10 May 2024, 21:32 | #4161 | |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,361
|
Quote:
Good old Paula + a DSP would have solved the sound issue. A 020 or 030 plus DSP is a powerful yet affordable combination. |
|
10 May 2024, 21:48 | #4162 |
Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Italy/Rome
Posts: 2,344
|
@Gorf
Believe me, it is not so easy. What made PC/VGA so succesfull was that is was easy to develop |
11 May 2024, 01:41 | #4163 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 903
|
Quote:
Fast 386DX/486SX-25/486SX-33 PC games have 3 to 4 MB requirements that is in line with 3DO ($699 USD)'s 3 MB RAM (2 MB system, 1 MB VRAM). Falcon 4MB RAM configuration is 599 UKP. Falcon 4MB RAM configuration is 699 UKP with 64 MB HDD. Falcon 4MB RAM configuration is 999 UKP. PC's 16-bit color pack pixels are on a higher clocked 32-bit VLB and SVGA chipsets. For games machine, no brainer for 3DO's 2 million unit sales murdered the Atari Falcon's 13,000 to 14,000 units. The games market is larger than the desktop music composition market. Baseline A1200's 2 MB RAM (399 UKP with a healthy profit margin) is progress from the previous A500/A600 generation, but wasn't enough for games that are ported from 3DO and fast 386DX-33/386DX-40/486SX-25/486SX-33 PC games have 3 to 4 MB requirements. Officially, Commodore thinks A1200 does not have game performance C2P and their solution is Akiko's C2P that was created within 1 day, hence locking out A1200 from chunky pixels PC game ports. Commodore was focused on IDE mandate and PCMCIA modifications on A1000+ (turned into A1200) and didn't think about C2P despite AAA project having chunky pixels. Wing Commander CD32 for A1200 was unofficially patched. If A1200 had an extra 1MB Fast RAM, hardware assist C2P or optimized blitter assist CP2 as part of the official SDK, the outcome could be different. Accelerated A1200 had commercial textured map 3D games from smaller game studios. AGA marketing had 24-bit 16.7 million color palette and 18-bit lossy color compression display capability. In modern GPU marketing, delta color compression (DCC) is a virtue. https://www.anandtech.com/show/10325...ition-review/8 NVIDIA's marketing delta color compression (DCC) for Pascal generation. Direct3D GPUs have MPEG (lossy motion compression), lossy and lossless texture compression. Modern GPUs has AV1 and H265 motion compression. Psygnosis wanted upgraded CD32 for a minimal marginal cost increase. From Commodore the Inside Story- The Untold Tale of a Computer Giant by David John Pleasance. About page 128 Code:
As a result of this, I was asked by Ian Hetherington (cofounder, with Jonathan Ellis, of Psygnosis) to arrange a meeting with Mehdi Ali at their studios in Liverpool. (skip, read book for extra detail) Ian explained to Mehdi that with a few seemingly quite modest design changes, the CD32 could have an incredible boost in performance at very marginal additional cost. (skip, read book for extra detail) Well, it went exactly as expected. Mehdi was rude and ignorant, and clearly had no idea what Ian was talking about. But instead of just admitting that, he more or less turned on Ian, as though he ‘must be crazy telling us how to design our computers!’ [ Show youtube player ] Steve Ballmer's Developers, developers, developers... Quote:
Atari fans should look at OpenGL's GLfloat which is 32-bit IEEE-754 floating-point value i.e IEEE FP32. AT&T DSP32 array is targeting SGI's Intel's i860 array market. http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/mikesinz.html Commodore engineer Mike Sinz's view on DSP32 Code:
