A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

The Natami team has managed to make a Motorola compatible(Mc680x0) cpu on an fpga. Now they need help testing it....

In the new CPU adress registers can be used as dataregisters, Pc relative adressing can be used to write to memory, muls.w is 1 cycle. etc..


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http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=1&note=5146

Gunnar von Boehn
Germany
(Natami Team Member)
Posts 757
27 Feb 2009 12:58

Fellow 68K Assembly Developer,

become a member of the Natami team today.

To speed up the unit testing our new 68070 CPU we need some help. We need 1-2 people helping to write testcases in 68K-ASM and that check the results.

Your skills:
You should have a good understanding of 68K ASM.
You should own Windows PC to be able to run ModelSim, a Chip Simulation/Verification Software (The free version of it).


We would need your help beginning end of next week (in 8 days).

If you like the idea o be part of the team recreating a new 68K CPU then please email us.

Cheers

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The NatAmi Project

This hardware project is dedicated to the still innovative system architecture of the Commodore AMIGA computer.

The basic concept is straight: Get the original Amiga design up-to-date.

The concept is to achieve this by hardware only means,
No software emulation of the hardware parts.
The concept is the project name: Native Amiga
...

I often wonder what the motivations are for projects like this. "Get the original Amiga design up-to-date." - why? What's so magical about the original Amiga design (the hardware, that is) that we want that, rather than something more modern?

I can see great value in projects like Amiga-on-a-chip, which is able to run old software flawlessly. But that does not seem to be the intention here.

I just curios about this phrase: "In the new CPU adress registers can be used as dataregisters, Pc relative adressing can be used to write to memory, muls.w is 1 cycle. etc.. "

If i understand it right, one more cpu differences ? It's not enought still ? For sure, 060 working on 300 or 500 mhz will be good for some one (which you can for example soldered to clasic blizzard board (just an example) ). But looks like it's not this case.

The natami is a 100% compatible Amiga-on-a-chip with a new superaga chipset and 3d hardware.8ns S-RAM 16bit sound etc etc..

The new CPU is 100% compatible with old Mc680x0 cpu's, but some of the instructions will be removed and emulated in software. Some new features are added(bigger caches, extended instructionset,more pipelines?).. New versions of the cpu/chipset can be upgraded in software (FPGA)

These guys are building a new computer from scratch, and a prototype is already finished.

It took very long but here is it:

http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=1¬e=11215&x= 0&z=sUxuGq

Here is what?

from my point of view, backwards compatibility is the only thing that's really interesting with such a project. It's getting hard to find the amiga hardware I like to use (for instance my blizzard 1260 card broke and since then I've not been able to do any coding).

I think you should focus on getting 060 timing, pipeline and cache behaviour correct, or maybe even the possibility to reconfigure it to match other versions of the 68k. That will make the system interesting to demo-coders. I don't think anyone will ever code an amiga-demo that relies on specific instructions available only on the natami.

anything Amiga related is interesting. but i'm not sure of the benefits of this hardware over simply using software emulation in WinUAE - particularly since with each upgrade of my PC WinUAE becomes more usable at 060+ speeds. but, well, it's still an interesting project and a nice achievement. congrats to those involved.

totally agree with dalton, i would really like to see something like a proper 060 accelerator with on-board gfx-card for my 1200 to speed up my workbench a bit.. the natami specific stuff is as interesting as OS4 or any other random technology with a boing-ball painted on it ;)

A new computer 100% compatible with the old amigas.

AGA chipmem speed: 5mb/s
NATAMI chipmem speed. 150mb/s

Onboard 3d chip (Playstation 2++)

New Mc680x0 compatible CPU (designed by cpu designers who work for IBM)

Equipped with network card/usb slots/workbench etc..

I want one!

but it's the original hardware restrictions, inherent of the time (1990s) it was manufactured, that makes classic Amiga coding so special? With "all that power" offered by the Natami, wouldn't it be more sensible to just code on a generic IBM platform...

hmm, I like the old design to stay old. :)

The Natami is a fixed hardware with possibility to upgrade the hardware. (FPGA flashram).
Algorithms implemented in hardware will outperform todays ghz pc's. The low voltage Natami is competive to modern supercomputers if connected in a GRID.

Workbench with a up to date www browser,torrent client, divx player will be enough for my daily use.

A new scene is under development. The FPGA underground...

The game consoles are making the world more stupid. The youth are wasting their time playing games instead of cracking them.
I believe there still is a market for a lowcost game-console with open hardware and operating system.
The C64/AMIGA/ATARI was the last computer with spirit.

You forgot the Spectrum ;)

I hope the chipmem bandwidth is at least 300MiBps, 100MHz DDR SDRAM with a 16bit bus have a theoretical peak of 100Mtps*2(DDR)*2(bytes)=400MiBps.
I doubt they will succeed in getting PSX2 graphics performance, enhanced PSX perhaps. I don't think that feature is worth much as there are very few coders that want to take advantage of it, I'd think some extra CPU instructions for accelerated texturemapping would be more realistic - selecting a optimized routine if running on a Natami is easy, having two separate "engines" for 68k60 and Natami is not.

I'd rather have a good A1200 accelerator as the existing ones are hard to find and very expensive.

This project was interesting once a long while back now its just silly, why o why do they need to "expand" the Amiga, what we need is a clone of a AGA/060 machine, nothing more nothing less. If its compatible enough it still might be better to use this thing compared to an emulator but still.

Anyone have any recent news on the Clone-A project, I heard that Jens was at Amiwest but I haven't been able to read any reports yet.

I think the idea is to make it both compatible and expanded in the same way the AGA machines are to the OCS/ECS machines, which should make the Natami part an AGA 68060 clone. With good programming practice your 68000 OCS demos run like they should on all Amigas whether they have AGA and 68060 or not, and you should be able to write your AGA 68060 demos to run fine on the Natami as well. You only have to detect and utilize specific features should you want to.

There seems to be some dissension amongst the ranks at the Natami forum so to speak, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some restructuring in the team leading to more and longer delays, or even the binning of the whole project. My hopes are that they finish the computer of course.

this is a bit off topic but..

bonkers: from what I could find out, the only news from Jens at amiwest is an ECS version of indivision. Perhaps a spin-off from the clone-A project?

Cheers Dalton, that is what I have managed to figure out as well. Sadly got down with flu so couldn't make it to the actual event myself. Some rumours about the Clone-A was that it was more or less finished but they didn't see an appropriate market for it at the moment. Sadly I would guess that there is more space for a OCS in a joystick thing rather than a 1200/060 machine.

ZEROblue, so they might be scrapping the whole thing you say? From what I heard the project was in its final stages.

Bonkers,

There's nothing indicating it will be scrapped. I'm just saying I get the impression the development team have different views on what the Natami ultimately should become, and it wouldn't be the first project to be cancelled due to indifferences.

Yes that is correct, IndivsionECS is a part of CloneA. I suspect that Jens has 'finished' CloneA, he just doesn't know (or lacks the funding) to make any money out of it as a complete system :(

Natami while very interesting is also going to struggle to get anything into production. I personally would be more interested in either drop-in replacement FPGA based classic motherboards or a new 100mhz 060 card with modern RAM support.

Some of you may be interested to read up on this ;)

NovaCoder: damn that was one long thread, would you mind telling us what its all about?

Oh nothing much, just a new FPGA based AGA board.....