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Information about the Apollo CPU and FPU.

Wazp3d for 080 AMMXpage  1 2 

A1200 Coder

Posts 74
21 Jun 2018 06:43


Mallagan Bellator wrote:

  MFLOPS and MIPS are quite misleading. Your name suggests that you’re actually a coder, sorry if I’m unfamiliar with what you’ve made, if anything? Or are you new to coding?
  I know this much, operations and instructions in both INT and PF ”types” are different from each other. One FP instruction can take more time to execute than another FP instruction. The same holds truth betweet INT instructions, they are different ”lengths” if you will.
  Therefore, using specific FP or INT instructions may result in a different MFLOPS value that if you would use other specific instructions. They are not necessarily the same
 
  I wouldn’t stare myself blind on MIPS and FLOPS values, but you could use them for an estimate, only keep this in mind
 
  If you wanna know what something can really do, look at how well a certain HW performs on various software, games etc

I'm familiar with the Amiga HW, coded a lot of stuff back in the 90's for A500 and later for A1200 in asm, didn't release anything though, but have the sources left. One project that I spent most time on was a civilization-style game for A500.

And I know what MFLOPS and MIPS means, and their limitations. What I'm interested in is average performance with MIPS and MFLOPS of 68080 compared to other m68k CPUs with typical workloads.



Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
21 Jun 2018 07:22


Mallagan Bellator wrote:

So my question is this.
Is the FPU of 080 in structure parallell to the CPU, or are all the FP instructions added to the 080 CPU core?

The FPU of APOLLO 68080 works like the FPU of any modern CPU, e.g IBM POWER9 or INTEL CORE CPU.

The CPU instruction decoder knows all FPU instruction and decodes all.
The FPU is part of the main CPU core - but as separate unit.
Very similar to how the SIMD/AMMX-Unit works.




Mallagan Bellator

Posts 393
21 Jun 2018 21:33


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

 
  The FPU of APOLLO 68080 works like the FPU of any modern CPU, e.g IBM POWER9 or INTEL CORE CPU.
 
  The CPU instruction decoder knows all FPU instruction and decodes all.
  The FPU is part of the main CPU core - but as separate unit.
  Very similar to how the SIMD/AMMX-Unit works.
   

I suspected that it was like that.
it actually made me think about the 040 (not EC) and the 060, if they are like that too, only older architecture


Mallagan Bellator

Posts 393
21 Jun 2018 21:44


A1200 coder wrote:

Mallagan Bellator wrote:

 
  MFLOPS and MIPS are quite misleading. Your name suggests that you’re actually a coder, sorry if I’m unfamiliar with what you’ve made, if anything? Or are you new to coding?
  I know this much, operations and instructions in both INT and PF ”types” are different from each other. One FP instruction can take more time to execute than another FP instruction. The same holds truth betweet INT instructions, they are different ”lengths” if you will.
  Therefore, using specific FP or INT instructions may result in a different MFLOPS value that if you would use other specific instructions. They are not necessarily the same
 
  I wouldn’t stare myself blind on MIPS and FLOPS values, but you could use them for an estimate, only keep this in mind
 
  If you wanna know what something can really do, look at how well a certain HW performs on various software, games etc
 

 
  I'm familiar with the Amiga HW, coded a lot of stuff back in the 90's for A500 and later for A1200 in asm, didn't release anything though, but have the sources left. One project that I spent most time on was a civilization-style game for A500.
 
  And I know what MFLOPS and MIPS means, and their limitations. What I'm interested in is average performance with MIPS and MFLOPS of 68080 compared to other m68k CPUs with typical workloads.
 

Awesome! I love Civ, been playing the MS dos version on my PC for a while.

ok so you'll probably be OK with the reports on sysinfo that Gunnar posts from time to time


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
22 Jun 2018 00:58


Louis Dias wrote:

    Amiga 3D games making used 3D video cards and openGL (StormMESA) have been released in the 90's as well.
    EXTERNAL LINK   

 
  I am not aware of any game/bigger app using StormMESA, even it is more of OpenGL then miniGL/Warp3D.
 
  There were w3d games, but most of them were PPC, not 68k. Also I dont know larger 68k app using w3d beside Tornado 3d.

Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

Vojin Vidanovic wrote:

  Has the performance improved with 2.9?
 

 
  Yes the performance improved a bit.

I ment in Wazp3D


Mallagan Bellator

Posts 393
22 Jun 2018 02:45


Does anyone have Tornado 3D? I can’t find it, always wanted it


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
22 Jun 2018 06:08


Mallagan Bellator wrote:

I suspected that it was like that.
it actually made me think about the 040 (not EC) and the 060, if they are like that too, only older architecture

   

The FPU architecture of the 68040 and 68060 is much faster than the 68030 with 68881/68882.
Roughly x 10 speedup
   
And again the FPU architecture of the Apollo 68080 is much more advanced over the 68040 and 68060. With code utilizing this potential then the Vamp can provide FPU performance equal to an 68060 @ 500 Mhz
 
This means roughly 5000 MHz 68030+68882 Speed.
This performance potential is mostly unused at the moment.
Old Amiga software does not expect this potential and will mostly not use it.

For AMIGA terms we have a huge unused potential.
The most sensible would be to develop new software now, to use this power.