It would also so really good speech and sound and math (talk about fast rendering times!) IEEE FP32 is standard for PC's vertex OpenGL and Direct3D. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/c...tion_Guide.pdf From page 19 of 140, AT&T marketed multiple DSP3210 as a 3D graphics workstation co-processor array. AA3000+ only has a single DSP3210. From page 20 of 140, "DSP32C, 32-bit CMOS DSP (3-D Graphics Floating-Point Accelerator with Graphics Application Library)" DSP32 was used as Quickdraw accelerator for Apple's Mac Quadra 840AV (68040 @ 40 Mhz, DSP32 @ 66Mhz) and Quadra 660AV (68040 @ 25Mhz, DSP32 @ 55 Mhz, $1399 USD). Quadra 840AV and 660AV was replaced by PowerMac line in 1994. Quadra AV has video in and video out i.e. Quadra AV and Adobe Premiere NLE combo directly targets Amiga's video market. Fast Amigas with Shapeshifter/Fusion/Emplant can run Adobe Premiere NLE. Apple >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Atari. Last edited by hammer; 11 May 2024 at 03:17. |
||
11 May 2024, 02:09 | #4164 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 903
|
Quote:
"Multimedia DSP" is a cheap math power accelerator. The reason for GPU is excellent math power per area and per math power per dollar. http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahi...ggebrecht.html Lew Eggebrecht's official road map had DSP3210 for every Amiga models. Lew Eggebrecht wasn't in the hot seat from 1988 to 1992. Amiga Hombre's PA-RISC @ 120 Mhz displacing 68EC020 @ 14Mhz mirrors the migration path for PalmOS 5's ARM925T (ARMv4T) @ 126 Mhz to 144 Mhz displacing Dragon Ball MC68VZ328 (68000) @ 33Mhz. Both PA-RISC and ARM had pretty good code densities. ARM focused on RISC power for the masses. Phase 5's PowerPC approach wasn't for the masses. It's ARM's turn for the Amiga. Last edited by hammer; 11 May 2024 at 02:42. |
|
11 May 2024, 02:52 | #4165 |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 903
|
Haage & Partner/Phase 5 PPC wasn't low cost for the masses. I re-activated and continued to use my Amigas with ARM-based (PiStorm-Emu68) accelerators instead of storing them after the COVID-19 lockdown.
|
11 May 2024, 06:59 | #4166 |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,652
|
|
11 May 2024, 07:24 | #4167 | ||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,652
|
Quote:
From your link:- Quote:
With CD audio you have Hi-Fi quality music with another 4 channels for sound effects, plenty enough for games and no need for a DSP chip. |
||
11 May 2024, 07:26 | #4168 |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Poland
Posts: 847
|
@Gorf - yes, but such DSP has to be properly placed in chipset... just slapping one to 68k bus ain't gonna solve a lot of things. DSP embedded in chipset and obviously with more DMA channels and faster RAM - that's the way to go...
|
11 May 2024, 07:38 | #4169 |
Registered User
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Italy/Rome
Posts: 2,344
|
@Promilus
Amen. |
11 May 2024, 07:44 | #4170 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 903
|
Quote:
Bill Sydnes was fired after the A600 debacle. https://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb...order=0#253077 Code:
Dave Haynie: Lew Eggebrecht has nothing to do with the Amiga as you all know it. He was hired to work with Bill Sydnes back in 1991 or so, and took over when they fired Sydnes in 1993. A1200's design changes must be completed about 7 to 9 months before the release date. Give an extra month or two for Commodore. Last edited by hammer; 11 May 2024 at 08:09. |
|
11 May 2024, 07:54 | #4171 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 903
|
Quote:
[ Show youtube player ] For AA3000+, DSP32 works as intended. Mac DSP32 software was ported for the AA3000+. The audio DSP focus didn't help Atari Falcon's bad 13,000 to 14,000 unit sales results. Last edited by hammer; 11 May 2024 at 08:01. |
|
11 May 2024, 09:41 | #4172 |
Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Poland
Posts: 847
|
One of the most common misconception is that DSP is math co-processor. No, DSP is DSP with architecture designed to fit that actual job. And while DSP could've supplement 020 with some nice additions related to 3D graphics generation it was hardly anything which particularly suited DSP back then. That's why there was a need to develop SuperFX chip for SNES in the first place, existing DSP-1 designs were hardly suitable.
