Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Help & information about the STE V1 series boosters.
pixelpusher
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Post by pixelpusher »

exxos wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:45 am So while this analogy does not increase ST-RAM speed per-se, the "available bandwidth" to RAM is somewhat increased because after the integer division we get to the next ram access a lot sooner.
I can't speak about Frontier (never used it), but people :-) would point out that division is something that you avoid like plague with this gen of hardware. You either try to get away with pre-calculated tables, shift aproximations or multiplication (using the reciprocal) before you consider using divisions.

Would probably be an interesting case study in an emulator to do an opcode analysis over a larger amount of apps at runtime and my bets would be on divisions are an edge case in the big picture. As long as you don't get the surrounding operations much faster, the effective speedup doesn't scale well with the frequency increase.

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exxos
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

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pixelpusher wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 4:56 pm the effective speedup doesn't scale well with the frequency increase.
Indeed. I document benchmarks of various speeds several months ago. Basically after 32MHz you really hit diminishing returns without speeding up something else.
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viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
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czietz
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Post by czietz »

pixelpusher wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 4:56 pm Would probably be an interesting case study in an emulator to do an opcode analysis over a larger amount of apps at runtime and my bets would be on divisions are an edge case in the big picture. As long as you don't get the surrounding operations much faster, the effective speedup doesn't scale well with the frequency increase.
That's why I tend to use EEMBC CoreMark® to assess the speed of Atari systems and accelerators. Imho, CoreMark contains multiple algorithms that you would also find in real software and, therefore, gives a much better indication of total speed than, e.g., Gembench's "Integer Division" number.

Source code of my port to Atari: https://github.com/czietz/coremark
Compiled version and some results in this thread: https://forum.atari-home.de/index.php/t ... 024.0.html

For example, you can see that -- without cache -- doubling the CPU clock to 16 MHz in the MegaSTE only gives about 10%(!) speed increase. That's because RAM access is not accelerated. Only with cache you're able to see a big boost.

EDIT: Just to mention, CoreMark is meant to assess CPU and RAM speed. By design, it does not call any OS functions during the benchmark. Thus, to see the effects of faster ROM access (e.g., on VDI drawing speed) by Exxos' boosters you still need to use Gembench.
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Post by exxos »

No one will ever know...

IMG_5095.JPG
IMG_5095.JPG (362.13 KiB) Viewed 5382 times

I've tested several CPU's and GAL's in my test board and all seem OK. So that booster will be the first one heading to my store next week...
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viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

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This one has been running for about 3 hours in total now.. So I will start on a second one. If the second one works, I may take some pre-orders for this so people can reserve one.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
Reylan
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Post by Reylan »

Hello,
First post here ! I have a question about those booster. As you remove the CPU socket, is it still possible to add an ide board ? Or do you have to choose between one or the other ?
Thanks !
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Post by rubber_jonnie »

Reylan wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:48 pm Hello,
First post here ! I have a question about those booster. As you remove the CPU socket, is it still possible to add an ide board ? Or do you have to choose between one or the other ?
Thanks !
I had one of the IDE boards from Alan Hourihane in mine, and it wouldn't work boosted. Also a bit of a nightmare because of the stack of stuff plugged in.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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exxos
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Post by exxos »

Reylan wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:48 pm First post here ! I have a question about those booster. As you remove the CPU socket, is it still possible to add an ide board ? Or do you have to choose between one or the other ?
I don't know of any compatible IDE solutions for the STE.. There is very few to start with.
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
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rubber_jonnie
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Re: Why the STE booster is so difficult to produce.

Post by rubber_jonnie »

exxos wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 11:21 pm
Reylan wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:48 pm First post here ! I have a question about those booster. As you remove the CPU socket, is it still possible to add an ide board ? Or do you have to choose between one or the other ?
I don't know of any compatible IDE solutions for the STE.. There is very few to start with.
@exxos Agreed, the only one I could find was Alan's.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
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