Superscalar 68000, have you seen the Apollo core ? What do you think about ?

[andersm]

understood, but how tu run a legacy binary software, e.g. AmigaOS kernel and amiga Applications ?
i think such a macros and fixes are usable if you could rebuild from sources. Am i wrong ?

AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS managed decent binary compatibility for well-behaved software using dynamic recompilation on PPC hardware. I never had an Amiga, but IIRC even back then some applications needed hacks to eg. disable caches when using accelerator cars with '030 and higher CPUs.

[nctnico]

I notice a 68k core (TG68K) is mentioned in this thread. Is it any good?

[legacy]

TG68k scales bad if compared to a real 68SEC000 (which is ASIC core, used in Minimig v1, Amiga 500 fpga emulator)

• 68SEC000 scales 1:10 -> 1 mips per 10MHz, stable up to @ 50Mhz -> max 5 mips
• TG68K v2 goes for 2.75 mips @ 87.5MHz, it scales ~1:30

Apollo/N050 is a new superscalar design (yeah very confusion about this name), but closed sources, claimed to provide 800 mips @ 400 Mhz
Viper/Phenix is an other super-approach, derived from Natami, closed sources, and claims something similar, but no sources no party

[legacy]

personally i would like to see the next minimig made with a real 68040V (instead of the actual 68sec000), this 040 version is 3.3V so pretty compatible with the common fpga I/O without any voltage level shifter: it should be pretty superior in performance, and pretty validated than every softcore

i mean, i do not trust any Natami/Apollo/Viper/Phenix or whatever

[legacy]

this is an AGA Amiga on Fpga

[jaxbird]

this is an AGA Amiga on Fpga

Dude, sorry, distinguished Sir, where can I buy this? the Amiga has always been my favorite 16bit machine and a classic from my youth.

[jaxbird]

Back in the days I got a genuine offer from one of my friends that he would let me sleep with his girlfriend if he could have my amiga 500 in exchange, I declined, while cute I did not believe the offer would be a fair exchange of such magnificent power for a simple sexual transaction. Anyway I managed to attract my own personal female just a few months after this exchange, no question the power of Amiga 500 helped me muster the required confidence for this awkward task.

I mean, cmon, they named it Amiga for a reason.

[legacy]

where can I buy this?

i don't know 
try to contact the guy at www fpgaarcade com
asking for price and availability

[legacy]

btw, the question is: guys, do you believe a superscalar 68k softcore will ever be possible for hobby ?
do you believe it could have features like SMP, bus snooping, and very high performances ?

do you believe that, or do you really think that a 68040V + fpga (with AGA&C inside) is a more practical choice ?

[Alex Eisenhut]

this is an AGA Amiga on Fpga

Dude, sorry, distinguished Sir, where can I buy this? the Amiga has always been my favorite 16bit machine and a classic from my youth.

...16 bit?

[miguelvp]

btw, the question is: guys, do you believe a superscalar 68k softcore will ever be possible for hobby ?
do you believe it could have features like SMP, bus snooping, and very high performances ?

do you believe that, or do you really think that a 68040V + fpga (with AGA&C inside) is a more practical choice ?

The Atmel 68040V is very expensive. Even my Sega Genesis has a 68000 on it.

Maybe the Freescale variants MC683xx variants a better bet, but I'm not sure how compatible they are with the original.

Maybe this might help as a fast core:
https://code.google.com/p/fpgagen/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fsrc

It's a SEGA Megadrive/Genesis console in a FPGA developed for a Terasic/Altera DE1 board with VGA output.

Also let me privy you into the PACE project, but be warned, once you delve into this source code, there is no coming back.

https://svn.pacedev.net/repos/pace/sw/

Their forum is broken, I had to email the developer directly, but no one can post because the forum is still broken after a year or so.
http://pacedev.net/index.php?pageid=home

The developers old main website (hard to find btw)
http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug/

The developer now is working on something else:

http://ngpace.blogspot.com.au/

But I did warn you, there is so much in there that it's easy to get sidetracked at every turn.
The good thing is that he uses VHDL

Edit: And I forgot to point you to the PACE (Programmable Arcade Circuit Emulation) cpus with three 68K variants of cores two at least based or the same as the tg68
https://svn.pacedev.net/repos/pace/sw/src/component/cpu/

[jaxbird]

...16 bit?