Actual example how to done things fairly efficient was PS1 - GTE is centered around vector math co-processor which basically translates to SIMD capability present basically in each and every processor out there (and yes, also in some for in AC68080). PS1 had vector math capability. Jaguar did not (but had DSP like MAC, hardware divider and special instructions which allows fairly convenient matrix multiplication). Sega 32X had dual SuperH2 which was nice to develop on but performance was ok-ish. Saturn had the same but with higher clock. Obviously Saturn (and I think 32X also) had some h/w texturing capabilities so at least that one came accelerated somehow. Both Jaguar and Saturn had their processors having direct access to graphics units (and in case of jaguar close relation to blitter and object processor). So let me get this straight... someone really expects that slapping DSP to 68k bus (instead close to what actually generates graphics) would solve the problems with inadequacies of Amiga hardware in terms of 3D gaming? How naive can you be?! |
11 May 2024, 10:44 | #4173 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: France
Posts: 615
|
Quote:
[ Show youtube player ] [ Show youtube player ] |
|
11 May 2024, 10:53 | #4174 | ||||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,652
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Commodore didn't have to put PCMCIA in the A300. They could have just made a cut down A500 that wasn't at all expandable, for people who just wanted the base model to play games. They didn't need to put PCMCIA in the A1200 either. People would find other ways to get Ethernet into it (eg. through the clock port) and we wouldn't know what we were missing. But I'm glad they did, because apart from the increased functionality I learned a lot about how PCMCIA and Ethernet worked. Quote:
The TTL chips mentioned were not a big deal. There was no need for a special custom chip in the A600 because it only had a 16 bit bus. This is a lot less complex than the A1200 and A4000 which have a 32 bit bus that needs to be steered to 16 bit for some devices. The A600 only needed two 74LS245 chips to interface between the CPU and custom chips. The A4000 didn't have PCMCIA so of course it wouldn't need any buffers for that, but Bridgette replaced six 74F646 and four 74F245 chips used in the A3000. |
||||
11 May 2024, 10:56 | #4175 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 31,735
|
|
11 May 2024, 11:24 | #4176 | |||
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,652
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
But fans here would do the same - piss away expensive R&D on their 'dream machine' which would have so much stuff in it that it would be impossible to build, let alone be cheap enough to become popular. Then they would blame management for their own failure to produce a machine that the market wanted. |
|||
11 May 2024, 11:51 | #4177 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Hastings, New Zealand
Posts: 2,652
|
Quote:
I'm not saying it wouldn't have been better for Commodore to just keep making the A500. In fact I agree with it. Hell, it might even have been better for Commodore if they had just stuck to making office furniture. But I don't care about what was best for Commodore - I care about what computers they produced. A Commodore that only made the A500 and then switched to whatever was the hottest product at the time (eg. this office chair) is not the Commodore I want. If producing the A600 meant they would go bankrupt, so be it. But Commodore didn't just keep making the C64 until it died. They also produced the C16 and Plus 4, the C128, the C64GS and the C65 (pity they didn't make more of them). So we are actually seeing some consistency here. Commodore had a long history of bringing out 'lower cost' models on the idea that it would boost sales. It worked for the VIC-20, didn't work for the C16, didn't work for the C64GS... and we can't put the blame for the C16 on Gould or Ali or Sydnes because that was Jack's idea. |
|
11 May 2024, 11:58 | #4178 |
HOL/FTP busy bee
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Germany
Age: 46
Posts: 31,735
|
But they never replaced the C64 with an 'updated' model. Releasing a replacement for the A500 didn't make a lot of sense, but releasing two of them in such a short amount of time makes it very clear that Commodore didn't have a clear strategy for the Amiga. It almost seems like a lot of decisions were second guessed the moment they made it to the market.
