Working Natami Prototype

[TCD]

Originally Posted by killergorilla

You'd really read it?

Yes. I'd like to know if there is one. If there is one, I'll read it. You know. Really, I'd read it.

[NovaCoder]

As a classic user, I'm only interested in a 'new' AGA machine if:

1) It's faster than a real AGA 030
2) It's cheaper than the real thing
3) It's as compatible as the real thing

And so far only the FPGA Arcade board comes close....

[alexh]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I'm only interested in a 'new' AGA machine if:

2) It's cheaper than the real thing

Never going to happen. You can get an A1200 for sub £30 these days.

[NovaCoder]

My NOS 1200 cost a little bit more than that, esp after you add the cost of a decent 030

Anyway the point still stands, if you can buy the original for cheaper then it doesn't make much sense.

The problem the Natami crew have is that the more you 'expand' the original chipset, the less compatible it becomes.

[moijk]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Question is : Which scene?

The people still using, or that are still interessted in the classical (legacy) Amiga.

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Also a reproduction of a 68060 A4000ish NatAmi isn't really a proof of a 'most powerful Amiga'.

With faster memory and optimized chipset it should run faster than any other legacy Amiga. That a PPC-based Amiga might be faster is irrellevant. Based on the speed claims set by the team, it ought to perform well compared to those as well. time will show.

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Release date was set to summer 2008 IIRC, so seeing a working 'something' now doesn't make me wet my pants tbh

That I can understand. I however doesn't mind waiting, since it isn't an urgent need. I got my two Commodore-made Amigas to tinker with the little time I got. Beside, this is done in their spare time and I know as well as the next guy how hard it is to plan a huge project in that time.

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Yet most of the additional concepts are yet to be developed and it might easily take a few years till the full features NatAmi is available. Seems like there was a tad too much bragging about a 'Supe-Miggy' at the start of the project.

As long as it outperforms a A4000/60 I'll be all over it no matter what. Considering the price of a A4000 (or the lesser 1200) with the required expansions to somewhat match the NatAmi (060 accelerator, flickerfixer, mediator etc) - it should be a affordable compared to the real thing as well.

[lolafg]

I recently bought a minimig , waiting for my ARM controler and my Loriano's box , i liiiiiiiiiiike so much the idea of playing my Amiga games or Workbench in a new Hardware , and if the Natami project becomes a reality i'll put money in it , well i'll stop smoking to buy it ...it's really a great project.

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Maybe someone can point me to a OS discussion for NatAmi.

You have just started one. Maybe Natami will help to revive the AROS m68k port.

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

As a classic user, I'm only interested in a 'new' AGA machine if:

1) It's faster than a real AGA 030
2) It's cheaper than the real thing
3) It's as compatible as the real thing

And so far only the FPGA Arcade board comes close....

i wish the best the natami, and hope to see real aga games soon and benchs with higher scores than 030, cross my fingers.

[desiv]

As for "cheaper than the real thing", I don't think it has to be.

It has one major advantage... It's new. You shouldn't have to worry about leaking batteries or CAPs or whatever has been spilled on it in it's lifetime.
(Yes, you get to spill all of your OWN soda/coffee/tea variations on it!!)

So, you'd kind of be comparing it more to NOS type of priced Amigas.

Then you throw in a processor accelerator with some memory and a Flicker Fixer, and you're actually getting to the possibility that the Natami might be less expensive than a NOS Amiga 1200 with Mem/Accelerator/FF.
...

I hope..

:-)


desiv

[asymetrix]

The natami project is great !

As I understand it, they created a Minimig/AGA hybrid 2 years ago, so to reduce costs and increase performance they had to write a DDR2 controller, all timings changed, adapting all componants for highbandwidth and future proof took time.

This is stage 1, OCS/ECS testing stage, im sure more videos will come in time.

they also requested assistance to speed things along :

It takes actually a lot more time to write a "monitor" file for AMIGA OS for this.

Is anyone interested in helping in this regard?
Someone willing/able to write a Picasso96 or CyberGFX module would help.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by desiv

Then you throw in a processor accelerator with some memory and a Flicker Fixer, and you're actually getting to the possibility that the Natami might be less expensive than a NOS Amiga 1200 with Mem/Accelerator/FF.

You're dreaming. MiniMig with ARM board and 4Mbyte RAM costs £250. Natami is a doubly expensive PCB, doubly expensive FPGA, 10x more expensive CPU so if it stays similar to what it is now you can expect the price for NatAmi to be in the £500+ mark.

Originally Posted by asymetrix

As I understand it, they created a Minimig/AGA hybrid 2 years ago, so to reduce costs and increase performance they had to write a DDR2 controller, all timings changed, adapting all components for high bandwidth and future proof took time.

