Apollo Team IceDrake V4 Accelerator For the Amiga 1200 out in Q1: 2022

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by manossg

when you obviously do. A lot. :P

I would if I didn't point out what's imo wrong, why I think that's the case and what are the alternatives. You mistake complaining with criticism. It's not the same thing. And you put way more effort to write about me rather than presenting counter arguments.

This is topic about ice drake. What it does, what it doesn't. How it looks in comparison to similar products. I did write about that. You did write about me. A lot. Totally unrelated stuff.

[OlafSch]

A little strange discussion to me...

I started with amiga as hobby again when I stumbled across Natami project (must been around 2011). At that time (and in following years) the situation was not very good. No development (no hardware, no software, no OS development). Now the situation has improved a lot. I do not understand why people still moan. Regarding bloatware... today often the situation is bloatware or nothing to use. In this case I would prefer bloatware. If somebody has the skills, motivation and time to rewrite something nobody is against it. As long this is not the case I prefer to have something less efficient to nothing. And the discussion about for what you need horsepower... there are many ports now from PC games that benefit from that and you have demanding tasks like watching videos. As long you only want to play old amiga games or watch some ecs or aga demos you do not need that of course. In this case you do not need any accellerator or "FPGA computer" at all.

And discussion V4 cards or standalone versus PiStorm. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Both will live together. I would prefer discussions about cooperation and how we can improve the situation and not "we against those". There might be some games that use specific features. The V4 generation has some advantages regarding amiga chipset features, perhaps there will be games using that and only run on it. On other side PiStorm might have advantages in 3D using the RPi hardware for it and then some games only work on it. Developers are free to decide. Most games will certainly developed running on both using bigger resources like horsepower and RAM and Truecolour.

[manossg]

Originally Posted by Promilus

I would if I didn't point out what's imo wrong, why I think that's the case and what are the alternatives. You mistake complaining with criticism. It's not the same thing. And you put way more effort to write about me rather than presenting counter arguments.

This is topic about ice drake. What it does, what it doesn't. How it looks in comparison to similar products. I did write about that. You did write about me. A lot. Totally unrelated stuff.

I wrote about how you present yourself versus how you come across, mate. Take it or leave it, we can be friends either way.

Also, words that you repeat here and in other threads like the Vampire is a 'trap', 'dead end' and so on do sound like your personal impressions and, sorry to say so, bitching and a bit of a crusade, judging from your walls of text every time there is a Vamp discussion. It's not 'what is', but your opinion about what it is. There's a ton of difference there and I say it very respectfully but I don't know if this comes across in the written word.

I also have a bunch of criticisms about the Vampire, but you don't see me shoving them down people's throats as if it is the only way to perceive this piece of hardware.

About my counter-arguments, you already know them from the pistorm thread.

But you are right, the topic is about this new accelerator.

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Promilus

I would if I didn't point out what's imo wrong, why I think that's the case and what are the alternatives. You mistake complaining with criticism. It's not the same thing. And you put way more effort to write about me rather than presenting counter arguments.

This is topic about ice drake. What it does, what it doesn't. How it looks in comparison to similar products. I did write about that. You did write about me. A lot. Totally unrelated stuff.

OK so now that you've said what you've had to say about the Vampire, and you've got it off your chest, I'm sure that there will be no need to repeat the same rhetoric again when another Vampire thread pops up hey?

[UberFreak]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

LoL

I'm saying that calling it an 'accelerator' has confused a lot of Amigans over the years.

It's an FPGA computer, simple as that.

Nothing against the product, looks like a great design but just call it what it is.

Repeating something doesn't make it true...

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Promilus

And that's suspiciously looks like ignorance which is rather weird thing to admit when trying to prove your point about specific SIMD implementation...

I fully admit to being ignorant. Nobody knows everything. Most of us are here to share experiences and help each get more enjoyment out of using our 25-30 year old vintage Amigas. We don't care what technology is used in modern CPUs, so why should we have to learn about that?

SIMD was introduced to the PC market in 1997 with MMX. Back then the term SIMD was barely mentioned, for good reason. In practice MMX was just some instructions added to Intel Pentiums to speed up multimedia operations. That was all most people knew, and all they needed to know. And since our Amigas didn't have it and weren't going to get it, we didn't need to know anything about it.

Fast forward 24 years and modern PCs are so complicated that no mere mortal can hope to fully understand them. Most of us stopped trying many years ago, and today just use them as appliances without worrying about how they perform their magic. But some of us still enjoy hacking around with hardware that is simple enough for us to understand - like home computers were back in the 80's. We are not trying to match the performance and features of a modern PC (that would be nuts) just making our 25-35 year old vintage machines a little nicer to use.

