Unreleased Amiga chipset better than anything today?

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Promilus

What's PC architecture nowadays anyway? It's based around x86 CPU. Those CPUs integrate nowadays not only memory controller and graphics but also pcie controller and usb controller making everything on motherboard basically peripheral on pcie or usb3 bus. That's the current PC architecture. You can bet it's built around the same functional blocks in SoC in PS5. They just block installing other OS in firmware. They do that since PS2 I think.

The main difference between the consoles and regular PC's is that with the SoC the memory is a shared pool vs split on PC where the PC needs to use the CPU to copy data from system RAM to the GPU's VRAM.
Of course there are PC's like the steam deck which are the same as consoles as the Deck uses an APU and shared pool.

Interesting from a recent Digital Foundries video where they bought some Chinese market only APU which used GDDR6 and benchmarked it and surprisingly the latency of GDDR6 is very high compared to DDR4/5 but it has higher bandwidth.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Why ports? Shouldn't I be able to just run an Xbox game directly on my PC? And I should be able to run Windows apps on the Xbox too, right?

No, because they aren't the same thing. They might both be x86, they might have a lot in common, but they really aren't the same thing.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by TCD

The lion's share of the market is mobile gaming. Asia is the fastest growing market. Not sure where you got the 90% figure from, but here's some data for you: https://financesonline.com/video-gam...ry-statistics/

Well yes, if you count the dumpster fire of trash that is mobile gaming. I was thinking more in terms of AAA quality titles, rather than time wasting tat.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

I was thinking more in terms of AAA quality titles, rather than time wasting tat.

Sure, but 'AAA' titles have become more and more like the micro-transaction ridden battle pass selling time wasting tat because people are used to it. There are of course exceptions (one might argue exactly because of the stubborn PC owning crowd), but in general mobile gaming (especially the 'monetization' aspect of it) has influenced gaming on both consoles and computers quite a bit.

[Promilus]

The main difference between the consoles and regular PC's is that with the SoC the memory is a shared pool vs split on PC where the PC needs to use the CPU to copy data from system RAM to the GPU's VRAM

99% of intel "regular PCs" already has that. Basically all AMD based laptops and OEM desktop computers also does just that. Because they use APU concept - so tightly integrated graphics with processor core. The only notable difference in consoles might be usage of iGPU a notch above even high end PC APUs but that still is the same architecture.
@AestheticDebris

but they really aren't the same thing

Sure they are. But since both PS5 and Xbox runs special version of Windows as their own OS and since you can't replace either of those to regular version of Windows you can't run apps for windows. Even if you did hack firmware and let it run e.g. linux you'd still have no proper driver for such system making it largely useless. But it does not mean it's different architecture. Architecture is the same. And it applies to x86 macs as well (and those were actually capable of running regular Windows and vice versa, UEFI PCs were modified to run Apple OS as well which was against the license but... so what?) Also - keep in mind that actually writing a game for single hardware configuration (consoles, OCS Amigas) let developers optimize it more rather than taking care of dozens of driver versions, OS versions, CPU, GPU, RAM and motherboard configurations which are common on PC.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Promilus

99% of intel "regular PCs" already has that. Basically all AMD based laptops and OEM desktop computers also does just that. Because they use APU concept - so tightly integrated graphics with processor core. The only notable difference in consoles might be usage of iGPU a notch above even high end PC APUs but that still is the same architecture.

Yes of course, theres PC APUs, my bad(lol cant believe i forgot those when i build a PC with an AMD 5700G for the kid), the problem is the iGPU's are gimped in both compute they generally use DDR4/5(some do use LPDDR4X or 5X which helps) so its not really a comparison to the gpu capabilities of the xbox/PS.

It should hopefully change with AMD's Strix Halo though and which might be the death of the low end dGPU - https://overclock3d.net/news/cpu_mai...e_and_nvidia/1

Originally Posted by Promilus

But since both PS5 and Xbox runs special version of Windows as their own OS.

Just on this, the PS5 is based on FreeBSD - https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps5/Kernel

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

"This item is not available for reservation in your country"

What does that have to do with anything?

