Next gen Amiga

[MigaTech]

Originally Posted by kolla

You need a CPU that address all the RAM that will ever be in the lifespan of human existence?

Not quite sure what you are getting at here?

Originally Posted by swinkamor12

Amiga is not awesome retro platform.
Amiga chipset is was designed in 1983.

What did you take before posting this? Amiga is the ultimate retro platform.

Also the MC68K dates back to the 1970's. It is also still in use to this day by many and is still being manufactured.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by swinkamor12

3D0 has what was missing in AGA - 16 bit sound, 24 bit truecolor, and hardware 3D support.

All completely unnecessary. The only thing a game really needs is playability - everything else is just window dressing. Would Lemmings, Dune II or The Settlers play any better in 3D with 16 bit sound? Would Quake become any less boring in higher resolution 24 bit color? (no).

I bought a Sony Playstation to play the one 3D game I actually liked - Tomb Raider. 3D on the Playstation was pretty bad - low res, blocky, visible seams and not enough polygons to build realistic 3D objects. But the gamelpay was awesome. Then Crystal Dynamics took over Tomb Raider and 'enhanced' it for the Playstaion 2 - so I bought one. Big waste of money because the gameplay sucked. It now only gets used to play any DVDs that my PC can't handle.

The game I have played the most lately? Astrosmash on the Mattel Aquarius. The 'Graphics' is just text characters and the AY-3-8910 only makes a few beeps, but the game has an addictive quality that makes you want to keep going. Would 3D in millions of colors and a 16 bit sound track make this game any better? I doubt it - more likely they would just get in the way.

when original amiga 1200 come out amiga chipset was underpowered, hard to use and obsolete.

Compared to what? At that time standard PC VGA cards sucked, most other home computers had vastly inferior graphics and gaming consoles were not much better. I worked on a couple of commercial titles for the A1200 and CD32, and I didn't find the chipset hard to use.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by starbird

Digital filtering is different from analog. Filters are basically delay lines. The more filters you add to a sample increases the delay.

so far so good...
but than:

For an extreme example, lets say you have a 1000 tap filter (or maybe a string of filters). At 44kHz you will be waiting 22ms from the time you hit the key to when you first hear a sample. With a filter of the same length 192kHz you are only(?) looking at 5ms.

Of course your filter need to have the same sampling rate... that is trivial.
But a filter with a higher sampling is not faster or has less delay - that only depends on your processing power.
You want to use a higher sampling rate to get rid of aliasing - not for speed!

The recommended oversampling rate is at least 10x.

To archive what exactly?
As long as you stay in the digital realm and stay at your 16 or 24Bit depth there is nothing to gain.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by MigaTech

Not quite sure what you are getting at here?

You were talking about a "128Bit" CPU...
We were already discussing, that in most cases even 64bit, will not speed up things - 64Bit only allows you to address more than 4GByte of RAM directly.
But you pay a price: your binary gets larger and wastes memory bandwidth.

With a 128bit CPU things would only get worse: no speed to gain, but much more memory used up and a more expensive processor-design.

The only benefit of a 128bit CPU is that you could address zillions of Terabytes of RAM ...

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by swinkamor12

Commdore instead of AGA computers should made something like 3D0.
3D0 was designed by Dave Needle and R.J. Mical the same who designed OCS.
3D0 has what was missing in AGA - 16 bit sound, 24 bit truecolor, and hardware 3D support.

Yes, and it was the most expensive console release in history, imagine adding to the cost with keyboard, disk drive and other components! Commodore made their money from their best selling budget models, they needed cheap custom chips like the Jaguar had from Flare not expensive 3DO parts.

[Megol]

Originally Posted by meynaf

A 32bit cpu can access more than 4GB. That current OSes don't actually do it this way doesn't mean it can't be done.

So you are a fan of segmentation? Given your views on x86 I'd never thought I see this.

Originally Posted by Gorf

Why would you want to load such a large file into RAM all at once?
AOS or any decent OS was always able to just load the relevant part of an file an eg. burn a 700MB CD with just a few MB RAM.

Your software should only load the relevant parts into RAM - even with hundreds of audio voices at once 2GB should be more than enough .. this looks more like a suboptimal disc-handling or editing strategy to me...

I can understand that raw 4K video material might be more demanding...

Who talks about loading? Think single level store: every data that can be accessed have an address. Modern OS in a way emulate this via memory mapping files (the most effective way to handle files BTW) but why use ad hoc mapping when it's always mapped?