That's not to say that we aren't taking advantage of modern technology. People are reproducing Amiga motherboards using modern PCB design programs and modern manufacturing facilities, using pre-built modules designed for use with Arduinos etc., and perhaps even CPLDs and FPGAs rather than dozens of logic gates and special function ICs like we did in the old days.

The Vampire was designed in that spirit. Its architecture is similar to classic Amiga accelerator cards, except that the 68k CPU is also implemented in HDL along with all the 'glue' logic. This provided the flexibilty to tweak the CPU and expand its instruction set - giving us multimedia extenstions similar to the Pentium MMX that Amigas couldn't use back in the 90's. The IceDrake takes it a little further with enhanced AGA compatible graphics and sound, and fast IDE and Ethernet built in - all good stuff that Amiga fans would have drooled over in 1997 and still do today.

But then you come along to tell us that AMMX is no good because it is specific to the Vampire (just like MMX was specific to the Pentium) and that jit emulation on a modern CPU would be so much faster that FPGA based hardware has no 'future'. And you start talking about ARM and NEON and other crap that is off topic in this thread - which is about the IceDrake.

If you want to discuss accelerating the Amiga with an ARM CPU and jit 68k emulation then start your own thread for it, just like those who are designing boards using a Raspberry Pi or real 68k CPU have done. Take a look around and you see that many of us are not that concerned about whether our projects have the best possible performance or widest application - and that's perfectly OK. You wouldn't dump on a thread like this one about making an 'old school' 14MHz 68k board, so why do it here?

Guess you don't use things like MUI, P96 because that's some 3rd party bloatware.

Not just bloatware, but proprietary too. I put up with it because some apps I use need them, but that doesn't mean I like it. We have enough bloatware already!

Sure we don't. And if you read my posts carefully you'd notice what I want. But when someone advertise their solution in terms of PERFORMANCE (and that's exactly how this product IS ADVERTISED) you can't help to think about what it actually means and how does it fare against other solutions.

Why? When looking at an electric motor kit for a pushbike, can we 'not help' comparing it to a Tesla Model S Plaid? Or does the thought never enter our heads? Just because the manufacturer of that electric bike kit touts its performance, does that mean anything less than 0-60 in 2 seconds is some kind of fraud? Of course not. Each product stands on its own and has its own reasons to be desired.

Oh my... in terms of features it doesn't introduce anything there wasn't in one way or the other in amiga world way back... Ethernet, sound, rtg, faster storage, usb? That's something which was achieved decade or two or three ago. Same with 3D.

You still don't get it. Most of us never got all that stuff a decade or two or three ago, or if we did we don't have it now. So the IceDrake is a great way to get it all at once without the hassles many of us experienced or avoided. We don't care if it was available 'in one way or the other' decades ago - we just want it now - in our unexpanded A1200s that may have been sitting in a cupboard gathering dust for the last 25 years.

The IceDrake is a very tidy board and very practical. It has all the stuff on it that I would want. It won't cook everything like a power-hungry 060/PPC board. It doesn't need a tower case, expensive PCI bus board and rare graphics card. It doesn't have multiple PCBs and jumper wires going everywhere making a huge unstable mess inside my A1200. What's not to like about it?

My only problem is that I already have a Vampire in my A600. But if the Blizzard 1230-IV ever poops out...

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by UberFreak

Repeating something doesn't make it true...

Well...technically he's not wrong.
Whilst I'll argue that the V2 range for the A500, A600 and A1200 were strictly accelerators, the up and coming V4 range for the various Amiga computers, being built around the V4 standalone design, can either function as just an accelerator or they can do a lot more than that. It depends on the user configuration, and is one of the reasons why I am attracted to the project.

[Promilus]

@Bruce

But then you come along to tell us that AMMX is no good because it is specific to the Vampire (just like MMX was specific to the Pentium)

Oh, let me see then. Pentium came with no MMX at all. It was added to a series of processors designed to 3rd pentium socket in history (socket 7). And also... AMD K6 had it, Winchip had it. Not exclusive intel tech. Other CPU suppliers adopted that technology (so it was popularized hardware wise) because it was also supported by developers and OS and became de facto standard. Same with SSE, AES and 64bits in x86. But there are failed extensions as well (mostly AMDs)

And you start talking about ARM and NEON and other crap that is off topic in this thread - which is about the IceDrake

No, I highlighted some things Crom mentioned with the premise that he actually likes PiStorm (he admitted he is a fan) so only added information that PiStorm can get most the things he crave for as well.

I did mention that moving away from chip-ram limited chipset to SAGA implementation in FPGA does make amiga basically keyboard interface, floppy interface* and power supply. What's wrong in that statement?

