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Originally Posted by Toni Wilen
Exactly. Another too obvious solution that is not done because most just copies old (bad) designs..
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Unfortunately, computer technology is all about following the leader and their bad ideas. From IBM choosing the 8088 for the PC when the 68000 was available to ARM with ARM32 (innovative but optimized too much for one CPU design), Thumb (first improved code density mistake), Thumb 2 (good code density but handicapped by 8 GP registers giving much increased instruction count and cache/memory accesses) and ARM64 (back to 32 GP register RISC which is a resource hog) modes with mode switching overhead and now using slower 64 bit pointers all in one CPU for embedded. These companies get a good reputation and then everyone follows them like lemmings. Yet IBM was far from a leader in PC performance then (they won market share by reputation and openness) and most modern "high performance" ARM processors are neither small and efficient any longer contrary to their reputation for small efficient CPU designs and energy efficiency.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toni Wilen
(As I have already said, there is big chasm between Amiga hardware and software people. I don't include those that think they know what they are doing, there is far too many of those.. Yes, I am software guy and there may be good reason for Phase 5 (and others) to do it that way but this is what happens when there is no good communication. Everyone just blames the "other side" for being stupid. "Here is the spec, now it is your turn do the software/hardware. Err? Didn't I have anything to say before you designed it? No. You don't need to know.". It happens both ways.)
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Again, not unusual. This was one of my major criticisms of the Apollo core. I tried to bridge the communication gap between the hardware designers (Apollo core hardware designers), software writers especially compiler designers (vbcc's Dr. Volker/Frank Wille) and embedded needs (I approached InnovASIC's Fido 68k designer Dave Alsup) in creating an enhanced 68k CPU and ISA but nobody was much interested! Nobody was interested in researching and creating a new 68k CPU together! I took the initiative on my own to modifying ADis to collect 68k statistics from Amiga executables but Gunnar decided how the hardware would be because hardware designers know best. I believe UAE could have been modified to prototype and run traces for an even better look. You were one of the people I would have loved to contact when I was trying to form a healthy "Apollo Team" but Gunnar's authority was threatened already by my meek assertiveness (meek and assertive are not opposites as I am the gentle, sometimes invisible, hand that steers people in the right direction). Unfortunately, Gunnar has made choices which limit the chances of the Apollo Core being used outside of an FPGA in retro 68k computers. His design and ISA are too optimized for a particular hardware, not designed for future upgradability and does not exploit the potential of the 68k. Too bad you were not there to tell him about hardware mistakes but then you are just a "software guy" too. On the bright side, you didn't waste your time like I did and is so common for developers in the Amiga community. Only Amiga makes it impossible.