« Is the Natami team still evaluating the ColdFire CPU or don’t you expect any performance gains by using a V5-core?
The 400 MHz ColdFire V5 is certainly a very powerful CPU.
To be able to get the ColdFire we would need to « bake » chips.
Baking chips is not a target that we can reach without help as require a major investment.
If we « bake » our own chip we would of course have to option to bake our own 68K_CPU design.
If we bake our own « softcore » into a chip then we could as reach very high clockrates. Our softcore would then provide better compatibility than the ColdFire.
The ColdFire is 68k compatible, but to get maximum performance out of the ColdFire for AmigaOS, some patching of Kickstart and Workbench will be mandatory.
By going for our own N68070 design we will save any patching and time.
Don’t you need to create a new architecture for ColdFire or is it the same because the ColdFire is compatible to the 68060?
We did some research in this area, and we came to the conclusion that it’s possible to build our own 68k CPU that we could include in our FPGA. We found out that we could build a new 68k CPU that is even more compatible to older 68000 Software than the 68040 and 68060 CPU. This new 68k CPU is more powerful than the 68040 and 68060. The combination of these advantages makes the Self-Made 68k CPU (N68050/070) very attractive for us. I believe that our design will be ideal for the next Natami design. We will ship the Natami60 board with a 68060 CPU. Later when our 68k FPGA CPU is finished the Natami60 board could install it into their FPGA with a simple firmware upgrade. »
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