Unreleased Amiga chipset better than anything today?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by grond

What a blitter does from today's perspective is render a flat textured object without any lightsourcing. A blitter simply isn't relevant today. And no chunky2planar (!), 5.1 sound (woah!) and unimaginable software-emulated stuff of the 90s created by a single person and only witnessed by David Pleasance either.

Xbox One has "Move Engines".

According to the Xbox One's official SDK, Move Engines operate at 256 bit (the same as the bus for the rest of the X1) and the system has 25.6 GB/s of read and 25.6 GB/s of write memory bandwidth shared between the DMA engines as follows: DMA engine 1, DMA engine 3, display scan out and write-back, and video decoding.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Photon

The battle is on even today, with Apple computers refusing to be a platform and swapping out the CPU type and removing support for standard graphics APIs.

Even today the goal is still the same - to make money. If they could do that without any hardware at all they would. But even today customers tend to shy away from handing over their money for nothing tangible in return. The battle therefore becomes convincing customers that they need new hardware. This is quite a quandary because modern PCs are ridiculously powerful and last for decades - how can they make money out of that? The answer is bloatware. Make the software bigger and slower so you need a more powerful machine to run it, while convincing the customer that they really need the bloat.

But this is completely irrelevant to us. The Amiga got off that merry-go-round 30 years ago. For us it's not a matter of creating more powerful hardware to handle the bloat, but making software work better on what we have.

The Hombre platform sounds like something that would replace the native chipset, and if so it would have changed the Amiga platform to another.

Yes, and it would not be the Amiga we know and love, so what's the point?

By 1995 the World had Windows 95, removing the last advantage the Amiga had over PCs. From that time on having more powerful graphics in the Amiga was pointless, since the OS couldn't scale to match it. And having an Amiga at all was pointless because no new software was being produced for it. Even if it had survived it would have been a Cinderella.

But today it's different. The Amiga is now a retro computer. We don't want to change it into something else. Even if this fictional Hombre chipset was capable of what is claimed, it's irrelevant. Something like the Vampire's SAGA or a slightly enhanced replacement for the original chipset is more than enough for most of us. I run my A1200 on a 32" LCD TV in PAL composite, and it does everything I want it to just like it did 30 years ago (actually even better, since the LCD TV has a sharper picture and flicker fixes interlace).

Even with tons of support, engines, shaders and hand-holding everywhere, RTX is still terribly slow. It's not used to ray-trace full frames, as polygon acceleration or a 3D rendering program would. Even full-scene antialiasing polygons can be too much for costly gaming PCs.

But hey, everything was too slow when first introduced, right? The important thing is to convince people that they need it, so they will fork out even more money when it gets faster!

And of course GPUs still use Blitters, but mostly for clearing and copying; they're not good enough for much else. Ask a modern GPU to draw some lines, or fill individual polygons and not others, and you have some work ahead of you, because... PCs are just for gaming?

That might explain why the Windows GUI seems to have gone backwards. Apparently fancy themes with more than a few pale lines and flat rectangles of barely distinguishable color are too hard for modern systems!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by grond

How was a software-emulation of a chipset doing something that Pleasance could see but hardware couldn't do back then?

I didn't watch the video so I can't be sure what you are talking about, but during development emulating a chipset in software is commonly done these days. I would bet that is how they developed Hombre - not the hard way like Jay Miner did with the Lorraine prototype.

All this Hombre stuff sounds like a Commodore Wunderwaffe to me. Yes, with more foresight perhaps Commodore could have made the Playstation but they would have had to start such a project much earlier.

I don't think they would have been able to start it much earlier. But the Playstation itself nearly didn't happen, so in an alternate universe it's possible Commodore might have pulled it off. Only problem is there were other consoles with 3D coming out that it would have to compete against.

We got the technology anyway, just as much Amiga-incompatible as Hombre would have been. So why should we care?

We shouldn't. Hombre is just a historical curiosity.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Never forget the Batman! He moved a ton of Amigas to the masses for us! We all would not be here if it wasn't for the Batman. Congrats on that campaign!

https://filmstories.co.uk/features/h...iga-computers/

My A500 Starter Kit wasn't the Batman bundle.