The IBM AS/400 and descendants defines a virtual architecture with 128 bit address space and they did it for a reason.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Try to do a 68k-like cpu with 64bit support. You'll quickly discover that 64bit leads to ugly instruction encoding. Besides, on the OS side all your system structures will be bigger. Apps will also use more ram than before, so say bye to the Amiga's current lean-and-mean. Big cost for little benefit.

Running lite with no overbyte? Sure. But observe the over-byte part:

Amiga OS is light because it is simple (and well designed without accumulated crud). Add modern features and there will be more overheads.

Don't see why a 64 bit 68k inspired processor would be ugly. I don't see why system structures would get significantly bigger.

Perhaps 64bit is necessary for x86 and some others.
But here we're talking about Amiga.

Which if I remember correctly you essentially want to stay the same?

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Megol

So you are a fan of segmentation? Given your views on x86 I'd never thought I see this.

Where did I speak about segmentation ?

Originally Posted by Megol

Running lite with no overbyte? Sure. But observe the over-byte part:

Amiga OS is light because it is simple (and well designed without accumulated crud). Add modern features and there will be more overheads.

Of course if you add all the gimmick some call "modern features", it will become a lot larger. But... do we need all that stuff ? What are "modern features" anyway ?

Originally Posted by Megol

Don't see why a 64 bit 68k inspired processor would be ugly.

That's because you haven't tried.

Originally Posted by Megol

I don't see why system structures would get significantly bigger.

Because all pointers (and some data) would be twice the size.

Originally Posted by Megol

Which if I remember correctly you essentially want to stay the same?

For me it has to stay the friendly asm coding platform it always has been, no more no less.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Megol

Who talks about loading? Think single level store: every data that can be accessed have an address. Modern OS in a way emulate this via memory mapping files (the most effective way to handle files BTW) but why use ad hoc mapping when it's always mapped?

The IBM AS/400 and descendants defines a virtual architecture with 128 bit address space and they did it for a reason.

Makes sense in a big datacenter or for large database application - that is why IBM does it that way.

But as long as SSDs are slower and have significantly more latency than RAM, this would not be very wise for a NG-AmigaOS as your CPU would constantly be waiting ...
So you could use your entire fast RAM as cache to speed things up and try to figure out some clever cache-handling ... or you load just the things into that fast RAM you really need... on demand, from a filesystem

Don't see why a 64 bit 68k inspired processor would be ugly. I don't see why system structures would get significantly bigger.

Not arguing here: would be great if it can handle 32bit transparently.
(actually 48bit would be enough, but would that save anything?)

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Where did I speak about segmentation ?

So how do you plan to access more than 4GB with 32Bit than?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Without bugs and design flaws you wouldn't need memory protection at all.

Yes you would because of security concerns (and during software development).

Originally Posted by meynaf

So memory protection is just wrong way driven by humans being the problem.

Memory protection shouldn't be necessary for anything other than software development, but sadly the world isn't ideal.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yeah it may be stupid too. But with AOS this limit does not need to be bypassed so it's less important.

But it's still stupid. Just like needing forbid/permit pairs for sending massages to public message ports and probably some other design mistakes I don't know about.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Multiple monitors

A laughable way to do something our Intuition screens do a lot better !

Multiple monitors are awesome even for just simply reading documentation while programming. I actually bought a second monitor just so I can read AOS documentation on my peecee while programming on my Amiga (I find screen switching for coding documentation to be annoying). For this, multiple monitors are impossible to beat. Not to mention the fact that they increase the available workspace.

While screen switching in AOS works extremely well, I don't always find it a good substitute for multiple monitors, and I'd rather have both options available at the same time.

Originally Posted by meynaf

There may be good reasons for this, other than just being lazy.

Yeah, GREED

Originally Posted by meynaf

I still need examples for this. What do you like on them ? They're flashy, eye candy maybe, but that doesn't make them any better.

You got me there However, it's not about the eye candy (I use a sober Win10 theme). Basically, current and recent OSs are more complete out of the box than AOS.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You'll quickly discover that 64bit leads to ugly instruction encoding.

It would, but I've been thinking about that. Wouldn't it be an idea to have several different instruction sets that you can switch between really fast? I'm no ISA designer so I'm asking.

Originally Posted by swinkamor12

Amiga is not awesome retro platform.

You're on a mostly RETRO oriented Amiga board. What were you thinking when you posted this? It's like saying old muscle cars aren't cool on an old muscle car forum.

