The vampire incompatiblity discussion thread

[Overflow]

Ive seen some comments about SoftFPU and a potential emulib to accomodate for incompabilities with regards to FPU.

That said; Gunnar made a post regarding FPU;

http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge...=5931&z=B6TxpH

There was the question regarding the status of the FPU.

Unfortunately the thread became unreadable with partly untechnical comments. Therefore we start here fresh with proper information.
Please only comment on technical level.


The status is:

APOLLO has a fully working FPU, supporting SINGLE, DOUBLE and EXTENDED precision calculations.

While the APOLLO FPU was successfully used in some customer project, for usage in 68K AMIGA OS some more testing was found required.
The Apollo-team did ask for AMIGA coders community to help testing 12month ago - in this time no coders applied for this.
So it became clear that the FPU priority in AMIGA world is not very high.
This makes sense as the majority of AMIGA software does not use FPU at all.
While we have a FPU now, we also know that the FPGA technology will allow to reach floating point performance 1000 times faster than existing Motorola 68060 CPUs we need to look for a solution which we can use long time and which allow benefit from these FPGA technologies. Therefore its advisable to verify and review the design to make sure that its future-proof.

If 68k coders are interesting in supporting this then please contact us. Ideally via IRC or via email : myfirstname @ apollo-core.com

Please note that coders willing to support need to be willing to put in significant time, and that all development will be done with 68k ASM.


Many thanks

[Glen M]

There is another thread on this forum discussing 060 processors without fpu and the general consensus is, as noted above, you just need to run the correct version of the program.

I still think that the term accelerator is fairly loosely used to describe the vampire as accelerator conjures images of a fast processor, more ram and not a replacement chipset as the vampire actually is.

I recently bought an 030 accelerator but to be honest I only did this because the v1200 is still so far off.

I'm very interested to see what form that will take so I sit patiently watching with interest.

EDIT: I removed my comment about fpu as it is clearly answered above.

[AJCopland]

I've been burned once on that FPU stuff thanks.

I backported from SDL2 & C++ to C a Raymarcher that heavily uses the FPU. It wasn't asm but the parts of it that did the maths could be converted to 68k inline asm.

Then Gunnar shut down the whole thread with that post. Which was a bit annoying.
He keeps talking about emulibs and patching stuff so it can use a SoftFPU but there is no implementation of a SoftFPU for AOS available whereas there is an actual FPU which they're holding back for some reason.

So I've given up.

[kolla]

What you would want is for new software is this...
http://www.jhauser.us/arithmetic/SoftFloat.html

[AJCopland]

yeah for new software that will suffice rather than having to switch all of your maths libraries internally to Fixed or integer only. But it will still run at some appalling fraction of the speed of a real FPU, so no-one will use the FPU.

This is just prolonging the whole "there's nothing that uses an FPU aside from Demos, TFX and some producitivty or rendering software". But there's not much compiled to use an FPU because so few people have an FPU.

Putting a FPU in every Vampire would alleviate all of that, everyone would have one.

Anyway, like I say I give up. It'll happen or it won't but I have my open source projects to work and a full time job.

[Predseda]

If Vampire 1200 will allow me to use 256 colors in high resolution in fast Workbench, browse the web reasonably somehow and use Deluxe Paint together with Eagleplayer, I will be happy with it.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by AJCopland

So I've given up.

im not a fan fo such moderation tactics, but after the thread has been filled.. with what actually, usual rants of completely uninformed people, as far as i remember, not to mention the nicks, it might have been better to delete it altogether and start over..

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by KONEY

I have used a Vampire for one year now and I can't even think of a single something which hasn't worked!
.

For me, the most informative comment on this topic. Thank you.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by AJCopland

I've been burned once on that FPU stuff thanks.

I backported from SDL2 & C++ to C a Raymarcher that heavily uses the FPU. It wasn't asm but the parts of it that did the maths could be converted to 68k inline asm.

Then Gunnar shut down the whole thread with that post. Which was a bit annoying.
He keeps talking about emulibs and patching stuff so it can use a SoftFPU but there is no implementation of a SoftFPU for AOS available whereas there is an actual FPU which they're holding back for some reason.

So I've given up.

