Linux/m68k on the Apollo FPGA softcore?

Linux/m68k on the Apollo FPGA softcore?

[Kolbjørn Barmen]

Hello,

I have been in lurk mode on Linux/m68k the last few years, but still
remain quite active in the "Amiga community". The last year or so, a new
m68k CPU has emerged, the Apollo core, a softcore for FPGAs from developer
Gunnar von Boehn, and the Apollo Team. From what I understand, the core
implements a new FPU, not compatible with existing FPUs, and there has
been talks about a new MMU implementation too. 

I am wondering if any Linux/m68k developers have been in contact with the
Apollo Team? Some sort of communication would be nice, a chance to make
sure the softcore also works, and works well, for Linux (and *BSD) :)

Information can be found here - http://apollo-core.com

-- kolla

Re: Linux/m68k on the Apollo FPGA softcore?

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 02/02/2016 06:16 PM, Kolbjørn Barmen wrote:
> From what I understand, the core implements a new FPU, not
> compatible with existing FPUs, and there has
> been talks about a new MMU implementation too. 

Well, that would be too bad given the fact that there is already a huge
number of applications and kernels which work with the old FPU/MMU
combination.

I'd buy such an accelerator in a heartbeat, but it should be binary
compatible with existing 68020+ code.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Linux/m68k on the Apollo FPGA softcore?

[Kolbjørn Barmen]

On Thu, 4 Feb 2016, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

> On 02/02/2016 06:16 PM, Kolbjørn Barmen wrote:
> > From what I understand, the core implements a new FPU, not
> > compatible with existing FPUs, and there has
> > been talks about a new MMU implementation too. 
> 
> Well, that would be too bad given the fact that there is already a huge
> number of applications and kernels which work with the old FPU/MMU
> combination.

Sure, but the idea is to move forward from what I understand.

> I'd buy such an accelerator in a heartbeat, but it should be binary
> compatible with existing 68020+ code.

Apparently it will be usermode compatible with all existing 68k, but not
supervisor mode compatible, not MMU compatibale, not FPU compatible. And
it is already blazingly fast compared to most 68060 systems, without any
optimization done.

I guess it will be an AmigaOS only CPU core :)

-- kolla

Re: Linux/m68k on the Apollo FPGA softcore?

[Christian T. Steigies]

On Fri, Feb 05, 2016 at 03:49:53PM +0100, Kolbj?rn Barmen wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Feb 2016, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> 
> > On 02/02/2016 06:16 PM, Kolbjørn Barmen wrote:
> > > From what I understand, the core implements a new FPU, not
> > > compatible with existing FPUs, and there has
> > > been talks about a new MMU implementation too. 
> > 
> > Well, that would be too bad given the fact that there is already a huge
> > number of applications and kernels which work with the old FPU/MMU
> > combination.
> 
> Sure, but the idea is to move forward from what I understand.
> 
> > I'd buy such an accelerator in a heartbeat, but it should be binary
> > compatible with existing 68020+ code.
> 
> Apparently it will be usermode compatible with all existing 68k, but not
> supervisor mode compatible, not MMU compatibale, not FPU compatible. And
> it is already blazingly fast compared to most 68060 systems, without any
> optimization done.
> 
> I guess it will be an AmigaOS only CPU core :)

From what I read it will replace only the CPU, so you still need the old,
fragile Amiga/Atari/Mac hardware around it? It would be great, if this could
be included into a minimig or MiST to replace all of the old hardware and
allows you to use a readily available USB mouse and keyboard.
Then it would be a new system m68k and "somebody" could write a new kernel
for this, with drivers for the FPU/MMU, instead of splitting the amiga
architecture into two incompatible ones. MiST is working great with AOS,
TOS, and I would love to have an m68k machine that can boot off an SD card
instead of a floppy disk (until you install some drivers on a IDE or SCSI
harddisk since nothing newer is directly supported).

But the nice thing about the FPGA computers is, everybody can write his own
core, so we only need to implement the original MMU/FPU in an FPGA ;-)

Christian