Fancy a 1GHz Amiga?

[Harrison]

Then say hello to the UltimatePPC!

A new CPU board for the A3000 and A4000 currently in development that will contain a 33MHz 040 and a 1GHz PPC CPU.

The homepage of the developers is found at http://ultimateppc.nl/

The press release reads:

Gideon Zweijtzer (of 1541-Ultimate fame) and Rutger Bevaart have teamed up to bring renewed innovation to the Classical Amiga by announcing the UltimatePPC today, the ultimate CPU expansion card for the Amiga 3000 & 4000. This new card will bring unparalleled performance and many great new features to the Amiga series of computers that were not available previously and give current users a viable upgrade path for aging components. It also opens new possibilities for newer versions of the Amiga Operating System or alternatives to run on your classic hardware with great performance. The UltimatePPC puts your Amiga right back on your desk as the most versatile and fun computer that has ever existed!


Right now the UltimatePPC is in active development, we expect to be able to take pre-orders at the end of 2012. Please visit our project website at http://ultimateppc.nl for availability information, specifications and detailed status reports.


Gideon & Rutger

An update on the progress of the project is due any day.

And current specs are as follows:

The UltimatePPC provides many new features. The current shortlist of features for "Revision A" is,

• 33MHz 68040 CPU
• 1.0GHz Freescale PowerPC CPU
• 128MB of DDR3 memory for the 68040
• An additional 2GB of DDR3 memory on an SO-DIMM
• USB2 host controller with integrated 4 port hub
• SATA2 controller with two SATA ports
• 10/100/1000 Ethernet controller
• Embedded 2D video with DVI connector

And here is a taster photograph of the first (unfinished) prototype board:

uppc_reva_devboard_g2_20120507_small.jpg

[Tiago]

I saw it on G+
Here we go again in that 68k vs ppc battle.

And... i remember old projects like Natami with many speculation around it, they even done some boards for developers, but... how is that project? There is no news about it. Last time i had info, there was only one person working on it, only when he has some spare time.... It could be a superb project, buit it is far from being completed. I am afraid this one gets in the same way...

[Kin Hell]

The problem is, if it can't Emulate the 060 code @ any decent speed, is there any point?

[Harrison]

Is there much point in most retro hardware dev? Other than to see something never before achieved on the system.

But yeah, I get what you are saying. PPC native software is too thin on the ground to fully utilise it for much, so you would be stuck using 68k code most of the time.

[Kin Hell]

Is there much point in most retro hardware dev? Other than to see something never before achieved on the system.

But yeah, I get what you are saying. PPC native software is too thin on the ground to fully utilise it for much, so you would be stuck using 68k code most of the time.

Elbox thought so, even if they did f'k up DMA, but they obviously thought it was still worth the effort.

However, this piece of hardware needs to be seen in action before I could make any serious criticisms & even if a 1GHZ PPC chip can make up for the shocking emulation effort Hyperion have made so far, I still digress with the decision to use an 040 Motorola. The traditional PGA style 040's were far less forgiving in their routines than the 060's were, leading to less backward compatibility.