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
22 Jun 2018 06:39


Mallagan Bellator wrote:

  Does anyone have Tornado 3D? I can’t find it, always wanted it
 

 
  It exists at EAB

EXTERNAL LINK 
http://grandis.nu:81/eabsearch/search.php?_search_=1&search=tornado++lzx&category_id=&exclude=&limit=


A1200 Coder

Posts 74
22 Jun 2018 11:24


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

The FPU architecture of the 68040 and 68060 is much faster than the 68030 with 68881/68882.
  Roughly x 10 speedup
   
  And again the FPU architecture of the Apollo 68080 is much more advanced over the 68040 and 68060. With code utilizing this potential then the Vamp can provide FPU performance equal to an 68060 @ 500 Mhz
   
  This means roughly 5000 MHz 68030+68882 Speed.
  This performance potential is mostly unused at the moment.
  Old Amiga software does not expect this potential and will mostly not use it.
 
  For AMIGA terms we have a huge unused potential.
  The most sensible would be to develop new software now, to use this power.

I think that V4 Vampire offers even more performance in terms of MIPS and MFLOPS than most of us had hoped for. Sure, if you make software in the modern way, nothing is enough, but doing it the old way, this system is certainly enough.

I also think that the potential of AGA+accelerator boards (68030-68060) were never fully used, but unfortunately, today people seems to focus rather on making A500 games. Probably tells something about that the resources available for making amiga games is very limited. But this may change in the future of course. But you really need a larger team to make a good game for Vampire, the usual 1-3 men teams as seen with A500 games are not enough.

Even if people dont learn how to fully exploit the 68080 and SAGA, its still needed as a replacement for aging hardware, as nobody manufactures new amiga custom chips, and not many new m68k CPUs are made anymore.



Louis Dias
(Needs Verification)
Posts 55/ 1
22 Jun 2018 14:21


Re: Tornado 3D
This is an old link but is the 2.0 version:
  EXTERNAL LINK


Mallagan Bellator

Posts 393
22 Jun 2018 23:12


Vojin Vidanovic wrote:

Mallagan Bellator wrote:

  Does anyone have Tornado 3D? I can’t find it, always wanted it
 

 
  It exists at EAB
 
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  http://grandis.nu:81/eabsearch/search.php?_search_=1&search=tornado++lzx&category_id=&exclude=&limit=

Thanks a bunch!! I’ll try to get it from there!!


Mallagan Bellator

Posts 393
22 Jun 2018 23:28


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

Mallagan Bellator wrote:

  I suspected that it was like that.
  it actually made me think about the 040 (not EC) and the 060, if they are like that too, only older architecture
 

   
 
  The FPU architecture of the 68040 and 68060 is much faster than the 68030 with 68881/68882.
  Roughly x 10 speedup
   
  And again the FPU architecture of the Apollo 68080 is much more advanced over the 68040 and 68060. With code utilizing this potential then the Vamp can provide FPU performance equal to an 68060 @ 500 Mhz
   
  This means roughly 5000 MHz 68030+68882 Speed.
  This performance potential is mostly unused at the moment.

Having this said, I keep thinking back to Quake.
I’m sure someone could make Quake, both 1, 2 and 3 run pretty good on the Vampire, even in the high resolutions, if this someone really went over the code very thoroughly and optimized it specifically for 080, AMMX, SAGA etc


Matthew Burroughs

Posts 59
23 Jun 2018 13:24


Never played either Magic Carpet or Dungeon Keeper, these 2 would be ripe for an Amiga conversion - licensing issues prevailing.


Andy Hearn

Posts 374
25 Jun 2018 09:02


Well given that we can “run” tomb raider in software on x86 emulation! I dream that ps1 level games should be within reach. Code availability and license permitting (so never then) XD
If we want to see anything like that then I guess we’re gonna have to roll our own from scratch. Given the need for resources would banging the hardware directly be and advantage rather than running through one or two layers of APIs?


Thellier Alain

Posts 141
25 Jun 2018 10:16


Tomb Raider III runs on the playstation emulator FPSE with Warp3D on Amigas (NG & Classic)
  This emulator was not so famous because 68k machines able to make it works were rare but it allow to runs loots of  2D & 3D games
  EXTERNAL LINK 
 


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
25 Jun 2018 12:25


thellier alain wrote:

Tomb Raider III runs on the playstation emulator FPSE with Warp3D on Amigas (NG & Classic)

I have seen FPSE on AmigaNG systems but was never aware there was a 68k version en par with it.

Great challenge for Vampire and its wazp3d implementation :)

Which PS1 games we will play and have in some future Coffin maybe?


Manuel Jesus

Posts 155
26 Jun 2018 14:58


I will check this out next week at some point



Markus B

Posts 209
26 Jun 2018 16:13


Hmm, taking a look at EXTERNAL LINK let's me suspect that a lot of optimzation is needed to make it somehow acceptable in speed.

What I can't see is that Warp3D is used at all. Or did I miss the information somewhere?


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
26 Jun 2018 18:25


Markus B wrote:
  What I can't see is that Warp3D is used at all. Or did I miss the information somewhere?

This seems to be 060 75Mhz at best, likely 60Mhz
It does use BVision with Parmedia 2, which is not a 3D champ.

We will see how much a v4 Vamp with 080 ~100Mhz and with some AMMX optimized wazp3d can do.

Under PC Task we used to have 8FPS on SILVER core 6 V2 Vamps.

Best would be OpenTomb convetsion
EXTERNAL LINK


Thellier Alain

Posts 141
26 Jun 2018 22:28


FPSE use a warp3d plugin. You need to configure FPSE to use this 3d plugin else it use slow soft rendering.
EXTERNAL LINK 
Once configured starting a game with fpse is only clicking a CD image found on the web...

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