[grelbfarlk]

I would assume it doesn't actually exist if I couldn't get one. This includes all kinds of things like mortgages, business loans, a webOS tablet, Beyonce tickets, these really good looking shoes I saw in a video, various uniforms from TV shows in my size.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Promilus

They just block installing other OS in firmware. They do that since PS2 I think.

I suspect there's a bit more to it that that. But yes, if they wanted to they could make a console and desktop PC sufficiently compatible to run the 'same' OS and apps. But they don't want to. Consoles and PCs are still seen as different platforms even though they are very similar inside. Sony don't even make PCs anymore.

In 1993 Commodore introduced the CD32 with a core architecture identical to the A1200. You can take a CD32 title and run the CD on an A1200 with CD-ROM drive without any modifications, and you can plug a mouse and keyboard into the CD32 and run Amiga apps and games on it because it has the same OS in ROM. Commodore didn't hide this fact, in fact they encouraged users to do it.

Had they not gone bankrupt in 1994, Commodore would have introduced an expansion package for the CD32 to give it full A1200 functionality, and a CD-ROM drive for the A1200 that made it 100% CD32 compatible. The next model would probably put it all together to make a machine that could be used as a console and a computer, without having to buy one or the other. That was a radical idea back then, and still seems to be today.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

I would assume it doesn't actually exist if I couldn't get one. This includes all kinds of things like mortgages, business loans, a webOS tablet, Beyonce tickets, these really good looking shoes I saw in a video, various uniforms from TV shows in my size.

...and 80MHz full 060's, and the Raspberry Pi 400 computer, and the 'unreleased Amiga chipset better than anything today' - which today would have a slick website with hyper-realistic 3D renders and a button for ordering it that would say "This item is not available for reservation in your country" when clicked on.

These days I have a low tolerance for products that are constantly out of stock, which is just as well because I already have far too much junk. Three Amigas of which only one gets used much, a dozen other retro computers that never get switched on, drawers full of ICs I will never use, 22 model boat kits that I will probably never get around to building...

[Dunny]

Lol. Bruce mate they're rolling out availability in stages. I'm pretty sure that they'll be available in your half of world at some point. They only started taking preorders for them in Japan this last few months.

From the site: "Steam Deck is now shipping to the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. Steam Deck is also available for reservation via Komodo in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong."

I agree that it's a pity, because they really are amazing little devices, but Valve is unfortunately gonna Valve.

I gather they did this to manage demand during the chip crisis, and the demand was such that people were willing to pay more than double the list price for them in regions they didn't take orders for - but as they're limited to one pre-order per steam account at a time, it's still impossible to get them on demand in those areas.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by hammer

The gold standard for platform backward compatibility is the X86 PC clone up to UEFI Class 2.

The gold standard for CPU backward compatibility is the X86-64 CPUs.

Your backward compatibility definition is bulldust.

Well your definition could be good for 2023 but it is not even bulldust in 1993... It is quite comfortable to made such brave statements on someone cost, knowing technology progress after 25 years.

Originally Posted by hammer

The X86 world has AMD to keep the bastard Intel honest.

It's too bad Apollo-Core didn't exist in the 1990s.

Once again you are too late 25 years and approx 300..500 billion of U$D's.

Originally Posted by hammer

CELL is trash since its real-world IPC is worst than AMD's born-again K8 known as Jaguar i.e. effectively K8 with 128-bit SIMD AVX hardware.

CELL development stopped at 2008... hope you see main problem with your examples - they are good only there is many years difference between them and as technology progress is continuous process then i would say it is quite obvious you have progress - no progress will be very bad for computing.

Originally Posted by hammer

Only ColdFire V is superscalar.

yeah and silicon was cheaper then... so once again - time for you is something irrelevant...

Originally Posted by hammer

Interviews and presentations are nearly meaningless when the 68K emulation is built into FireTOS operating system instead of the "ring -1" hypervisor position.

Prove FireBee can run Bitmap Brother's Xenon II, Chaos Engine, and God's games.

FireBee is a fork from the original Atari Falcon. CT60/CT63's 68060-based accelerators exist for Atari Falcon.