|
11 May 2024, 12:13 | #4179 | |
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 903
|
Quote:
I'm aware of less flexible DSPs. AT&T marketed DSP3210 as "3D and multimedia" DSP. Again, http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/c...tion_Guide.pdf From page 19 of 140, AT&T marketed multiple DSP3210 as a 3D graphics workstation co-processor array. AA3000+ only has a single DSP3210. From page 20 of 140, Code:
"DSP32C, 32-bit CMOS DSP (3-D Graphics Floating-Point Accelerator with Graphics Application Library)" https://user.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/esv.html Evans & Sutherland ESV Workstation used 44 DSP32C for its 3D acceleration! Code:
The graphics subsystem consists of a command FIFO filled by the CPU with a stream of commands. The command stream is dispersed to any one of up to 44 AT&T DSP32C signal processing chips. The model number roughly correlates to the number of DSP chips in the system, with four in the base ESV/3 and 44 in the ESV/50. In my collection I have an ESV/10 and an ESV/50. The DSP chips perform vertex processing operations and produces a command-stream for the custom ASIC pixel processor chip that is connected to the 88-bit deep frame buffer. The pixel processor command stream handled 2D Blit operations and antialiased rasterization of point, line and span primitives. A 'span' primitive is an aliased line used for scan conversion of polygon primitives. The polygons are rasterized into a series of spans by the DSP chips. Amiga Hombre with a single PA-RISC with custom 3D extensions for 3D... this is NOT a many-core GPU characteristic of early "proper" workstation class 3D and modern-day GPUs. At best, Amiga Hombre is just a low-end games console. SGI employed many core i860 as its geometry engine. There's a reason why modern GpGPUs companies are founded by workstation graphics engineers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Drivin%27 Code:
Race Drivin' improved upon its predecessor in several ways: It had improved handling courtesy of a faster microprocessor and more efficient software. The TMS34010 used for car modeling was replaced with an AT&T DSP32C which is faster and has floating point. Instead of modeling a car with only two wheels as Hard Drivin' did, Race Drivin' could model a car with all 4 wheels. For 3D, DSP32C is faster than TMS34010. Ignorance is bliss. Reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games MAME that runs Race Drivin's machine emulation would have a DSP32C emulator. https://ia903005.us.archive.org/Book...ale=4&rotate=0 During 1989, DSP32C is around 24 Mhz. This is used as an FPU accelerator add-on card for the PC. AA3000+'s DSP3210 is the 50Mhz variant. The DSP3210 is a variant of the DSP32C with a more powerful interface to external memory. Commodore is just a follower, not a leader at this point. Last edited by hammer; 11 May 2024 at 13:33. |
|
11 May 2024, 12:22 | #4180 | |
Registered User
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Munich/Bavaria
Posts: 2,361
|
Quote:
Commodore could have dome more to support developers, but that's besides the point here ... I just tried to answer the question why DSP was somewhat hyped back then and why it might have been a reasonable and economical decision to go that route. |
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 3 (2 members and 1 guests) | |
Thorham, TEG |
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
A1200 RF module removal pics + A1200 chips overview | eXeler0 | Hardware pics | 2 | 08 March 2017 00:09 |
Sale - 2 auctions: A1200 mobo + flickerfixer & A1200 tower case w/ kit | blakespot | MarketPlace | 0 | 27 August 2015 18:50 |
For Sale - A1200/A1000/IndiAGA MkII/A1200 Trapdoor Ram & Other Goodies! | fitzsteve | MarketPlace | 1 | 11 December 2012 10:32 |
Trading A1200 030 acc and A1200 indivision for Amiga stuff | 8bitbubsy | MarketPlace | 17 | 14 December 2009 21:50 |
Trade Mac g3 300/400 or A1200 for an A1200 accellerator | BiL0 | MarketPlace | 0 | 07 June 2006 17:41 |
|
|