*- didn't mention that one
I replied Crom and I was going to leave with that but then ... you came along with the same sarcastic comments with baseless statements like

by then the 'modern' tech you prefer

I put up with it because some apps I use need them, but that doesn't mean I like it

well as you admitted you like reinventing the wheel so why not start with this? What makes one part of the code essential and had to use and other bloatware you don't use? Well... need of having specific features applied and lack of time or skill to do things yourself.

When looking at an electric motor kit for a pushbike, can we 'not help' comparing it to a Tesla Model S Plaid

That's kind of silly argument considering we're still talking about the same functional thing - Amiga turbo card. Whatever it has under the hood. So the proper comparison would be gasoline, cng, diesel, hydrogen combustion engine or electric motor. With all their advantages and disadvantages. Apollo products are compact, have (after all those years) pretty good firmware and assisting software support, have adaptable hardware (since it is FPGA, it can easily introduce new features as long as there's space left) and in that compact design contains things most amiga users want (like rtg, fast storage, usb for joy/mouse ... unfortunately no usb mass storage class yet or did I miss that in spec?). And those things I see as amazing.

I can even understand ppl wanting to get their rev3 or rev5 A500 a new beginning by allowing AGA through FPGA rather than heavily modding their mb to get expensive and hard to get super fat agnus with 2MB of chip ram. Doesn't make my favorite feature as I do enjoy ECS and I want that whole chipset to be working to the day it dies. Would love hw to upscale pal and switch between pal and rtg auto. There doesn't seem to be one but I think I read somewhere Apollo is going to try that and CSLabs already working on it.

Not wanting to route functionality way outside amiga mainboard is a reason I am not planning to join PiStorm bandwagon. Doesn't mean I am blind to what it does and - should it succeed and finalize - how far will it go in the future (with both new firmware and new hardware i.e. Pi4, Pi5, Pi6). I probably still won't like JIT and (exactly as sometimes with Apollo and 2 decades ago with mediator + blizzard + voodoo) using Amiga just as a keyboard. But I do have slightly damaged amiga which might work with either one (pistorm or apollo) so I might consider it as a last resort if repair fails.

But rationally - V2 came out in 2016 iirc. 5 years and there has been no significant progress in area of those features I mentioned earlier like AMMX and 64bit. They are there, so what? Doesn't hurt if those are unused right? Why should I care? Well wouldn't you highlight that pushing amphibious systems to a car running on desert - while having added value in certain situations - doesn't really do much good?

So the IceDrake is a great way to get it all at once without the hassles many of us experienced or avoided

And I never denied that. Warp has rtg, sound, usb, sd, net. PiStorm has rtg, usb etc. It's going as a pretty much standard for modern turbo. And yes, sure warp has it's own problem (even longer waiting time + you have to have own 060) and PiStorm has compatibility problems and rather mediocre performance (under linux with musashi) but that's pretty much alpha stage anyway while V2 was beta and V4+ is finalized version with small bug hunting and minor enhancements here and there.

Now the question YOU should ask yourself or perhaps Gunnar. Why Ice Drake does use the same FPGA as V4 which was first announced in the middle of 2017. Cyclone V was introduced in 2012 as 28nm tech. Cyclone 10 is (unfortunately) not much better, there are 2 model lines. One GX in 20nm, one LP in ... 60nm! Not much of a progress here.

And there is (and doesn't seem to fade away in the future) problem with FPGA manufacturers getting access to process nodes 6/7/8nm, 10 or 14/16nm (well Xilinx supposedly got last one but I think doesn't offer products yet). So while you could definitively get bigger FPGA (which Apollo Team obviously didn't chose - probably cost related or low availability) you won't get much faster FPGA.

Natami team talking about N68050 - and 68070 in extension - projected that in few years with new FPGA softcore would reach 300MHz+ ... that's from interview done by PPA member in 2011. And if you look at the features - it's already all AC68080 has but no AMMX and no 64bit. No wonder, those are Gunnar's choices to improve previous version. And while it certainly is some kind of improvement I think he overestimated quite a bit propagation of those new sets of features in aos3.x app world. And the same applies to improved sprites over AGA standard.

[Thomas Richter]

There is nothing wrong with AMMX. There is just nothing right about it either. The whole platform is on outdated technology, on the retro-computing experience. As such, it would be important to get the homework done first, and then care about the extras. The homework is to get a MMU on board, to make the FPU fully compatible, to care about the drivers (why does their RTG driver not support screen dragging, still?). Once that all works, one can think about extras - and while you are at it, please implement them *without* using opcodes that are actually in use by members of the 68K family. And for that, it's not at all a "68080" as it is marketed, it is actually more a 68EC080 without the extra units. If you care about something modern, Amiga and AmigaOs is simply the wrong end to start with. 68K is probably the wrong end to start with. So the decision to "modernize a retro experience" is contradiction in terms. Either do modern, or do old, but then do either of it right.

