep-2006 at 11:01 PM.

Quote:

looking at these benchmarks, performance seems comparible to a Freescale PowerPC 7400 @ 500mhz, it beats it in most cases.

That's true up to the point where the 440's L1 cache starts thrashing, and it has to go to main memory. The 7400 has (IIRC external) L2 cache, which even running at only 1/3 of processor speed still makes it severely outperform the 440 in those cases.

Team

Just curios.

I assume that the SAMANTHA boards shown were just bare boards and were not running.

Has "anyone" seen them booting anything (Linux, GRUB... anything) yet?

This is only a question out of curiosity.

Regards
Darren