Apollo Team announces developing of Vampire standalone version to run as AMIGA and ATARI ST

[mfro]

I hear that the Apollo will have extra instructions, AMMX, which I gather are for faster video. Does the Coldfire have anthing similar ?

It would be a lot to ask the Coldfire designers to add support to the CPU but worth asking if it is so beneficial.

ColdFire V4 has EMAC (Enhanced Multiply ACcumulate unit) to support SIMD instructions.
Up to one multiplication, two additions and one shift in a single instruction, either integer or fixpoint with 40bit precision with 4 ALUs in parallel.

Probably not as advanced as AMMX, but documented and fully supported by existing toolchains.

[Frank B]

I hear that the Apollo will have extra instructions, AMMX, which I gather are for faster video. Does the Coldfire have anthing similar ?

It would be a lot to ask the Coldfire designers to add support to the CPU but worth asking if it is so beneficial.

It might be better for the Vampire to support the Coldfire extensions. They're official and presumably supported in recent toolchains.

[calimero]

From Apollo forum:

"There are no plans to create a Motorola compatible MMU so there is no point. After listening to interviews with Gunnar, I have the impression that he is only interested real time style operating systems and I can appreciate that."

http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.ph ... 8&z=bTxbWO

[ex68k]

From Apollo forum:
"There are no plans to create a Motorola compatible MMU so there is no point. After listening to interviews with Gunnar, I have the impression that he is only interested real time style operating systems and I can appreciate that."

Sounds like the kiss of death for the atari platform?

[vido]

Here are words from Gunnar:

Also existing are the 68040 compatible FPU, the MPU and the MMU.

The FPU is mathematically 100% tested and fully compliant.
We still had to do the roundup of some FPU control instruction.
While we were at this, some activities took higher priority this year.

[joska]

Here are words from Gunnar:

Also existing are the 68040 compatible FPU, the MPU and the MMU.

The FPU is mathematically 100% tested and fully compliant.
We still had to do the roundup of some FPU control instruction.
While we were at this, some activities took higher priority this year.

This sounds like only the FPU is 68040 compatible. The "MMU" - as described in their forum - is a completely different thing than the 68040 PMMU.

I posted my views on the MMU in their forum, but got no response.

[1st1]

Yes, their MMU is something different, but it does similar things. It is possible to add/emulate the PMMU functionality to it. But at the moment it has no priority for them yet. Maybe an idea would be for someone here with good VHDL/Verilog knowledge and how PMMU works offers to cooperate with them for implementation?

But about FPU I already told you some pages ago in this discussion. It's there already. It only does not contain a few math operations like cotangens or so which are faster to implement in CPU than the FPU can do, that means nobody uses them...

[mfro]

... Maybe an idea would be for someone here with good VHDL/Verilog knowledge and how PMMU works offers to cooperate with them for implementation?
...

Sure. Maybe somebody calls it an early day next week and just does it in an hour or two.

After all, an m68k PMMU is an easy thing to do. Just a little bit more complex than this tiny 68020.

[1st1]

Yes mfro, it's notging that could be done within 5 minutes... And as lomng Vmapire only runs proper in Amiga there is no good testimg environement for MMU. This is the chicken egg problem. It's maybe easier making and testing the MMU when Vampire can run in ST and MInT can try to use it.

I just jumped again on this sentense:

" Also existing are the 68040 compatible FPU, the MPU and the MMU."

I read the magic word MMU behind "compatible"... hmmm... is it there (now) or what does this mean?

[mfro]

It's been several weeks since we all saw the video of a Vampire nailed into an ST and no (neither positive nor negative) news regarding it.

If things were as easy and simple as you want(ed?) to (make us) believe, we surely would have heard something about it.

Yes, the specs are still promising, but maybe it's about time for you to recognize that, after all, this is just another hobby project within it's own set of rules (preferences and limitations) and that there is a lot of sweat to shed from a YT video to a working product ...

[1st1]

I didn't told anything about a time frame. I didn't told "before christmas" or something like that. I told, they have priorities but they plan to support STs as well and they plan to do a standalone which can be used for both. No time frame, no limit. In the Apollo forum I recently have read a statement "in one year". We have time...

[Sorgelig]

And as lomng Vmapire only runs proper in Amiga there is no good testimg environement for MMU. This is the chicken egg problem.

It's not correct assumption. Actually it's completely incorrect. MMU is used by WHDLoad. There are many MMU-enabled libraries in AmigaOS. So if they want to develop MMU, then it would be easier to test it on Amiga where it's optional and can be tested by pieces. The environment where nothing will work without complete MMU implementation is not good for debugging.
Without MMU (read as complete 68030/68040/68060) this very expensive accel goes nowhere. Basically it doesn't provide anything extra comparing to MiST board.
"May be, in the future, when they will add everything they plan..." - is going into future. When they will implement something effectively better (not just raw high speed for aged apps) than MiST - then they may get my money. I simply don't invest into doubtful projects in advance.