[Megol]

Originally Posted by Thorham

<snip>
It would, but I've been thinking about that. Wouldn't it be an idea to have several different instruction sets that you can switch between really fast? I'm no ISA designer so I'm asking.

That's not a good idea. One could do that with either hardware or software translation to native instruction set - which is how most designs but the most RISCy RISC ones does it.

The type of translation that is possible to do fast is the ARM Thumb extensions, those are designed to be easily translated into the 32 bit standard ARM ISA.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Megol

That's not a good idea.

Okay, but why?

[knightbeat]

Originally Posted by Thorham

You're on a mostly RETRO oriented Amiga board. What were you thinking when you posted this? It's like saying old muscle cars aren't cool on an old muscle car forum.

It's reasonable to recognise that the Amiga platform isn't perfect, however. The 68k hardware and operating system had limitations that have been carried over to PPC implementations.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Gorf

So how do you plan to access more than 4GB with 32Bit than?

Easy, just use 64-bit physical space mapped with custom mmu to 32-bit logical space.
But again, an Amiga really (really !) does not need this. So it's more on the academic level...

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yes you would because of security concerns (and during software development).

You don't need full protection for software development, or at least it does not need to be activated permanently.
About security concerns, i've already said here that when code gets executed on the machine, it's too late. Do you booby-trap your home or do you lock the door so intruders can't enter ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Memory protection shouldn't be necessary for anything other than software development, but sadly the world isn't ideal.

Instead of accepting the world is a bad place, perhaps we could try to make it a better one...

Originally Posted by Thorham

But it's still stupid. Just like needing forbid/permit pairs for sending massages to public message ports and probably some other design mistakes I don't know about.

Stupid yes, but nevertheless minor and not worth throwing the whole thing in the bin.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Multiple monitors are awesome even for just simply reading documentation while programming. I actually bought a second monitor just so I can read AOS documentation on my peecee while programming on my Amiga (I find screen switching for coding documentation to be annoying). For this, multiple monitors are impossible to beat. Not to mention the fact that they increase the available workspace.

No they don't increase available workspace. The only difference is turning your head instead of pressing two keys or clicking in the top right corner.
Even worse, physical space is greatly reduced.

Originally Posted by Thorham

While screen switching in AOS works extremely well, I don't always find it a good substitute for multiple monitors, and I'd rather have both options available at the same time.

If you want the option to get a stiff neck for something easily done by pressing two keys, it's your problem.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yeah, GREED

Yes that's another reason, but that's not what i was thinking about. Current OSes (and current software in general) are bloated for a good reason that's technical (and it's not the level of features they have !).
Hint : look at what languages they're written in.

Originally Posted by Thorham

You got me there However, it's not about the eye candy (I use a sober Win10 theme). Basically, current and recent OSs are more complete out of the box than AOS.

But what is "complete out of the box" ???

Originally Posted by Thorham

It would, but I've been thinking about that. Wouldn't it be an idea to have several different instruction sets that you can switch between really fast? I'm no ISA designer so I'm asking.

What ? 32-bit and 64-bit modes like with x86 ? Yuck !

Originally Posted by Gorf

so far so good...
Of course your filter need to have the same sampling rate... that is trivial.
But a filter with a higher sampling is not faster or has less delay - that only depends on your processing power.
You want to use a higher sampling rate to get rid of aliasing - not for speed!

You can't decrease filter delays by increasing CPU power alone. What does the cpu do while waiting for the next sample? You still have to wait for enough samples to go through your filter before the first output.



The 10x oversampling isn't for archiving necessarily. Its what is recommended for real time systems. Think controls, radar, computer vision and such. It's not always attainable.


Anyhow, I was trying to answer why you see such high oversampling when 44khz is fine for audio. It's not just to reduce aliasing, tho it does help for that.

[Gorf]

Easy, just use 64-bit physical space mapped with custom mmu to 32-bit logical space.
But again, an Amiga really (really !) does not need this. So it's more on the academic level...

There where already some usecases mentioned for software that needs more than 2 GB of RAM.
If you want to run such software, your Amiga needs to support more RAM.
Just stating Amiga would not need it is lame. It entirely depends on what you are wanting to do.

Custom MMU ... that would still limit a single program to the 32bit range...

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Gorf

There where already some usecases mentioned for software that needs more than 2 GB of RAM.

Not several usecases, a single one and not very valid.

Originally Posted by Gorf

If you want to run such software, your Amiga needs to support more RAM.
Just stating Amiga would not need it is lame. It entirely depends on what you are wanting to do.

Be realistic, do people really want to replace their peecees by amigas ?