David Pleasance understands game title exclusivity to sell hardware and avoid the "Xbox One has no games" meme.

Both Nintendo and Sony have strong game-exclusive libraries.

Xbox Series S = 8 million units
Xbox Series X= 13 million units
Xbox One / Xbox One X= 68 million units

vs

PS5 = 38 million units
PS4 / PS4 pro = 106 million units

Microsoft Xbox's leader Phil Spencer thinks pure hardware superiority will sell the Xbox platform e.g. Xbox One X vs PS4 Pro.

With Microsoft purchasing Bethesda, Phil Spencer is learning AAA game exclusivity sells hardware.

Xbox One X being hardware superior when compared to Play Station 4 Pro is meaningless.
Xbox Series X being hardware superior when compared to Play Station 5 is meaningless.

The lessons from Amiga 500's Batman pack are still applicable to the current game console generation.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Even today the goal is still the same - to make money. If they could do that without any hardware at all they would. But even today customers tend to shy away from handing over their money for nothing tangible in return. The battle therefore becomes convincing customers that they need new hardware. This is quite a quandary because modern PCs are ridiculously powerful and last for decades - how can they make money out of that? The answer is bloatware. Make the software bigger and slower so you need a more powerful machine to run it, while convincing the customer that they really need the bloat.

It's NVIDIA's greed that constrained VRAM for lesser SKUs e.g. RTX 3070's 8 GB debacle. A mod'ed RTX 3070 with 16 GB VRAM plays the latest VRAM-heavy games with smooth frame rates.

NVIDIA has halted RTX 4070 12GB's production while AMD is running out of RX 6800 XT 16 GB with RX 7800 XT 16 GB arriving in the distribution channel.

BVH raytracing (search engine problem), pixel density geometry (e.g. Unreal Engine 5's Nanite) and multi-layer semi-transparent textures will require additional VRAM.

PS5 and Xbox Series X combined 51 million install base will dictate VRAM allocation for gaming PC.

AAA game developers are demanding more VRAM.

Raytracing is a black hole when comes to TFLOPS of compute power being thrown at it.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

But today it's different. The Amiga is now a retro computer. We don't want to change it into something else. Even if this fictional Hombre chipset was capable of what is claimed, it's irrelevant. Something like the Vampire's SAGA or a slightly enhanced replacement for the original chipset is more than enough for most of us. I run my A1200 on a 32" LCD TV in PAL composite, and it does everything I want it to just like it did 30 years ago (actually even better, since the LCD TV has a sharper picture and flicker fixes interlace).

Amiga 1200 can be re-created and enhanced by combining ACA 500plus's Amiga 1200 expansion connector knowledge and Apollo Core's SAGA chipset knowledge.

Amiga 1200's expansion connector can accept PiStorm32 lite, Ice Drake V4, TF1260, Warp1260, and any future accelerators.

Amiga 1200 design allows the base platform to evolve with any new accelerators and enforces Amiga's AutoConfig subsystem architecture. PC's ACPI subsystem architecture makes modern PC characteristics.

Apollo Core's VSA4 doesn't duplicate A1200's Commodore-designed expandability feature and "Amiga 1200" is not being manufactured. I would like to see VSA4 with Amiga 1200 's expansion connector.

My Amiga 1200 (with PiStorm32 lite+RPI 4B 4GB + Emu68) has Indivision AGA Mk3 to connect to an HDMI display and PCMCIA WPA2 WiFi.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Photon

I'm one of those who is mad about the original chipsets, and a graphics cards is a perfectly good and meaningful expansion which doesn't change the platform unless you run OS code on it. If there isn't some standard API supported by the OS though, you go through the same changes as PC did, becoming a jumble of parts rather than a platform.

I draw the line at Motorola-designed CPUs, because there is always emulation involved if you go beyond that, meaning that you change the platform.

So, you're one of those who still believe "Intel genuine" name mentality for the X86?

