Apollo 68080: high performance 68k processor on FPGA | Hacker News Reader

Apollo 68080: high performance 68k processor on FPGA

apollo-core.com

24 pointsfanf210 comments

Am I lost or are the cores not open source? I cannot find any Verilog, VHDL, or bundled IP blocks to downloaded. Very strange for what on the surface appears to be a hobby FPGA project.

Thats Amiga scene baby, open source was always the exception.

Is this truly a 64 bit processor?

No, it isn't 64 bit at all. It claims to have 64 bit vector extensions, but that's worlds different from being a 64 bit processor.

It's mostly marketing fluff. The people who made Apollo claimed for ages that FPUs necessary, then finally provided an FPU. They want people to target their proprietary extensions, but they don't even offer an MMU and emphatically claim, just like with the FPU, that it's not necessary. They spin way too much.

I can't take them seriously. There are plenty of other projects that are much more interesting, like:

https://www.buffee.ca/back-to-fulltime/

https://github.com/captain-amygdala/pistorm

They allow for much more flexibility, the option to run on actual m68k motherboards and compatible extensions, such as an '060 emulation that includes support for instructions the '060 would otherwise need to emulate.

It would be an interesting exercise to design a 64 bit processor that extends the 680x0 ISA and compare it against today's offerings in a similar node.

I see - it already can reply with a 404!

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=features

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=performance seems more interesting.

Even more interesting would be the comparison with that vs. most modern version of UAE running on some contemporary ARM, 'crappy' Intel N100, or Apple Mx-whatever.

Ansonsten gilt: "Das Balkenspiel ist schlechter Stil!" Kapiert?

rpi is >10x faster

FPGAs are massive meshes of 4-bit SRAMs mostly mimicking aluminium traces, they are minimum 4x or so worse than real chips made in the same process.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com