GFA on the FireBee

[lp060]

Some have inquired about it, we will see. At least now it should be usable.

I did not explain why one has to build two versions of their app if they release it. It is because the Firebee has the Line-A functions remapped to different opcodes. The original ST uses $A000-$A00F and the Firebee uses $A920-$A92F. It is this way because on the coldfire CPU, $A000-$A00F have been put to use as actual coldfire instructions so there is a conflict that cannot be resolved by the CFLib.

GFA at the very minimum calls Line-A init, which normally is harmless even if you never call further Line-A functions. But this is not the case anymore and it becomes fatal. The only solution is the user must install the correct binary for their system.

[ManuM]

Thanks for you job LP

[lafleche]

Well done Lonny !
Considering that some famous brands cannot guarantee binary compatibility from a version of their OS to the newest, I think recompiling isn't an big issue if we consider the gap between the 68k line and the coldfire. That's a major achievement for Coldfire users, for sure.

[lp060]

I made a video showing how easy it is to build both versions of an app.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHw7t7UGKmI

[lafleche]

very straightforwar indeed. Did you (or anyone that you know) try to benchmark a GFA program on an actual Firebee to see how it compares to an Hades 060 performance-wise ?

[lp060]

I wrote a benchmark program in GFA that tests the mul, div, mod, sin, cos, and so on. Then activates the 020+ CPU long mul, div, and so on plus the FPU for cos and sin, etc but I didn't save the results and my Hades is dead. I will compile the benchmark soon with the new CF version of the lib and see if we can get some FireBee/Hades owners to send some results.

[lp060]

I rebuilt the benchmark and posted it to the Atari clone mailing-list. Hopefully some clone users will post some results. If and when they do, I'll report results here.

Note: Small values are better.

Code: Tout sélectionner

FireBee (under FireTOS+FreeMiNT):

Function        CPU 000         CPU 020         Factor
LMUL%           9               8               1.125
LDIV%           92              14              6.571428571429
LMOD%           26              12              2.166666666667
ITOF            513             284             1.806338028169

Function        Software        FPU             Factor
SIN             2712            2718            0.9977924944812
COS             2780            2781            0.9996404171161
TAN             5810            5804            1.001033769814
ASIN            57              58              0.9827586206897
ACOS            63              61              1.032786885246
ATAN            54              56              0.9642857142857
SQR             1144            1143            1.000874890639
EXP             462             474             0.9746835443038
LOG             2585            2599            0.9946133128126
LOG10           2638            2648            0.9962235649547
DIV#            760             772             0.9844559585492
MOD#            1650            1660            0.9939759036145

Thanks to Jo Even Skarstein for the results.


Its as if there is no FPU. I asked about the '_FPU' cookie and got this reply:
There is no emulated FPU on the Firebee. The _FPU cookie is present but the value is zero.