Emu68 still follows Amiga's AutoConfig subsystem architecture i.e.
1. Broadcom P96 RTG driver is still 68K coded.
2. Raspberry Pi's Fast RAM recognition.

68060 translates 68K CISC to RISCy before being executed in RISCy CPU core.

Unlike UAE hosted on memory-protected multitasking OS, both Emu68 and 68060 don't have multitasking OS for the translation stage.

Originally Posted by Photon

The battle is on even today, with Apple computers refusing to be a platform and swapping out the CPU type and removing support for standard graphics APIs.

Apple's past CPU partners are less dependable e.g. Commodore Semiconductor Group (MOS), Freescale (Motorola), and IBM.

Intel dropped the ball during the Cascade Lake era and Intel's near-stagnated "quad-core forever" for the mainstream desktop CPU market from Core 2 Quad to CoffeeLake's 6 cores.

Acorn developed ARM against Commodore Semiconductor Group's crap 65xx R&D road map.

Originally Posted by Photon

The Hombre platform sounds like something that would replace the native chipset, and if so it would have changed the Amiga platform to another.

Even with tons of support, engines, shaders and hand-holding everywhere, RTX is still terribly slow. It's not used to ray-trace full frames, as polygon acceleration or a 3D rendering program would. Even full-scene antialiasing polygons can be too much for costly gaming PCs.

MSAA on polygon edges is pretty easy for RX 6800 XT class GPUs. Rasterization is not a major problem for modern PC GPUs.

There's less need for polygon edge antialiasing at a high 4K resolution.

Real-time raytracing with modern games is sample-based raytracing with an RT denoise shader pass. AI pixel reconstruction pass can help with RT denoise stage.

Originally Posted by Photon

And of course GPUs still use Blitters, but mostly for clearing and copying; they're not good enough for much else. Ask a modern GPU to draw some lines, or fill individual polygons and not others, and you have some work ahead of you, because... PCs are just for gaming?

GPUs with tensor cores are good for deep learning workloads.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by hammer

David Pleasance understands game title exclusivity to sell hardware and avoid the "Xbox One has no games" meme.

But Batman wasn't an Amiga exclusive game. The Batman pack sold A500s because it was cheap.

[d4rk3lf]

The only way I can see that Hombre is relevant in 2023, is if Commodore release it, and right after releasing, there's been a huge nuclear war, that devastated majority of everything.
After some years of battles with spears and swords, and after a piece is reached, right about at this time, we could gather remaining Hombres and re-establish Amiga's BBS's.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Thorham

What an absurd statement to make. He's basically saying that Hombre would've been more powerful than tens of millions of dollars worth of super computer equipment of the time

Although his statement leaves people scratching their heads a small bit of logic will tell you he obviously isnt talking ”power” in terms of raw computational power.
Maybe the system was doing things no other system is doing today. We could drag screens with different resolutions on Amiga, youre still not doing that on your $2000 RTX 4090 windows machine. Is it necessary? Not really, but still.
The tight integration of things he saw in the early Hombre demos is probably some cool shit that was doing thing that were on a path no one chose since..

[stefcep2]

Originally Posted by Thorham

What an absurd statement to make. He's basically saying that Hombre would've been more powerful than tens of millions of dollars worth of super computer equipment of the time

sorry but how much did the video editing systems of the day cost when the video toaster and lightwave came into the market?

[Cris1997XX]

For Hombre to actually have a chance on the market, Commodore engineers should've made sure the chipset had almost perfect compatibility with OCS, ECS and AGA (Meaning the most popular games can run with no problems). But as we know very well, that was something they couldn't care less about...

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by stefcep2

sorry but how much did the video editing systems of the day cost when the video toaster and lightwave came into the market?

Sure. But the video toaster was better than anything available at the time, but it's not better than anything invented 30 years later.

In fairness to David, in some of those clips it seems he means "its better than anything you see today done on an Amiga" suggesting he's really bemoaning the fact it has mostly become a retro platform, left pretty much where it was in the late 80s. Although in others it does just seem like an outright statement in comparison to modern computing. Maybe he just remembers being wowed by the demo and hasn't felt that same kind of wow factor since (because improvements have been gradual) and his own nostalgic rose-tinted spectacles are changing the memory of what he saw back in the day.