[soviet9922]

I want my vampire 500 V2 , but considering that more they have more than 1600 people declaring interest it's going to be a long wait.....

[ericgus]

I want my vampire 500 V2 , but considering that more they have more than 1600 people declaring interest it's going to be a long wait.....

Well it gives you plenty of time to make sure your A500 is ready for it..

[1st1]

Happy new year. They have MMU... It's a bit different than PMMU of original 680x0, but more powerfull. And they offer support on implementation in MiNT. http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php Have fun!

[calimero]

^
at http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.ph ... 6&z=vY9c4o
Gunnar always talk about future software and advance capabilities (never seen before) of Apollo core.

He said: "As you have the sources of Free-Mint it should be no problem to add support for our new protections bits to FreeMint to enable what you want." so Apollo did not implement old hardware but made new MMU and MPU capabilities and we need to change software to be able to use advanced Apollo features.

This is not critic, but rather observation of Gunnar "point of view".
Hope Atari developers would find same language with Apollo team (I see mfro on Apollo forum...)

[Sorgelig]

Looks like "Hey everyone! We made incompatible CPU. Common everybody, make a special support for our CPU."
Apollo development is weird keeping in mind active development phase for Amiga and Atari has been finished couple decades ago.

[1st1]

I agree, a PMMU legacy mode would be better, but if MiNT handles that memory management unit, applications must not care about. Apps will get what they need. You see, mfro and Olivier which are deeper in the developement of Emutos and Mint are quite confident that they can get this to work. From my view this is just a different Minut kernel (mint.prg in the auto folder), all other keeps the same. Firebee with it's incompatible coldfire CPU needs much more effort to get legacy software to run. I think if we want this CPU we have to eat that frog and we get a fast thing with interesting enhancements. And maybe their memory management is better than Motorola's and we can even profit from that? Memory protection is an operating system issue, let's it manage by OS, let's it manage by MiNT.

[mfro]

He said: "As you have the sources of Free-Mint it should be no problem to add support for our new protections bits to FreeMint to enable what you want." so Apollo did not implement old hardware but made new MMU and MPU capabilities and we need to change software to be able to use advanced Apollo features.

I wouldn't judge that a huge drawback. Motorola themselves were 'very innovative' (i.e. messing around) with virtual memory support throughout the m68k line - 020/851, 030, 040 and 060 MMU incarnations are mutually incompatible and need different handling within MiNT as well (still lacking implementation for 020/851).

ColdFire MMU is completely different (and not yet implemented) as well. If Apollo's implementation is 'similar enough', it should be doable (provided somebody volunteers).

P.S.: not being familiar with the inner workings, I guess the difference is there for a reason. It's simply technically impossible to implement a given CPU design 100% compatible but 'just' magnitudes faster when you are clock frequency limited.

[joska]

You see, mfro and Olivier which are deeper in the developement of Emutos and Mint are quite confident that they can get this to work.

So far Gunnar hasn't revealed much details about the MMU, so nobody knows yet how much work it is to adapt MiNT. Or even if it's possible at all. I suspect that the MMU is still in an early phase, I hope that the Apollo team ends up with an MMU that can be used by MiNT without having to completely rewrite the memory protection system.

[ericgus]

Its funny all this discussion over the CPU aspects in the Vampire and as a "typical"consumer/ hobbyist that is in the Vampire 500 v2 wait list, the things that actually interest me most are HDMI out, networking (via the ESP8226 wifi module), IDE/SD card and even more RTG/AGA graphics ability on my A500 .. the CPU "speed" boost is nice but its the thing that interest me the least about the Vampire since I only really ever plan to run legacy/classic 68k applications on it, what the Vampire already brings to the table is more than enough for me (and i'm actually more interested in the vampire doing 68000 "slow" mode than anything fast or faster than an A4000.. I can't really see using a Vampire equipped Amiga to replace my day-to-day modern desktop requirements (web browsing, email, video etc)..

[1st1]

This is an Amiga 500.

[Anima]

This is an Amiga 500.

...and was degraded to a keyboard/mouse adapter.

[1st1]

This is an Amiga 500.

...and was degraded to a keyboard/mouse adapter.

Same as Falcon +CT60+SuperVidel?

[Cyprian]

This is an Amiga 500.

...and was degraded to a keyboard/mouse adapter.

Same as Falcon +CT60+SuperVidel?

nope,
due to in opposite to any amiga, Falcon with CT60 is still hardware compatible with stock Falcon