Sure the 68000 based Amiga (girlfriend) was a hardcore 16 bit based design with several helper GPU and sound chips making it far superior to the Atari ST.

[legacy]

The Atmel 68040V is very expensive

how much is MC68040V ?

Maybe the Freescale variants MC683xx variants a better bet, but I'm not sure how compatible they are with the original.

some MC683xx microcontrollers use the CPU32 core, others, such as the MC68302 family and the MC68306, use the 68EC000 core
but, there are no advantages using MC683xx, perhaps not about performances

[legacy]

Sure the 68000 based Amiga (girlfriend) was a hardcore 16 bit based design with several helper GPU and sound chips making it far superior to the Atari ST.

it's confusing definition, the 68k is a 32bit cpu machine, the bus of the 68000 is 16bit, cpu registers are 32bit while graphical registers are 16bit, so … it depends on what you are talking about

[miguelvp]

The Atmel 68040V is very expensive

how much is MC68040V ?

Only ones I can find on stock are north of $2K
http://www.findchips.com/search/ts68040

Maybe the Freescale variants MC683xx variants a better bet, but I'm not sure how compatible they are with the original.

some MC683xx microcontrollers use the CPU32 core, others, such as the MC68302 family and the MC68306, use the 68EC000 core
but, there are no advantages using MC683xx, perhaps not about performances

Price, they are available and way cheaper

[jaxbird]

Sure the 68000 based Amiga (girlfriend) was a hardcore 16 bit based design with several helper GPU and sound chips making it far superior to the Atari ST.

it's confusing definition, the 68k is a 32bit cpu machine, the bus of the 68000 is 16bit, cpu registers are 32bit while graphical registers are 16bit, so … it depends on what you are talking about

While the MC68K does have some 32 bit support, it is primarily marketing worthy with the CPU being mostly 16bit. As far as I remember it's got 32bit registers, but most instructions are 16 bit based.

[legacy]

TS68040MF33A

the idea of the MC68040V is that it is 3.3V core and 3.3V I/O (1), it seems to me TS68040MF33A is 5V
fpga needs 3.3V cpus and devices, if you put 5V devices you need voltage level translator (also bidirectional) 3.3V <-> 5V

Price, they are available and way cheaper

yep, but the 68SEC000 is 3.3V, you can buy a new one for less than 10USD, and it goes (stable) up to 50Mhz
the problem is: it scales 1:10, so if you provide 50Mhz of clock, you get 5 * 10^9 instructions executed per seconds
that is not enough for my purposes 


(1) while the MC68060 is 3.3V core, and 5V I/O (i do not know if it can work 3.3V, too)

[legacy]

p.s. 68060 is not exactly 100% compatible with 68040, so .. Amiga needs special patches to be applied, these patches are called:

MC68060 SOFTWARE PACKAGE

The purpose of the M68060 software package (M68060SP) is to supply, for a target operating system, system exception handlers and user library software that provide:

• Software emulation for integer instructions not implemented in MC68060 hardware via the new unimplemented integer instruction exception
• System V ABI-compliant library subroutines to help avoid using unimplemented integer instructions
• IEEE floating-point support for the on-chip floating-point unit (FPU) as well as software emulation of floating-point instructions, data types, and addressing modes not implemented in MC68060 hardware
• System V ABI-compliant library subroutines to help avoid using unimplemented float- ing-point instructions

[Rasz]

True, but when Coldfire was introduced, Motorola had a set of macros that were added to the assembler and it became assembly language compatible !

Much of what was left out were instruction and/or addressing modes that were very seldom used.

understood, but how tu run a legacy binary software, e.g. AmigaOS kernel and amiga Applications ?
i think such a macros and fixes are usable if you could rebuild from sources. Am i wrong ?