Note that Amiga has an EmuTOS port that can run Atari TOS' 68K OS-friendly programs and it works on AC68080 and PiStorm-Emu68. EmuTOS is not an emulator on the Amiga i.e. a clone TOS port for 68K C= Amiga hardware.

There's a reason for PiStorm Atari ST/STe.

Allow me to guess - price?

You can run 68K software on CF - only with speed penalty.

Originally Posted by hammer

Motorola/Freescale didn't fully respect backward compatibility. The results speak for themselves i.e. Motorola exited and Freescale has been purchased by NXP.

You have Freescale "nickel and dime" IEE-754 FPU and VMX/Altivec SIMD instruction set features on PowerPC SKUs.

Once again - instead 68K for desktop Motorola choose PPC - you can argue with Motorola decisions and i can support you on this but nothing can be changed.

Originally Posted by idrougge

I think the term "desktop" doesn't even need introducing.

The Amiga is a desktop computer. Desktop processors are general-purpose and usually at the leading edge — as opposed to embedded processors. It is not viable to build a competitive desktop computer around an embedded processor.

In real life luckily there is no such strict definition... I would agree that it was partially true till some moment but today everything is way more complex.

Originally Posted by idrougge

It's a recurring pattern that CPU architectures that fail in the desktop/workstation markets "retreat" into an increasingly crowded embedded territory. Even the ARM did that before doing its major comeback in the desktop market with the Apple M1 — after mobile processors had reached the same sophistication as desktop-class processors albeit with a different power envelope.

Once again - partially true - especially for today where we observe frequently opposite trend where high end desktop ISA's are used in embedded market.

Originally Posted by idrougge

It wasn't a poor choice exactly because the Coldfire was an embedded processor.

A defining characteristic of an embedded system is that it runs one software, be it control software for an industrial robot or a cruise missile. If you upgrade your platform from 68k to CF, you recompile/reassemble your software and make some necessary adaptations and you're done. Not so for a computer, which may run any kind of extant 68k software over which you have no control.

The fact that CF was not 100 % backward compatible with the 68k series was not a serious problem since it was only aimed at the embedded market which had full control over which software the processor would run.

Yes, but this is my point from very beginning - MC68K development was not suddenly stopped by Motorola, 68K was not abandoned as it was expressed during this discussion, it was simply re-targeted, developed with different goal as in previous usage case it was replaced by PPC but still market penetration, mostly embedded one was neat market for Motorola.
Just wanted to point that MC68K was not dead but refactored.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Well your definition could be good for 2023 but it is not even bulldust in 1993... It is quite comfortable to made such brave statements on someone cost, knowing technology progress after 25 years.

I shouldn't be the topic.

Originally Posted by pandy71

Once again you are too late 25 years and approx 300..500 billion of U$D's.

More blah.

Originally Posted by pandy71

CELL development stopped at 2008... hope you see main problem with your examples - they are good only there is many years difference between them and as technology progress is continuous process then i would say it is quite obvious you have progress - no progress will be very bad for computing.

I shouldn't be the topic. You're not following this topic.


In August 2009 the 45 nm Cell processor was introduced in concert with Sony's PlayStation 3 Slim.[13]

By November 2009, IBM had discontinued the development of a Cell processor with 32 APUs[14][15] but was still developing other Cell products.[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor)

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/art...-technologies/

“Based on our experience gained from Cell, we now believe that the next generation of computing will rely heavily on the integration of multicore and hybrid technologies. IBM continues to invest in Cell technologies as part of this hybrid and multicore strategy, including in new Power7 based systems expected next year,” said the spokesperson.

Originally Posted by pandy71

yeah and silicon was cheaper then... so once again - time for you is something irrelevant...

You're not following this topic.

Originally Posted by pandy71

Allow me to guess - price?

What are Commodore's core revenue markets again?

Originally Posted by pandy71

You can run 68K software on CF - only with speed penalty.

Again, FireTOS's 68K emulation implementation will not survive Amiga's WHDload games.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

The main difference between the consoles and regular PC's is that with the SoC the memory is a shared pool vs split on PC where the PC needs to use the CPU to copy data from system RAM to the GPU's VRAM.
Of course there are PC's like the steam deck which are the same as consoles as the Deck uses an APU and shared pool.