But the specs for Hombre are out there and it's clear that while powerful if it had come out alongside the original PlayStation, it's not anything modern hardware can't vastly outperform.

[stefcep2]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

For Hombre to actually have a chance on the market, Commodore engineers should've made sure the chipset had almost perfect compatibility with OCS, ECS and AGA (Meaning the most popular games can run with no problems). But as we know very well, that was something they couldn't care less about...

It made no business sense to do that.



The growth of the computer industry is driven by obsolescence of hardware and software.



If people wanted to run OCS/ECS/AGA then they can keep those machines.



The reason Commodore hardware is what people look back on today is because that was Commodore left us with when it died, and by us I mean the old farts nostalgia of those very days.


If Hombre had happened, if PPC had happened in 1994, then we'd see the OCS/AGA much like the NES/SNES are today by Nintendo fans.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

We could drag screens with different resolutions on Amiga

That's an illusion. 320x256, 640x256 and 1280x256 are all the same resolution. Hint: SVGA CRTs and flat panels don't switch modes when switching between these compatible resolutions. These are not different resolutions in this context.

Originally Posted by eXeler0

youre still not doing that on your $2000 RTX 4090 windows machine.

It's an OS feature that they didn't add. Any recent graphics card can do that pretty easily because the resolutions are just doubled like in my example above. In fact, a graphics card can do this better than an Amiga because it can do proper up scaling so that you can mix truly different resolutions like 640x512 and 800x600.

Originally Posted by stefcep2

sorry but how much did the video editing systems of the day cost when the video toaster and lightwave came into the market?

If it's better than anything we have now, it would've been better than anything available back then.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by stefcep2

It made no business sense to do that.

The growth of the computer industry is driven by obsolescence of hardware and software.

Except that proved not to be true, at least not for software. Being able to continue running the old software you brought, even if you might eventually replace it was critical to platform success. Windows ruled the roost because more than anyone else, Microsoft made massive strides in retaining backwards compatibility (the story of how Windows 95 contained special code to compensate for bugs in Sim City is legendary at this point).

They also learned quickly that you needed to abstract away from the hardware with higher level APIs, even for things like gaming with DirectX. Whereas Commodore were still assuming in the AAA documentation that programmers would need to hit the hardware direct to get performance, in effect making it harder for themselves to modify the underlying hardware design.

[TEG]

More important than all the extras features, I wonder what kind of graphics Hombre would be able to produce. If this is to output 3DO shitty graphics kind off (made by ex-Amiga engineers), no thanks.

At least, with the hard evolution frozen into AGA, we have the Amiga touch we like so much, still alive.

[Bren McGuire]

what is this then? Happening next week:

https://www.amigashow.com/programme/

this community is just insane

Originally Posted by gimbal

I don't think that repeatedly calling his sanity into question qualifies as giving someone a platform. Quite the opposite really, it's yanked out from under him.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's an illusion. 320x256, 640x256 and 1280x256 are all the same resolution. Hint: SVGA CRTs and flat panels don't switch modes when switching between these compatible resolutions. These are not different resolutions in this context.

It's an OS feature that they didn't add. Any recent graphics card can do that pretty easily because the resolutions are just doubled like in my example above. In fact, a graphics card can do this better than an Amiga because it can do proper up scaling so that you can mix truly different resolutions like 640x512 and 800x600.

If it's better than anything we have now, it would've been better than anything available back then.

Ok so that was an example. No need to do a deep dive because the particular example was not the point here.
Obviously I dont know what exactly David was shown, Im trying to paint a picture that he was shown some stuff that isnt being done to this day by others (at least something not very common).
That would make sense, the alternative is that he’s insane ;-)

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

what is this then? Happening next week:

https://www.amigashow.com/programme/

this community is just insane

I doubt he will even turn up after his failed Kickstarter, but this is a private enterprise by Ravi Abbot of Retro Hour fame, Pleasance isn't running anything to do with it.