[utri007]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

There is nothing wrong with AMMX. There is just nothing right about it either. The whole platform is on outdated technology, on the retro-computing experience. As such, it would be important to get the homework done first, and then care about the extras. The homework is to get a MMU on board, to make the FPU fully compatible, to care about the drivers (why does their RTG driver not support screen dragging, still?). Once that all works, one can think about extras - and while you are at it, please implement them *without* using opcodes that are actually in use by members of the 68K family. And for that, it's not at all a "68080" as it is marketed, it is actually more a 68EC080 without the extra units. If you care about something modern, Amiga and AmigaOs is simply the wrong end to start with. 68K is probably the wrong end to start with. So the decision to "modernize a retro experience" is contradiction in terms. Either do modern, or do old, but then do either of it right.

First priority of Apollo team should have been a compatibility. That would have made me interested. So Thomas is right about this.

What really annoys me is names they use, there is already Apollo and Sage. Now if I want to find information of those, I got zillion spam post about FPGA accelerator.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

LoL

I'm saying that calling it an 'accelerator' has confused a lot of Amigans over the years.

It's an FPGA computer, simple as that.

Nothing against the product, looks like a great design but just call it what it is.

Not so much with the V4. But it has been pointed out , to you quite a few times now, that the v2 is an accelerator. Its just a fast 68k with some extra gubbins in FPGA, but still using all of the custom chips of the amiga.

[viddi]

How does overlocking work here?
Is it shipped with 165 Mips settings?

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by utri007

First priority of Apollo team should have been a compatibility. That would have made me interested. So Thomas is right about this.

What really annoys me is names they use, there is already Apollo and Sage. Now if I want to find information of those, I got zillion spam post about FPGA accelerator.

And Firebird (the Prometheus bridgeboard) was already used as well. But "who cares, we do what we want" is the main attitudine driving the Vampire team

Needless to say, I approve of Thomas' post 100%.
If Vampire truly wanted to be the future of Amiga, they should've started by not stepping all over the past and respect the foundations that were laid and used for 20+ years before their first design.

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Is it better to buy it than the Mister?

Does it offer similar expansions?

MiSTer is a different kind of FPGA computer and is designed to recreate multiple old computer systems/consoles/arcade boards with a priority given to hardware accuracy and not to performance.

If you are interested in MiSTer then there are loads of great videos out there.

You can either stick in an A500 case or do what I've done and house it in a Checkmate mini case for that Amiga feeling.

[ Show youtube player ]

Just keep in mind that the MiSTer currently only performs like a 020 @ 50 Mhz (but does feature RTG and MIDI).

[lmimmfn]

Bottom line is if you want better than 68030 performance on an Amiga its still the best all in one solution.
Yes theres the excellent terriblefire and CSLabs Warp cards but getting a decent 060 cpu for those is like hens teeth.

Im not pro Vampire under and circumstances but as an all in one solution its one of the best buys.

My ideal setup will always be a 060 with accelerator card for my 1200.

And of course i think the Mister is a fantastic alternative if not interested in using original hardware.

[danko]

I wrote for the pre-order but do you know how long after they contact us?

[Pollock]

Originally Posted by lmimmfn

Bottom line is if you want better than 68030 performance on an Amiga its still the best all in one solution.
Yes theres the excellent terriblefire and CSLabs Warp cards but getting a decent 060 cpu for those is like hens teeth.

Im not pro Vampire under and circumstances but as an all in one solution its one of the best buys.

My ideal setup will always be a 060 with accelerator card for my 1200.

And of course i think the Mister is a fantastic alternative if not interested in using original hardware.

Very true. Although i don't know if you have used a Vampire or not, there are still issues with demos etc, and it's not really a card that is just "plug and play" like an 030 solution. An 060 is nice to, it makes using workbench like a modern PC, although in truth, for the vast majority of games, not all of them, the WHDLoad performance with an 030 is nearly identical.

[Pyromania]

Vampires look like a great way to standardize almost all Amigas to higher spec 16 bit sound, better graphics/colors and a higher performance CPU. Let's not forget it adds a lot of other stuff too. This has been a long time coming for Amiga fans.

[sean_sk]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Vampires look like a great way to standardize almost all Amigas to higher spec 16 bit sound, better graphics/colors and a higher performance CPU. Let's not forget it adds a lot of other stuff too. This has been a long time coming for Amiga fans.

Whilst I agree with your comment, be prepared for the inevitable crapstorm that will follow. XD

[Pyromania]

Why would there be a crapstorm? New Vampire hardware based on Vampire V4 stand alone for classic Amigas line is very very cool.