Interesting from a recent Digital Foundries video where they bought some Chinese market only APU which used GDDR6 and benchmarked it and surprisingly the latency of GDDR6 is very high compared to DDR4/5 but it has higher bandwidth.

YOU'RE WRONG.

All desktop Zen 4 CPUs are APUs with two CU RDNA 2 iGPU on a 6 nm-based I/O chip from a 6 nm-based Rembrandt APU.

From https://www.techpowerup.com/306713/d...or-cpu-and-gpu
Date: April 2nd, 2023.


Microsoft has implemented two new features into its DirectX 12 API - GPU Upload Heaps and Non-Normalized sampling have been added via the latest Agility SDK 1.710.0 preview, and the former looks to be the more intriguing of the pair. The SDK preview is only accessible to developers at the present time, since its official introduction on Friday 31 March. Support has also been initiated via the latest graphics drivers issued by NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD.

The Microsoft team has this to say about the preview version of GPU upload heaps feature in DirectX 12: "Historically a GPU's VRAM was inaccessible to the CPU, forcing programs to have to copy large amounts of data to the GPU via the PCI bus. Most modern GPUs have introduced VRAM resizable base address register (BAR) enabling Windows to manage the GPU VRAM in WDDM 2.0 or later."

They continue to describe how the update allows the CPU to gain access to the pool of VRAM on the connected graphics card: "With the VRAM being managed by Windows, D3D now exposes the heap memory access directly to the CPU! This allows both the CPU and GPU to directly access the memory simultaneously, removing the need to copy data from the CPU to the GPU increasing performance in certain scenarios."

This GPU optimization could offer many benefits in the context of computer games, since memory requirements continue to grow in line with an increase in visual sophistication and complexity.

A shared pool of memory between the CPU and GPU will eliminate the need to keep duplicates of the game scenario data in both system memory and graphics card VRAM, therefore resulting in a reduced data stream between the two locations. Modern graphics cards have tended to feature very fast on-board memory standards (GDDR6) in contrast to main system memory (DDR5 at best). In theory the CPU could benefit greatly from exclusive access to a pool of ultra quick VRAM, perhaps giving an early preview of a time when DDR6 becomes the daily standard in main system memory.


AMD Fusion's HSA future is incoming for gaming PCs when Microsoft updates Windows 11's Direct12X subsystem. Enabling ReBar is part of the answer.

Without the incoming DirectX12 update, the Windows PC treats IGP like discrete graphics, hence the reserved IGP memory allocation.

Originally Posted by idrougge

When it comes to verbal diarrhoea, I thought you were referring to "Phase5 tax" Hammer.

You can't handle the truth.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

The Xbox and PS4/5 architecture are much closer to the PC but they're not quite the same. However, I'd say a bigger deal in bringing the two closer was Microsoft ditching support for every controller under the sun and instead forcing controllers to essentially match the Xbox 360 (and onwards) layout for buttons when they brought in XInput. It made it a lot easier for Devs to just carry the control scheme over from console versions.

And that's probably the second reason. 90% of PC games now are really just ports from the consoles, because that's where the lions share of the market is.

AMD 4700S and 4800S are PC products that recycled APU silicon from PS5 and Xbox Series X respectively. AMD added UEFI and Windows Ready ACPI to enable these SKUs to boot into UEFI/ACPI-enabled Windows.

AMD 4700S's and 4800S's iGPUs are not working.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

This was a later development.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/snobol-snb-m008
https://theretroweb.com/motherboard/...1320990357.pdf
This 1988-era chipset for 286 CPU has shadow ROM BIOS and VIDEO BIOS.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Of course Amiga fans know all about this technique, called 'MapROM' on the Amiga.

I use it for Kickstart 1.3 backward compatibility on A3000 with physical Kickstart 2.04 ROM.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

BTW my 16 MHz 386SX motherboard died today. If I can't figure what's wrong with it there won't be any speed tests coming from me. Just about had enough of PC crap now - time for a spring clean?

That's your problem and 386SX has a 16-bit frontside bus.

My original 1989 A500 Rev6 was repaired by Commodore Australia.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Any 2D representation of a 3D scene is 'fake'.

Your eye has 2D surface receptors.

