New Amiga motherboards from Jens

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by wawa

now that i read a bit through these threads, i must say that the policy on display here to put down independent projects that may interfere with ones target audience doesnt really look fair. if one has not voiced objections up till now, one shouldnt do that in alast to weeks of campain, especially when admitting to wish it to fail "for their own sake".

jens, you have aggresively criticized gunnar and igor in the past. if you were always right, there wouldnt be neither vampire accelerators nor apollo core out there. there may be misunderstandings or maybe lack of insight on both part, but you are not the only person everybody needs to report if they want to start an amiga related project.

I would say it this way... you can still earn some money with amiga related products but the market is limited and competition never appreciated

2 cents and off again

[grond]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

(Philippe) has every right to use your products as long as he doesn't use your company name

This is not correct. Philippe can state that his cases fit Individual Computer's new Amiga PCBs, Keyrah or whatever without asking permission, this would not be a violation of trademarks or illegal anticompetitive practice as long as this information is technically correct. Or do you think that you may not sell vacuum cleaner bags, printer cartridges or windscreen wipers without being allowed to mention which models they fit?

[grond]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

- the Vampire 600 demo that was presented was written specifically without instructions not implemented or not working correctly. Gunnar confirmed that a few posts later. I was wrong about the RISC assumption, but I was right about it not being 68k yet.

So 68040 and 68060 aren't 68k in your opinion as they do not offer hardware support for all 020 and 882 instructions, too? In the Apollo core there are still a few instructions lacking hardware support such as bitfield instructions that are very rarely used. This support will be added, though. There already is hardware support for some instructions that did not have hardware support on the 040/060.

The Apollo core has transparent caches so even borked self-modifying 68000 code will run fine. Design goal is to have hardware support for all 68k instructions from 68000 to 68060. Apollo will be more compatible than any 68k before.

The Vampire 600 FPGA is way too small for a full implementation of what Gunnar was suggesting

Vampire v2 will have a 40k LE Cyclone III that has more than enough space for 68060+ cpu power. The Vampire v1 has too small an FPGA for full hardware 020 compatibility.

Gunnar specifically avoided answering critical questions, giving more reason to believe that it's more like "I have an idea, let's try it", rather than careful planning and execution of an extremely complex job (see post#44 of that thread)

It's an extremely complex job. But a job they have done before.

What Gunnar presented lately is impressive. However, to make this a product (which is what many people want), it's still a LONG way to go.

We'll see how long "LONG" will really be.

[Apollo]

For me there are two kind of poeple (when it comes to producing hardware/software for the amiga):

The ones who make announcements of (maybe) soon-to-come products and the ones who make announcements of deliverable products.

Personally, after all these years I prefer listening to people which delivered products in the past as they're very likely going to deliver in the future as well. Period.

I don't even count 'selling' hand-made prototypes to interested people.

Empty promises about never coming products and their fancy features is 'killing' the community IMHO.

So, I stay at ICs products as they can be bought, you get support and there will be more products. Everyone else should refrain of making statements like 'the next super-duper accelerator based on (FPGA/68k) is soon to come' as long as there is not even the date in sight when the product can be put on the shelf.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Apollo

For me there are two kind of poeple (when it comes to producing hardware/software for the amiga):

The ones who make announcements of (maybe) soon-to-come products and the ones who make announcements of deliverable products.

Personally, after all these years I prefer listening to people which delivered products in the past as they're very likely going to deliver in the future as well. Period.

I don't even count 'selling' hand-made prototypes to interested people.

it is not related to the discussion. The main point is badmouthing other projects.

[Apollo]

No, point is that there are projects with a future and projects without. Is it really about 'badmouthing' as such or is more that Jens has the experience about what it needs to create a product for customers (which is proven) and others maybe not?

Kickstarting a project doesn't give you the experience or knowledge of how to create a product for the 'mass'. But I am under the strong impression that it is only about "we need the money, everything else will come".

I don't know Jens personally, nor do I know personally any other person of this topic. Maybe Jens could be more diplomatic, but this is only by judging what I (and all others) can read here.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Apollo

No, point is that there are projects with a future and projects without. Is it really about 'badmouthing' as such or is more that Jens has the experience about what it needs to create a product for customers (which is proven) and others maybe not?

Kickstarting a project doesn't give you the experience or knowledge of how to create a product for the 'mass'. But I am under the strong impression that it is only about "we need the money, everything else will come".

I don't know Jens personally, nor do I know personally any other person of this topic. Maybe Jens could be more diplomatic, but this is only by judging what I (and all others) can read here.

"Apollo" project was already mentioned, there I saw him in action. I also heard that this was not the first time. Again I have no problem with anyone promoting the own project but badmouthing others is not a good style and is not helping to sell more either.

[trixster]

All very interesting.... but back on topic perhaps? Motherboards from Jens.....

