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[nikodr]

Reading the thread 3 worst idea in amiga developemt it came the idea of how some chips like the akiko were used.

I dont know of any (except one game that was wing commander ?) that used it.
If someone made a doom port for cd32 (like the many doom or quake ports that are out there),how fast could the akiko do the chunky to planar?

Can someone write a benchmark program with a custom c2p routine and test akiko on a cd32?
How much bandwidth does it use?How much data can it really handle?Is it faster with or without fast memory?

I always had this question....

[alexh]

5V * 0.8A = 4 Watts.

Oh not that power... you mean processing power?

The Akiko is ****e. Should never have been made. A CD32 with fast memory can do C2P much faster using the CPU (in addition to all other tasks) than using the Akiko

Doom written to use the Akiko would be slower than an A1200 with fast memory and much much slower than an 030. Quake would be impossible. Not enough RAM, not enough CPU power.

[nikodr]

Originally Posted by alexh

Doom written to use the Akiko would be slower than an A1200 with fast memory and much much slower than an 030. Quake would be impossible. Not enough RAM, not enough CPU power.

Back in the early 90ies would it be any good if we had the akiko?
Would it help a stock 1200 have 256 color games ported from pc with no slowdowns?

[Matt_H]

Ah, but the CD32 didn't have fast RAM out-of-the-box. Given that the Akiko's never really been used, I think some empirical testing is in order:

1. Akiko vs. no Akiko
2. Akiko + fast RAM vs. no Akiko + fast RAM
3. Akiko vs. no Akiko + fast RAM

[Karlos]

The figures I remember being quoted suggested that the akiko could do c2p at "copy speed". In other words, it could perform the c2p operation in the same amount of time that it would take to just copy the data to chip ram without any operations being performed on it. Once you hit that limit, no amount of "doing it faster" on the CPU is going to help, it'll just end up waiting to write the transformed data.

[nikodr]

Originally Posted by Matt_H

Ah, but the CD32 didn't have fast RAM out-of-the-box. Given that the Akiko's never really been used, I think some empirical testing is in order:

1. Akiko vs. no Akiko
2. Akiko + fast RAM vs. no Akiko + fast RAM
3. Akiko vs. no Akiko + fast RAM

I think that would be an excellent test.We have to remember that back in that area the game production was moving toward chunky style with 256 colors.
I can't understand some of Commodore's desicion's.Use a chunky to planar convertor while not giving any fast ram at all.
I think there is wing commander cd32 that uses akiko.What is the speed of it?
I know there is a special patch for accelerated amigas with fast ram for that game.
But back in the cd32 area with only 2mbytes did wing commander cd32 play the same speed as a fast equiped pc?

[Piru]

Originally Posted by nikodr

Would it help a stock 1200 have 256 color games ported from pc with no slowdowns?

Unlikely, even doom required too much ram.

Not to mention the 020 starving due to no fastmem. Stock A1200 crawls, no akiko can change that.

[Cammy]

Has anyone ever tried running benchmark tests to compare the performance? I HAVE!

I have here an A1200 with an 8MB/FPU card, an A1200 with 32MB/030/FPU, and a CD32 with SX32 and 8MB/FPU. I ran the Doom benchmark test using DoomAttack, which seems to be the best DOOM port for lower-end machines. It needs more than 2MB RAM so I can't test it on an unexpanded CD32.

To run the test yourself, use this command line: DoomAttack -forcedemo -timedemo demo3

Here are the results I got:

A1200 030/50Mhz 32Mb (Optimised 020 C2P) - 8481 realtics (8.8 fps)
Amiga CD32 68020/14Mhz 8Mb (Optimised 020 C2P) - 18971 realtics (3.9 fps)
Amiga CD32 68020/14Mhz 8Mb (Optimised Akiko C2P) - 12872 realtics (5.8 fps)

So there you go, Akiko DOES work.

[Cammy]

Here's more information about the Doom benchmark if anyone wants to give it a go: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/misc/doombench.html

[nikodr]

Cammy this is very interesting.I am going to the link you posted and read it.So it seems akiko can do something after all.!

[ChaosLord]

Originally Posted by Cammy

So there you go, Akiko DOES work.

Girl Power!

[AmigaNG]

Did'nt microcosm and gloom deluxe make use of it as well?

Full Hardware details of Akiko are here
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showha...gi?HARDID=1449

and so technically you could say, every game made on the CD32 use it.

[Piru]

Originally Posted by Cammy

Here are the results I got:

A1200 030/50Mhz 32Mb (Optimised 020 C2P) - 8481 realtics (8.8 fps)
Amiga CD32 68020/14Mhz 8Mb (Optimised 020 C2P) - 18971 realtics (3.9 fps)
Amiga CD32 68020/14Mhz 8Mb (Optimised Akiko C2P) - 12872 realtics (5.8 fps)

So there you go, Akiko DOES work.

It makes a small difference, but nothing spectacular.

Also, when the actual game gets more complicated the amount of time spent on c2p conversion lets smaller and smaller, and so does the performance boost given by Akiko.

In short: Having akiko on existing A1200 systems would give no benefit whatsoever, except maybe in case of an 030 accelerator. If your system doesn't have an accelerator it is really too slow to run the game anyway. If your system does have an 040/060 accelerator it's as fast to use optimized c2p (they reach copyspeed) anyway.

[Zac67]

Given the very simple way Akiko works (write chunky words to its registers and then read back/copy the planar converted data) it's no surprise the speed up is rather moderate. AFAIR there was some space left on the gate array that was to become Akiko and the developers tried to think up something useful. Well, they did, given the budget.

Something that would really have made a change:
- adding a c2p converter in front of Lisa's bus interface with on-the-fly conversion - no waste of bandwidth here
or better:
- adding a chunky mode to Lisa - was missing from AGA from the start

[LoadWB]

Originally Posted by Zac67

Given the very simple way Akiko works (write chunky words to its registers and then read back/copy the planar converted data) it's no surprise the speed up is rather moderate. AFAIR there was some space left on the gate array that was to become Akiko and the developers tried to think up something useful. Well, they did, given the budget.

Something that would really have made a change:
- adding a c2p converter in front of Lisa's bus interface with on-the-fly conversion - no waste of bandwidth here
or better:
- adding a chunky mode to Lisa - was missing from AGA from the start

If I understand this correctly, Akiko was the C2P equivalent of the FPU? Given that, I have a bitter taste over the Akiko. I would have thought you could have it actually operate on a segment of memory if it was going to be a grafted-on component. My thought was double- or triple-buffer (if the 2MB memory permitted), sick Akiko on the off-screen buffer, then switch.

Better to be integrated, as you say, in the existing custom chipset. Very sad, indeed.