FPGA based A500 accelerator

[AmigaHope]

I would totally use a Lemon Party accelerator if it was also themed with Lemon Amiga motif <3

[lord of time]

so I have a couple of ideas - not sure if they are possible or if they would make it expensive but I figured its worth mentioning... Firstly would a clock port be possible on the accelorator? secondly what about intergrating a VA2000 for RTG?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by jbilander

On that topic, may I suggest the name Harpia after the coolest/biggest bird on the planet, the Harpy Eagle (Harpia Harpyja). A real predator and it feeds on sloths (amongst others) so you can call the Second Edition the Sloth Killer Edition when "Phone Me Now" has been reached Would also allow for a nice silkscreen print on the PCB with that eagle on there too.

Another suggestion since Fire seems to be popular in names on Accelerator cards these days, why not the name Spitfire. Not that Terrible of a suggestion right I think people still argue if the SF was better than the german Messerschmitt Well, there you go...and then you have all the versioning already sorted for you Mk I Mk II...Mk IX etc.

Oh, and Kraken is taken. It is a cryptocurrency exchange.

My two cents -jb

Spitfire has been used already in Amiga land.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/spitfire

[kipper2k]

ATM it seems like the hardest part of the project is trying to find a politically correct name lol.It seems there has been lots of projects with many names most of the greek Gods are all taken except the ones with long names. Mike has been working away with the logic glue and is making some great headway, he will let everyone know when there is something interesting to report.

[utri007]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

ATM it seems like the hardest part of the project is trying to find a politically correct name lol.It seems there has been lots of projects with many names most of the greek Gods are all taken except the ones with long names. Mike has been working away with the logic glue and is making some great headway, he will let everyone know when there is something interesting to report.

It is annoying to found tons of Vampire stuff, when I try to google something for my Apollo 68060 accelerator.

Saga and Sage are also too close http://amiga.resource.cx/search.pl?p...&base=dec&pid=

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

ATM it seems like the hardest part of the project is trying to find a politically correct name lol.It seems there has been lots of projects with many names most of the greek Gods are all taken except the ones with long names. Mike has been working away with the logic glue and is making some great headway, he will let everyone know when there is something interesting to report.

That's fine, this is EAB we can argue about a name right up until you have to send the pcb with the right name silkscreened on.
No need for the Greek pantheon, how about like:
Ra
Anubis someone on EAB might spoil this one
Dagon
Kali
Orcus
Odin
Just nothing with "Warp" in the name we have the WarpEngine, WarpUP/OS, Warp560/1260, etc. Thinking about space stuff how about:
Quasar
Pulsar
Accretion Disk

[mkstr]

Little update. Not much done this week but I've been playing with adding an instruction cache today. Currently just a simple 4KB direct-mapped I cache (no D cache yet). Decent improvement.



Edit: This is on an unmodified TG68 core.

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by mkstr

Little update. Not much done this week but I've been playing with adding an instruction cache today. Currently just a simple 4KB direct-mapped I cache (no D cache yet). Decent improvement.

awesome, from 8444 to 9718, the dhrystones are faster than the ACA1233N accelerator for the a1200 and pulling away from the 1st gen models ...

I think the imath also increased by 25% too but will let Mike confirm that, and still no name lol

[gulliver]

I have what I believe is a good suggestion as a name:

"Mirage"

Definition: an optical illusion caused by atmospheric conditions, especially the appearance of a sheet of water in a desert or on a hot road caused by the refraction of light from the sky by heated air.

It definately suits given the FPGA nature of the accelerator. Its name is short, unused, and is rather cool.

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by gulliver

I have what I believe is a good suggestion as a name:

"Mirage"

Definition: an optical illusion caused by atmospheric conditions, especially the appearance of a sheet of water in a desert or on a hot road caused by the refraction of light from the sky by heated air.

It definately suits given the FPGA nature of the accelerator. Its name is short, unused, and is rather cool.

I Like this name too, A lot of people may look at this score and think it is a mirage, i am just amazed at the numbers and there is still room to grow.

[grelbfarlk]

That's a good name, but Elbox Mirage Tower cases.
How about Phantasm?

[skan]

Dudes, I think it's time for a poll!

I like both Harpy and Mirage, but if we stuck to greek mythology/deities while keeping the "vision" concept, I suggest also "Oneiros" or "Phantasos" (or maybe slightly distorted to "Phantasy"?)

About the progress and performance: wow! This looks very promising to say the least!

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by mkstr

Little update. Not much done this week but I've been playing with adding an instruction cache today. Currently just a simple 4KB direct-mapped I cache (no D cache yet). Decent improvement.

Impressive!
(I'm also retroactively much more impressed with the previous score now I know you didn't yet have an instruction cache!)

[mkstr]

Regarding naming, I'm not really that keen on the Greek/Roman mythology route - it feels a bit dated (like everyone used to name their servers after Greek gods 20 years ago). I quite liked the idea of using minor Buffy characters, but maybe that's a touch "inflamatory".

[mkstr]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

Impressive!
(I'm also retroactively much more impressed with the previous score now I know you didn't yet have an instruction cache!)

Sysinfo gets this wrong and seems to report that there is always an I cache for a 68020 class CPU. I haven't even looked at what TG68 implements in terms of the CACR yet.

You'll also note in the screenshot that it reports the fastmem as 32-bit, which is also not the case - it's only 16-bits wide.

[jbilander]

Impressive, well done , what version of SysInfo are you using? Maybe later revisions are more accurate in this regard?

https://sysinfo.d0.se/

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by mkstr

Sysinfo gets this wrong and seems to report that there is always an I cache for a 68020 class CPU. I haven't even looked at what TG68 implements in terms of the CACR yet.

I've not explored that in any detail but I believe it simply emits the lower four bits of any write to CACR on the CACR_out signal. It would be trivial to extend that to support instruction cache bits too.

You'll also note in the screenshot that it reports the fastmem as 32-bit, which is also not the case - it's only 16-bits wide.

But with a nice long burst, I imagine?
(I think when it says 32-bit its referring to the address width - i.e. outside the 24-bit 68000 address space, rather than the bus width.)

[PR77]

Great project! Well done. By default is TG68 implementing the EC020? Are you planning to open source?

Ps., I found this on EAB;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=47989

[kipper2k]

The TG68 core is open source so any changes that are made to it will be published. Looking at that old link i read that before, it seemed to be popular and then seemed to just end, shame, it showed a lot of potential

[Lemaru]

I'm guessing the core will be opensource but the hardware won't be?