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by grond

This is not correct. Philippe can state that his cases fit Individual Computer's new Amiga PCBs, Keyrah or whatever without asking permission, this would not be a violation of trademarks or illegal anticompetitive practice as long as this information is technically correct. Or do you think that you may not sell vacuum cleaner bags, printer cartridges or windscreen wipers without being allowed to mention which models they fit?

This is what I meant and this should have been obvious from the general angle of my post. Yes, I could have been more precise but if you were not so quick to view me as adversarial you would have understood that.

[grond]

Sorry if I caused any confusion. I just used your comment to state what the law actually says about this. A point was made that using IC's name and products was illegitimate and I wanted to correct this. I generally don't like to think in terms of "camps". I just wanted to state a fact and the snippet quoted from your comment was a good opportunity to add this fact in context.

[copse]

99% of the drama in this thread has been by people pronouncing interpretations and their own offence at being third party to their subjective interpretations of what has been said. Surely the mods can move this into a different thread and I can continue to read about motherboards from Jens without having to read this self-perpetuating drama?

[kolla]

Originally Posted by matthey

The lack of AmigaOS 3.9 compatibility may be Amiga specific and not a CPU problem. It also require a 68020 which adds the maximum complexity of any 68k integer CPU. It is a very good test for the Apollo core.

So the 68020 softcores used on various other FPGA systems are superior then, since they can actually run software such as OS3.9?

[traal]

Originally Posted by grond

Design goal is to have hardware support for all 68k instructions from 68000 to 68060. Apollo will be more compatible than any 68k before.

That's a good long term goal, but the first step is to make it perfectly emulate one or more specific revisions of one or more specific CPUs. Even the timings need to be 100% accurate. If software can detect that it isn't running on a real CPU, then nobody will take the FPGA core seriously.

Once this is done, only then will you have the information you need to make it "more compatible," if that's even possible. So plan your strategy carefully!

[wawa]

Originally Posted by traal

That's a good long term goal, but the first step is to make it perfectly emulate one or more specific revisions of one or more specific CPUs. Even the timings need to be 100% accurate. If software can detect that it isn't running on a real CPU, then nobody will take the FPGA core seriously.

Once this is done, only then will you have the information you need to make it "more compatible," if that's even possible. So plan your strategy carefully!

as far i gather the softcore isnot meant as exact "emulator" ofeach and every particular 68k that was out there. its meant as development of these line, as every previous 68k cpu before, which may happen at a costof some lack of compatibility. the question is how big a gap is acceptable.

generall speaking, you dont exchange the accelerator in your amiga every time you run another app, so why expect it of fpga accelerator now? its totally exaggerated demand imho.

[grond]

Originally Posted by traal

the first step is to make it perfectly emulate one or more specific revisions of one or more specific CPUs. Even the timings need to be 100% accurate.

No, the timings don't need to be 100% accurate. Otherwise there would be no way to put new enhanced processors into an amiga.

If software can detect that it isn't running on a real CPU, then nobody will take the FPGA core seriously.

There is no such software. And why should it? What point would there be to make sure that your program doesn't run on a faster processor?

It's interesting that you felt the need to create a new account to spread such misinformation that seems to favour (inherently cycle-exact but slow) processors over the apollo softcore that is many times faster than those old processors.

[traal]

Originally Posted by traal

If software can detect that it isn't running on a real CPU, then nobody will take the FPGA core seriously.

Originally Posted by grond

It's interesting that you felt the need to create a new account to spread such misinformation...

It's tough to be taken seriously in this crowd, isn't it?

[demolition]

I am certainly looking forward to trying this accelerator in my 600, and I certainly do not expect it to be 100% compatible with any existing CPUs, although it would be nice if it was. To get a major speed bump, you need to accept some compatibility problems, like it was the case when 040/060 Amigas came out. Much of the old stuff did not work any longer and had to be rewritten/patched. Although maybe not to begin with but eventually, I would close to 100% compatibility with the most common SW like WB 3.1-3.9, libraries and system friendly software.

This being said, some compatibility mode would be nice, for example which could be activated in runtime when running WHDLoad which would disable some of the new fancy stuff. Although this would slow down the CPU, WHDLoad slaves generally don't require a massively fast CPU anyway.

+1

[wawa]

Originally Posted by traal

It's tough to be taken seriously in this crowd, isn't it?

simply dont make sensless accusations and assumptions based on nothing but your imagination and you may be taken seriously one day.

btw. isnt this thread about jens products? why not post where the subject belong to?

[kolla]

Originally Posted by demolition

This being said, some compatibility mode would be nice, for example which could be activated in runtime when running WHDLoad which would disable some of the new fancy stuff. Although this would slow down the CPU, WHDLoad slaves generally don't require a massively fast CPU anyway.

You expect you can always load the TG68 core for that.