They were trapping unhandled exceptions, and resolved problems in the trap

You want hardcore? Here is some dudes Coldfire devboard to working atari port diary:
http://didierm.pagesperso-orange.fr/ct60/ctpci-e.htm

[legacy]

that coldfire hack is very very interesting, thank you 

[legacy]

guys, anybody has seen a 68060 evaluation board around ? looking for something with just the CPU, ram, serial, and the expansion bus
in case, have you seen a full 3.3V system ? (both 68060 Vcore & IO powered at 3.3V)

[legacy]

this is a pretty discussion group about m68k board and CPUs

[legacy]

about 3.3V 68k core i am reading interesting things

• MC68EC000AA10, M680x0 32-Bit, Speed: 10MHz, Voltage: 3.3V, 5V, 64-QFP
• MC68EC000AA12,  M680x0 32-Bit, 12MHz, Voltage: 3.3V, 5V, 64-QFP
• MC68EC000CAA10, M680x0 32-Bit, 10MHz, 3.3V, 5V, 64-QFP
• MC68EC000EI12, M680x0 32-Bit, 12MHz, 3.3V, 5V, 68-LCC (J-Lead)
• MC68HC000CRC10, M680x0 32-Bit, 10MHz, 3.3V, 5V, 68-BCPGA
• MC68HC000CRC12, M680x0 32-Bit, 12MHz, 3.3V, 5V
• MC68SEC000, M680x0 32-Bit, 20Mhz (overclock up to 50Mhz) 3.3V, 5V, 64-pin QFP 64-pin LQFP

it seems there is no 68EC020 at 3.3V, am i right ?

a brief summary list

[theoldwizard1]

Personally, I think "binary compatibility" is a "fool's quest".  Too many limitation to truly maximize performance.

I have been a big fan of Coldfire since the first one hit the market !  There is a very interesting "urban legend" about the Coldfire development.  Some is true because it did get published.

Once the lead designer had completed the 68060 design, he was not re-assigned to any specific project.  While working on the '060 he realized there were some interesting "short cuts" that could be made that would result in a smaller (cheaper) and faster replacement for the '020.  Because he was a "senior" designer, he actually design and built a prototype chip even though it was never targeted for production.

The rumor was HP was about to jump ship on their next generation laser printer because the '020 did not have enough "power" and anything above that was too expensive.  The engineer mentioned above got wind of this and said, "Hey, I got this chip I have been working on ...".  Some assembly language macros were thrown together to handle the the missing instructions and addressing modes and the rest was history.


Clock speed became "king" and for whatever reason Coldfire could not keep up.  At the same time Motorola had "hitched their wagon" to PowerPC (dumping their 88000 product line) so all efforts were placed there.  It loked like a good move until Apple went to Intel (word on the street was Apple got a HUGE discount on Intel chips for a number of years).  Motoorola did design and build a PowerPC chip for embedded (automotive) application, but that seems to have died out also.


ARM is the new "darling" of the CPU world especially the latest 64 bit version.  It is not "screaming fast" like Intel's desktop/server line, but its low cost and low power makes it attractive.  New implementations are only a step or 2 behind Intel on die shrinks.

[legacy]

Personally, I think "binary compatibility" is a "fool's quest".  Too many limitation to truly maximize performance.

Yeah, off course, but the problem about things like minimig is the AmigaOS & binary applications! With AROS&C (kernel and applications) sources you can do whatever you want, patching things, porting to Coldfire, PowerPC, X86, whatever (in the theory).

I think that is the reason why guys have started project like Natami/Apollo/Vampire/Phenix SuperScalar CPU made in fpga

i mean, i think they wanted performances and full 100% compatibility with the real hardware (in case we are speaking about 68000 and 68020, something mounted on Amiga500 and Amiga1200)

Motoorola did design and build a PowerPC chip for embedded (automotive) application, but that seems to have died out also.

my jobs is related to automotive, i am junior profiled but i can say our customers and all my four bosses are addicted for PowerPC quadric core, e.g. the e500 series used in Formula1 and MotoGB 

Also Avionics is using PowerPC, made by IBM or AMCC, i mean PPC440, PPC460, or something like that (it may also be PPC405), they should be made around the PowerPC 603 core