Yes, Gunnar is strange. He wrote that Apollo has "fully pipelined, double/extended FPU" and now he want to use SoftFPU. I can ask where is this pipeline for SoftFPU? It will be slowdown CPU only. No advantage of using SoftFPU, except no crash. Where is this double/extended FPU? If he want to support only single precision in Apollo FPU? Perhaps your program was too hard for Gunnar's FPU core. Im almost sure that Apollo FPU has only support for very basic FPU instructions like fadd, fsub, fmul, fdiv etc Complicated and hard enough to implement FPU instructions like fsin, fcos, ftan etc are unsupported. Then your program will be only show how slow is Apollo FPU, not like fast is Apollo FPU. Seems that Gunnar still is big fan of software emulation of instructions which can (or must) be internal part of every good CPU/FPU. You can read this old thread with Gunnar posts:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=73297&page=7

[kolla]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

For me, the most informative comment on this topic. Thank you.

Chances are that if you haven't had any software issues, you might just as well have bought a cheaper and simpler solution.

[kev]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

Yes, Gunnar is strange. He wrote that Apollo has "fully pipelined, double/extended FPU" and now he want to use SoftFPU. I can ask where is this pipeline for SoftFPU? It will be slowdown CPU only. No advantage of using SoftFPU, except no crash. Where is this double/extended FPU? If he want to support only single precision in Apollo FPU? Perhaps your program was too hard for Gunnar's FPU core. Im almost sure that Apollo FPU has only support for very basic FPU instructions like fadd, fsub, fmul, fdiv etc Complicated and hard enough to implement FPU instructions like fsin, fcos, ftan etc are unsupported. Then your program will be only show how slow is Apollo FPU, not like fast is Apollo FPU. Seems that Gunnar still is big fan of software emulation of instructions which can (or must) be internal part of every good CPU/FPU. You can read this old thread with Gunnar posts:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=73297&page=7

yep asshole lies lies lies then when u bust him out on it he bans you lol

[kev]

i sat in that irc since the start and FPU was coming which was a lie so he just gave people shit they really cant use like ammx etc he is constantly changing his stories and spreads tons of propaganda he is so full of it and himself and his cronies lol

<BigGun> very simple
<BigGun> no fpu for vampires!
<Mindblighter> fpumpire
* mbrantley wakes up
<pisklak> BigGun: I have no problem with that
<BigGun> people shall buy it for what it is period
* mbrantley tears up
<BigGun> people shall NOT expect to get anything extra for free
<BigGun> very simple. end of communication

[KONEY]

Which I have, having owned a Viper '030 for 20 years. Before I had an A2000 with a GeForce GVP '030 card: something anyone scared of Vampire's compatibility would find a nightmare

Originally Posted by kolla

Chances are that if you haven't had any software issues, you might just as well have bought a cheaper and simpler solution.

[Jope]

Please avoid going into personal insults when discussing the Vampire here.

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by kev

i sat in that irc since the start and FPU was coming which was a lie so he just gave people shit they really cant use like ammx etc he is constantly changing his stories and spreads tons of propaganda he is so full of it and himself and his cronies lol

<BigGun> very simple
<BigGun> no fpu for vampires!
<Mindblighter> fpumpire
* mbrantley wakes up
<pisklak> BigGun: I have no problem with that
<BigGun> people shall buy it for what it is period
* mbrantley tears up
<BigGun> people shall NOT expect to get anything extra for free
<BigGun> very simple. end of communication

ohh interesting. guess my vampire stays in the box..

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by Chucky

ohh interesting. guess my vampire stays in the box..

The discussion did not end there, this is taken out of context.

[wawa]

on this very forum gunnar once said apollo wont contain full 68k instruction set and missing instructions like movep or bitfields will be software emulated. remember?

[Marlon_]

Originally Posted by wawa

on this very forum gunnar once said apollo wont contain full 68k instruction set and missing instructions like movep or bitfields will be software emulated. remember?

Yeah, just give it time. It's a small team of passionate hobbyists doing this core development essentially for free. Demanding things to happen YOUR way will not help in any way. I'm happy with the features I got with my V500+ and I look forward to further developments, but I don't sit on the sidelines demanding this or that.

Get real people! If the current iteration of Vampire doesn't have the features you want, don't buy it. If you don't like the direction the Vampire is going in, don't buy it. It's as easy as that.

Peace out!

[ptyerman]

As you say, I won't be buying it. No FPU, no sale, its not as if I'm desperate.

[TuKo]

+1 Marlon