From two 2D eyes, stereoscopic vision describes the ability of the visual brain to register a sense of three-dimensional shape and form from visual inputs.

My point, Amiga's 2D parallax methods are inferior to Doom and PS1's 3D focus games.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If you move your head relative to the screen in Doom, can you see behind objects?

Realistic stereoscopic vision is outside the scope of 1990s-era games.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The PS1 had pretty poor 3D.

For a lowish asking price in Xmas Q4 1995, PS1's triangle 3D system polygon is good enough. Sega Saturn and 3DO competition have the quadrilateral 3D polygon system. These game consoles are mostly integer 3D systems without Z-buffer acceleration.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Tomb Raider suffered from quite distracting graphical glitches.

Core Design's Tomb Raider (1996) is not the only game on PS1. Tomb Raider software rendering on PC also has 3D glitches.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Only the exceptional talents of
Toby Gard, Paul Douglas, Gavin Rummery, Jason Gosling, Neal Boyd and Heather Gibson made it worth playing.

That's subjective.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

...and apparently some came with no video at all!
Sales? We don't have any sales. We don't need no stinkin' sales!

Hint: PC's Doom unit sales murder the entire AGA install base.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Wing Commander Combat Information Center

They were on the Amiga.

PC has Wing Commander II in September 1991.

Stock A1200 with Wing Commander CD32 WHDLoad's experience is subpar when compared SNES version. DP has argued for CPU-accelerated A1200 bundles for 1993.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Probably always did. I sold very few commercial PC games in my shop (1991-2002) but shareware game packs were very popular.

New Zealand has a small market with a weaker currency.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

ET4000 was problematic in Windows, and that was all that mattered to most users. The majority of DOS users didn't even know that some cards were better than others.

PC's Doom unit sales murder the entire Commodore-Escom AGA install base.

1993-era full 32-bit CPU-equipped gaming PC minority murders the entire AGA install base.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

... bundled with new PCs. But most users didn't run Windows, especially gamers (except me. I can play Windows Solitaire for hours!).

Microsoft sold 10 million Windows 3.0 copies, not including pirated copies.

PC's Doom unit sales murder the entire Commodore-Escom AGA install base.

1993-era full 32-bit CPU-equipped gaming PC minority murders the entire AGA install base.

My NSW government-run school in 1993 had a fleet of 386DX-33-based Windows 3.1 PCs.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

There was an old saying back in 1992 - never buy a Microsoft product until it reaches version 3.1 - that's how bad earlier versions of Windows were.

The same for IBM OS/2 1.0 or AmigaOS 1.0.


[ Show youtube player ]
Title: The Fall of OS/2. OS/2 lead evangelist install Windows 95 on his home PC since he couldn't install OS/2 Warp.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by hammer

From two 2D eyes, stereoscopic vision describes the ability of the visual brain to register a sense of three-dimensional shape and form from visual inputs.

The brain only needs one eye for that, it just becomes more accurate with two I'll now go be a smart-ass somewhere else

[pixie]

Originally Posted by Thorham

The brain only needs one eye for that, it just becomes more accurate with two I'll now go be a smart-ass somewhere else

one eye + time gives you also 3D, although not as accurately

[Promilus]

Well stereo + proper timing = 3d sound. So what? Amiga was leader in case of 2D graphics in computers back then. Parallax scrolling is 2D technique, not 3D technique. It gives more depth to regular 2D game. Nothing else.
You could do better with actual 3D scene and fixed camera. So what? If you play new 2D games made with 3D API (like hollow knight) it LOOKS exactly the same way with multi plane background ... not actual 3D. So you force 3D engine to work on 2D planes to create "retro" effect and it sells the title... yay! Well that's about that in terms of 2D platformers and adventures which are quite popular nowadays. Remember angry birds or flappy bird phenomenon? That's not 3D AAA title! It just f... works! Simple enjoyable game. That's obviously beyond hammer's comprehension like many, many other things.
Unreleased Commodore chipset would AT MOST be on par with Saturn from Sega (but with EVEN LESS developers support). So that's that. Useless crap of hardware. And going into PA-RISC with desktop would've been even bigger crap than PowerPC.