Apollo Team has new Cyclone 5 FPGA accellerator cards

[Retrofan]

Marvellous news . I'll wait for the A1200 version, but I will be very interested on pics and videos of the existing versions.

[Adrian Browne]

Yep an a1200 version.

[Lord Aga]

Heh heh, good times ahead, yes

[vroom6sri]

Wowzer!

[turrican3]

i can't imagine quake 2 on amiga 500 !!!!!

[tolkien]

Good news....very good news. It's exciting. This is like in the good old days. Great!

[CMTX]

Awesome news!!! Lots of people are waiting for powerful accelerators that beat those 060, not only in performance but specially specially in PRICE!!

Whatever amiga 060 accel -> 600€
RTG card-> 150€
Ethernet card ->120€
Plus the memory card interface...

Total 870€

If you are capable of packing all those features in a nice sub 200€ product you will be the pathway to follow (at least for me) for amiga hw. And you'll sell it like hotkakes

Also looking for an 1200 version

You rock!!

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by gulliver

I just hope that this board doesnt suffer the post-Natami syndrome.

Same here.

It seems pretty simple though, most of the complexity is going to be in developing the software side of things. I can see a long road ahead to properly develop the software for this (CPU, LAN, RTG) but at least it's a start

I wouldn't worry about support for other Amiga's, I believe the 'card' is basically an off-the-shelf FPGA computer with a custom interface.....can someone confirm or deny that?
Therefore to make one for the A1200/A3000/A4000 you only need to make a new custom interface. This makes a lot of sense as it cuts down on development costs/complexity.


I'd personally rather see a 'pure' custom Classic FPGA accelerator card (like the Vampire on steroids) but that would cost a lot more money than using an off-the-shelf FPGA card, especially if you take the next logic step and offload the HD I/O to the accelerator. My problem with projects like these is that you can end up with a modern computer attached to an old keyboard (the keyboard being the A1200).


Anyway, this is an interesting project which I'll be watching with interest

[Gunnar]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Same here.

It seems pretty simple though, most of the complexity is going to be in developing the software side of things. I can see a long road ahead to properly develop the software for this (CPU, LAN, RTG) but at least it's a start

Yes of course developing the network driver will take time.
But the good thing is no one has to wait for it.

The card as it is "plug and play".
You take the old 68000 out, you plug the new card in.
And "VOILA" you have a ultra fast CPU and big amount of memory.

From a software point of view there are three development items.
a) IDE driver testing
b) Picasso96 driver testing
c) Network stack

One can go two ways with this.
A) You wait until all software stacks are done and tested.
B) For impatient users you give the card out as "Turbo-Card" now.
And they an download the drivers to enable the other feature when they are done.

The card is good value for the money even alone as memory upgrade.
The card is great value for the money as CPU upgrade.


So for people like you who primarely look for a 200 MIPS AMIGA.
The card is great even without RTG driver.

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I wouldn't worry about support for other Amiga's, I believe the 'card' is basically an off-the-shelf FPGA computer with a custom interface.....can someone confirm or deny that?

Yes the card is a sandwhich.
Its two PCB connected piggypack to each other.
It design similar to the well known X-Surf.

One piece is the AMIGA bus bridge, with HDMI out, and Network out.

The other part as a high quality, well tested Cyclone 5 card with 128 MB DDR 3 memory, and SDCard interface.
This CPU-Module is already well tested and working fine.


The 2 piece solution offer two major advantages:

a) We can produce cards for ALL Amigas from A500 to A4000.
And only need different adaptors for them.
This means the CPU-module is the same for all of them.
This keeps production costs down and results in
a much higher value for the money for AMIGA users.

b) The CPU-Module is "a module".
This means users buying this solution could even upgrade their CPU module.
The AMIGA bridge can be used with new Modules later on.

The current module has more CPU power than a 68060 and 128 MB memory.
But CPU Modules with more main memory or even much faster CPUs are possible too.




Nova you could basically take the card now without wating for the RTG driver and change one of your games to directly bang the hardware on the RTG truecolor out to have Quake 2 running in truecolor.

[Fingerlickin_B]

Where do we go to pre-order?

PZ.

[ptyerman]

Gotta have one of these for my A2000. Just cost a fortune for a 040 card and memory though.

[Amicol]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

My problem with projects like these is that you can end up with a modern computer attached to an old keyboard (the keyboard being the A1200).

I totally understand what You're saying, I never use emulation for this reason (only to install an operating system). But I think it would be amazing to bring the Amiga into the 21st century, it's a massively good thing people have continued to develop for a system that should never have lost out to the PC.


Wouldn't it be amazing to do all you word processing, internet browsing, and more modern gaming all on the Amiga!


You would still have all the original hardware to play your old games as they were intended. The best of both worlds!


I am excited!! Like a kid waiting for Christmas Day!

[crazyc]

I think its great to see development like this, but I struggle with the same issue as Novacoder.

Originally Posted by Amicol

Wouldn't it be amazing to do all you word processing, internet browsing, and more modern gaming all on the Amiga!

But to what extent is it still an Amiga? Does that even matter? Depends on whether you want the output (to play the games etc) or if you get your kicks from the hardware side as well (which I do).

Am a bit torn on this really.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by crazyc

I think its great to see development like this, but I struggle with the same issue as Novacoder.



But to what extent is it still an Amiga? Does that even matter? Depends on whether you want the output (to play the games etc) or if you get your kicks from the hardware side as well (which I do).

Am a bit torn on this really.

Gunnar can explain it certainly better.

It is the same as the Vampire. If you do not use the new features you have a accellerator with fast CPU and more RAM. For ECS or AGA it uses the Amiga side so you have the same there (same amount of chipram, same chipset). It is of course not making full use of the hardware.

[ptyerman]

You still have the real hardware so that is not an issue really. Just think of it as an expanded Amiga, the same as you would expand them back in the 90's with a Blizzard or Apollo card.

[Amicol]

Originally Posted by ptyerman

You still have the real hardware so that is not an issue really. Just think of it as an expanded Amiga, the same as you would expand them back in the 90's with a Blizzard or Apollo card.

I totally agree. Having to always use the hardware on the motherboard has always held the Amiga back. One of the reasons it lost in the fight against the PC.


Is a PC not a PC anymore because it uses a graphics card, a Ethernet card, a sound card, etc?? It's still a PC....


Same with this, it's still an Amiga whatever you expand it with

[kipper2k]

I like the hardware addons, as long as they are addons and don't cause compatibility problems too much with all the software that we enjoy. Personally , i have no use for Ethernet on an Amiga, HDMI, would be awesome.

At what point the real Amiga becomes just an emulator is up to everyones translation, speaking of which, the possibility of being a SNES, Mame etc emulator is nice too

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Gunnar

One piece is the AMIGA bus bridge, with HDMI out, and Network out.

The other part as a high quality, well tested Cyclone 5 card with 128 MB DDR 3 memory, and SDCard interface.

very good!

[Amicol]

@kipper2k
Wil this make Ian Stedman's CD32 expansion redundant?
If this is also available for the CD32 of course...

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Amicol

@kipper2k
Wil this make Ian Stedman's CD32 expansion redundant?
If this is also available for the CD32 of course...

from amiga.org:
"We as team have recently bought several A1200 and have already stocked up mostly every made AMIGA here for testing the cards: E.g A500,A1000,A2000,A3000,A4000,A1200,CD32"

hope this answers your question