Originally Posted by Gorf

Custom MMU ... that would still limit a single program to the 32bit range...

Not even. Simple API can remap on demand.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by starbird

You can't decrease filter delays by increasing CPU power alone. What does the cpu do while waiting for the next sample? You still have to wait for enough samples to go through your filter before the first output.

The 10x oversampling isn't for archiving necessarily. Its what is recommended for real time systems. Think controls, radar, computer vision and such. It's not always attainable.

Anyhow, I was trying to answer why you see such high oversampling when 44khz is fine for audio. It's not just to reduce aliasing, tho it does help for that.

Radar and other fields are trying hard to reduce bandwidth and hardware costs and use undersampling wherever possible.

There is no way to decrease filter delays be increased sample rates - this is nonsense. You can just improve the quality to some degree.
Your CPU should not wait, but precalulate the next sample with the informations that are available. Originally this discussion was about DAWs and editing audio- not a live-effect fillter ... for that you would use dedicated circuits and certainly not use more than 4GB of RAM

[swinkamor12]

Next gen Amiga.
Next gen Amiga is binary and source compatible with 68k Amiga software.
That's why we use them.
But in speed and comfort of use, there is big difference between Next gen Amiga and 68k only Amiga.
Next gen Amiga is of course not modern, but it is also not archaic as 68k only Amiga.
As a developer I want to do something on Amiga, but I don't want to waste my precious free time on something which is slower and less comfortable than my first Pentium 90 PC which I buy in 1996.
My first PC was cheap Pentium 90, it has 16 bit sound, 24 bit true color, and hardware 2D and 3D support.
Comparing vampire to my Pentium 90 or ppc cards for amiga, vampire has half time better memory speed (66 vs 100 MHz), three times faster transfer to graphics memory (33 vs 100 MHz), but has not fully working FPU, has not hardware acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics.
68k only amiga is not good enough to compete with cheap PC from Windows 95 era.
In future I may use 68k amiga if it will be faster and has better price/performance ratio.
Original amiga with PPC card is fast enough, but they are too expensive.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Easy, just use 64-bit physical space mapped with custom mmu to 32-bit logical space.

But now an application still can't go over the 4GB limit.

Originally Posted by meynaf

You don't need full protection for software development, or at least it does not need to be activated permanently.

For software development, indeed.

Originally Posted by meynaf

About security concerns, i've already said here that when code gets executed on the machine, it's too late. Do you booby-trap your home or do you lock the door so intruders can't enter ?

You lock it so intruders can't enter. Impossible without memory protection. Obviously you have to run software on your computer, so insuring that programs can't do things they're not supposed to is not a bad way of doing things. Problem is security holes and design flaws, of course.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Instead of accepting the world is a bad place, perhaps we could try to make it a better one...

But how are you going to get everyone to behave as they should? It's just not going to happen, especially when there's big bucks to be made by writing malware.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Stupid yes, but nevertheless minor and not worth throwing the whole thing in the bin.

It is to me. Being stuck with AOS legacy isn't nice. 68k can do better and faster than AOS.

Originally Posted by meynaf

No they don't increase available workspace. The only difference is turning your head instead of pressing two keys or clicking in the top right corner.

A matter of personal preference than.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Even worse, physical space is greatly reduced.

Not from my perspective. And besides, even I had very little space, I'd bend over backwards to have two monitors.

Originally Posted by meynaf

If you want the option to get a stiff neck for something easily done by pressing two keys, it's your problem.

Remember my WASD request in your Dungeon Master engine? You get a stiff neck from two monitors, I get wrist pain from using the numpad for hours

Originally Posted by meynaf

Yes that's another reason, but that's not what i was thinking about. Current OSes (and current software in general) are bloated for a good reason that's technical (and it's not the level of features they have !). Hint : look at what languages they're written in.

Bloated run times are a reason, certainly, but you don't have to use those.

Originally Posted by meynaf

But what is "complete out of the box" ???

Networking, removable media support, usable file manager built into the desktop, lots of drivers for a whole range of peripherals. When I install AOS 3 I can't really do anything yet, when I install Win10 I can do almost everything right away.

Originally Posted by meynaf

What ? 32-bit and 64-bit modes like with x86 ? Yuck !

Oh please no What I mean is that you have a core instruction set that doesn't change while you have extensions that change, things like FPU, 68bit, vectorisation, etc. Basically where a subset of instructions change so you can keep that nice 16bit encoding.

I don't know if it's a good idea, like I said I'm not an ISA designer.