A followup to a previous discussion about Amigas, Palm Pilots, instruction
sets, etc.
--- Gareth Knight <gaz_k_at_onlyamiga.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> From: "Gareth Knight" <gaz_k_at_onlyamiga.freeserve.co.uk>
> To: <ethan_dicks_at_yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Motorola 68k family ( was Re: Comparison of system specs. )
> Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 23:24:37 -0000
>
> Ethan Dicks
> > I did see Dave Haynie mention that there were some fundamental differences
> > in the Dragonball that caused binary-level compatibility problems, but I
> > don't recall the specifics, either.
>
> I had a look through the Team Amiga archives and found this. I would
> appreciate it if you could forward it onto the list.
>
> From: Dave Haynie <dhaynie_at_jersey.net>
> To: <teamamiga_at_thule.no>
> Sent: Friday, December 03, 1999 6:59 PM
> Subject: Re: Fw: Re: [TA] Re: Look what those wily Atarians are up to!!!!
>
>
> >
> > On Fri, 03 Dec 1999 15:33:49 +0100, "g'o'tz ohnesorge"
> <gohnesorge_at_lh-compute
> > rtechnik.de> jammed all night, and by sunrise was overheard remarking:
> >
> > > Jim Mackoy schrieb:
> >
> > > > Unfortunately, I am not sure the 68040 or 68060 was ever
> > > > reduced to VHDL file. The Coldfire was, and Dragonball,
> > > > but these are pretty low performance compared to the the
> > > > synthesizeable versions of Mips, x86, Sparc and PPC
> > > > Sad, because in many way ways the 68K was the most complete
> > > > and elegant microprocessor of the lot.
> >
> > I don't think DragonBall or any other Motorola 68K variation is fully
> > synthesized -- Motorola made a fairly big to-do about the fact that
> > ColdFire is, whole chip. MIPS has a killer (for embedded stuff)
> > synthesizable core you can licence. I don't know of any decent x86 core
> > (there are probably low-end things, and you can find an 8052 core in the
> > public domain I think). I don't know any PPC offering, either internally
> > or as a licensable core. There are tons of ARM cores; like MIPS, it's
> > been simple enough to offer since back when these things had to be pretty
> > simple (due to weak VHDL compilers). Ed Hepler's company offers a whole
> > 40MHz 68K compatible in VHDL.
> >
> > > Sure. But something like ColdFire in VHDL is a start at least; the
> missing
> > > commands could be added, and while they might be slower this way than a
> > > "perfect" solution, they'd still be faster as a whole than any Amiga now
> > > ..
> >
> > So far, Motorola's not actively licensing the core (don't know if that's
> > a "won't" or a "would, but not what we like to sell" thing), but of
> > course the could if necessary for competition. Primarily, it's a way for
> > them to release new version with different features faster than in the
> > past. The did this without synthesis throughout the MC683xx line, using
> > standardized component modules (design and layout largely prefabbed, more
> > or less like standard cell), but it's much more efficient with VHDL. And
> > of course, this way, any I/O block you design for ColdFire could be
> > reused for PowerPC or any other design that comes along.
> >
> > > and cheap like a Nintendo GameBoy along the way.
> >
> > That's a 6502-like thing.
> --
> Gareth Knight
> Amiga Interactive Guide http://aig.amiga.tm
> Mystery of Life? I found it on Aminet!
>
>
=====
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Received on Wed Dec 22 1999 - 14:46:49 GMT