PowerPC Accelerators

[Toryglen-boy]

These look the bomb, but, would i be right in saying they wouldn't accelerate WHDLoad games, or older versions of the O/S? i guess thats what the 040 or 060 is there for?


thanks

[Jope]

This is true, the PPC is sort of like a co processor when you're running WB3.x. 68000 stuff doesn't go faster than the 040 or 060 lets it.

Naturally some programs fully run on the PPC in these setups, but those are specifically built for PPC.

[wiz12]

Is there much software or games that take advantage of theses accelerators?

[Locutus]

Nothing to get excited about

[utri007]

Some

http://hol.abime.net/hol_search.php?N_ref_hardware=14

Also some 68k RTG games and apps get benefits from native PPC libraries.

[wiz12]

I think Locutus is right after having a look at that list.

[grelbfarlk]

Here is another list, this is a list for just stuff working on the Sonnet.library, but it has most WarpOS/PowerUp apps listed, still some missing though.
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetA...tible-software

Perfectly playable and fast versions of Genesis, SNES and MAME emulators, plus the later 3D engine games like Quake run well enough to not just be a curiosity like under 68k.

[Amiga1992]

I rather buy a $40 Raspberry Pi 3 for emulators than plonk over $1000 on a PPC accelerator.

[grelbfarlk]

Right, or you know just buy the $40 Raspberry Pi 3 and skip the Amiga altogether. Or for that matter buy a Playstation and a new TV. Or some ice skates and a bike.

Then again I paid $40 for my PPC in the A4000. Or you know some people bought a Blizzard or a Cyberstorm PPC for the 060+RAM+SCSI and it happened to have the PPC on it.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Perfectly playable and fast versions of Genesis, SNES and MAME emulators, plus the later 3D engine games like Quake run well enough to not just be a curiosity like under 68k.

GLQuake/BlitzQuake runs at 24-25 fps on my 68060@75MHz in 512x384x16. It is quite playable and looks good. The 68060 has better performance per MHz than the PPC 603, 603e and 601 but the 604e is faster per clock finally with enough resources (caches and memory bandwidth to make up for the PPC's poor coded density). The PPC is about 40% worse code density than the 68k and about every 25% difference needs the next power of 2 in ICache size to provide the same performance (the 68060 with 8kB ICache has almost as good of ICache performance as a PPC with 32kB ICache like the PPC 604e).

[trixster]

Originally Posted by Akira

I rather buy a $40 Raspberry Pi 3 for emulators than plonk over $1000 on a PPC accelerator.

I kind of agree. I'm curious about Amiga PPC but no way curious enough to splash megabucks.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Then again I paid $40 for my PPC in the A4000.

Sure, you're the luckiest person in the world, but that is just not reality: PowerPC accelerators, today, go for a stupidly high price.

Of course you blow my point out of proportion. I rather buy any of those things to do anything else BUT real Amiga stuff. That's what I have the Amiga for. All the things you mentioned can be done better and cheaper with other hardware, and there's nothing "Amiga"-specific about them. So spending SO MUCH money just to get marginally OK Doom speeds on an Amiga, sounds preposterous.

Now there are some people, who use their Amiga as their main computing platform, and as such, they need to do everything with it. For them, PPC makes sense (I guess). But they don't get these accelerators either, they use those PPC motherboards which are a lot faster and modern than this 603/604 old junk. That's a lot better bang for your buck.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by Akira

Now there are some people, who use their Amiga as their main computing platform, and as such, they need to do everything with it. For them, PPC makes sense (I guess). But they don't get these accelerators either, they use those PPC motherboards which are a lot faster and modern than this 603/604 old junk. That's a lot better bang for your buck.

I doubt there are very many people using even a PPC Amiga as their main or only computer. The software just isn't there and most people who can afford a new PPC Amiga can afford a cheap and more powerful PC. I'm not so sure the PPC makes sense for them either unless they only need to do very specific specialized tasks where AmigaOS 4 has software but doesn't require much processing power.

The new Amiga PPC hardware is a lot faster in clock speed but barely more modern. The e500 Tabor is basically a tweaked G3 design (from the '90s) with more modern bandwidths and a few more specialized caches here and there but without a FPU. The 604e has the same size L1 (32kB ICache 32kB DCache) but lacks an L2 (integrated on e500) and has the FPU. At the same clock speed, the Tabor is going to offer moderately better integer performance and significantly worse floating point performance per core. Even the X5000's P5020 (e5500 core) is hardly an evolutionary design with 64 bit and integrated L3 caches but still no SIMD (Pentium had an SIMD in 1996). AmigaOS 4 can't use multiple cores which would have been the biggest modern performance advantage besides better clock speeds. I guess it is nice to take advantage of chip die shrinks since the '90s but it would be nicer yet for the 68060 where half the caches of a PPC could be traded for more cores but then we would have to run a modern AmigaOS with SMP like AROS .

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Akira

Sure, you're the luckiest person in the world, but that is just not reality: PowerPC accelerators, today, go for a stupidly high price.

Of course you blow my point out of proportion. I rather buy any of those things to do anything else BUT real Amiga stuff. That's what I have the Amiga for. All the things you mentioned can be done better and cheaper with other hardware, and there's nothing "Amiga"-specific about them. So spending SO MUCH money just to get marginally OK Doom speeds on an Amiga, sounds preposterous.

Now there are some people, who use their Amiga as their main computing platform, and as such, they need to do everything with it. For them, PPC makes sense (I guess). But they don't get these accelerators either, they use those PPC motherboards which are a lot faster and modern than this 603/604 old junk. That's a lot better bang for your buck.

I use a Sonnet 7200 which has a 400MHz G3 in my Amiga 4000. They were going for $40-$50 when people could find them. Then Hedeon went and made them work on the Amiga then all of our fine Amiga scalpers started buying them up and reselling them for $300+ or just hoarding them.

The performance is about equal to a PowerPC G3 at the same speed on a Mac from the same era.

The other option is to get a Cyberstorm or Blizzard PPC and mount a faster PPC in the 3-400MHz range, again this costs some money, but not really that much in the grand scheme of things if you do it wisely. And if you were buying an 060 accelerator anyway you'd better be expecting to spend at least $600 anyway.

Buying any classic Amiga is madness anyway, $150 for an A500 in good shape that runs at 7MHz and doesn't even have a HDD controller? Madness. But then again if you want an Amiga and decide after a couple decades of running your 040 or 060 is getting a little old and want to play with something different and much faster in your Amiga your options are limited.

[NorthWay]

We're close to decommissioning our IBM P795s at work now. I wonder if the MOS guys would be interested in porting to that.
OTOH, you can watch that youtube of the 18yo that bought a mainframe to know what a world of pain you're in if trying to get one in the door...

(But I expect they will go to recycling as we never find buyers for our used gear.)