Sounds very unlikely. The FPGA toolkits you can buy include examples of VHDL/Verilog DDR2 controllers. That cannot possibly have been the bottle neck. It surely has to be man-power + expense of making PCB.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by moijk

The people still using, or that are still interessted in the classical (legacy) Amiga.

Ah, well I know quite a few people that aren't really interested in it and would consider themselves classic Amiga users. Guess it's mainly because they haven't done much yet and it's good that you are patient and trust in them. Just these 'keeping the scene alive' stuff rings all 'vapourware' alarm bells for me

[lolafg]

[quote=alexh;673034]You're dreaming. MiniMig with ARM board and 4Mbyte RAM costs £250. Natami is a doubly expensive PCB, doubly expensive FPGA, 10x more expensive CPU so if it stays similar to what it is now you can expect the price for NatAmi to be in the £500+ mark.

Minimig + 4mb + ARM + Loriano's case = 400 Euros... so you are right here Alexh , Natami will be more expensive.

[lolafg]

Originally Posted by alexh

Never going to happen. You can get an A1200 for sub £30 these days.

Where ?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by lolafg

Where ?

£21

[lolafg]

Of course at this price i didn't expect a white and clean machine...but you're right again here.
But if we want a new product it's more expensive , for example the NOS A1200 from Amigakit + accelerator card etc etc , no ?

[Paul_s]

The NOS Amigakit stuff is fast approaching 15 years old so chances are caps etc will need replacing in the not so distant future... depends on storage conditions I guess but they'll have a expiry date no matter if used or not.... retrobrite can sort case yellowness so that's not really an issue and you can pick up brand new A1200 keyboards for little money...

it would be better to just recreate the A1200 PCB... like one of those GB1000 boards
Updated for 68030/just slot your custom chips in etc... far nicer for the hobbyist and you could probably get them under £100 if enough people chipped in.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

it would be better to just recreate the A1200 PCB... like one of those GB1000 boards
Updated for 68030/just slot your custom chips in etc... far nicer for the hobbyist and you could probably get them under £100 if enough people chipped in.

[asymetrix]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

it would be better to just recreate the A1200 PCB... like one of those GB1000 boards
Updated for 68030/just slot your custom chips in etc... far nicer for the hobbyist and you could probably get them under £100 if enough people chipped in.

it would only be temporary as parts will get unavailable and no new cases are being made.

here is more info about the changes : a quote about the DDR

Quote:
Due to the way DDR memory works I think they may be using the rising signal flank of the pulse for custom chip access and the falling one for cpu accesses.

You seem to conceptionally misunderstand how DDR memory is working.

Ill try to explain it with an easy example:

With DDR you send 1 address and then a burst of data belonging to this address will be transmitted.
It would similar to like the 68040 or 68060 did burst in their 16byte cache lines.

Typical burst size is 4 words.
If your memory interface is 32bit this means every memory access READ or WRITE will transfer 128bit in one go - ALWAYS!

The AMIGA chipset originally was not prepared for bursting.
When AGA was developed a short burst of 64bit was added for the Video and Sprite DMA.
But bursting and buffering was never added for the Blitter or Audio or Copper or other DMA channels.


Finally now the NATAMI does correct this.

Now all AMIGA DMA is bursting.
And the DMA is not only bursting but also doing pipelined burst.


Example of a pipelined burst and "old school" memory interface.
Todays memory has a latency of roughly 20 clocks this means if your FPGA clocks with 200 MHz then you "old school" blitter can fetch every 20 clocks a word of 16bit.
This give you a blitter bandwidth of 20 MB/sec.
Better than old AGA but not very exciting.


Using the same Hardware you could burst every 20 clocks a 28 bit word.
To be able to do this you need to add the right buffers to your Blitter.
This gives you a bandwidth of 160 MB/sec.
That is a lot better isnt it?


Now when your DMA will also proper pipeline the burst also then you can have 5-6 burst in flight in parallel.
This will finally you a bandwidth in the order of 800 MB/sec
Now we are talking.


The NATAMI did has working AGA already 2 years ago.
For those that wondered what was changed / developed since these 2 years.
I think you know the difference know.

natami is futureproof, faster and cheaper FPGAs will come :-)

remember the estimated performance for Natami is x150 - x200 cpu speed of an A600 and a x50 DMA performance.

But one must code a program to fully take advantage of the new features.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by asymetrix

remember the estimated performance for Natami is x150 - x200 cpu speed of an A600 and a x50 DMA performance.

We do remember. Anyway, the prototype isn't really what they estimated some time ago.