Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by pjc50 on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @05:50AM
(#23757390)
What happened to freescale/NXP "Coldfire"?
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Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by herio on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @06:25AM
(#23757594)
ColdFire is still around but is also not fully binary compatible with 68k. There have been attempts at making Amiga accelerator cards using Coldfires, but I don't think I've ever seen one that was fully finished.
Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by cmrdporcupine on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @09:20AM
(#23769581)
It's not fully binary compatible but pretty damn close. People working on the Firebee were able to make it run pretty smooth, there's some things you can do to trap the old instructions and rewrite. It's never going to work for games and the like, but games and the like from that era have all sorts of other video hardware specific dependencies that are even more difficult to satisfy.
It really is "spiritually" a 68k series processor, just with some cleaning up. I like it.
Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by DCKing on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @06:26AM
(#23757609)
I am really not an expert in 68k but the Coldfire does not appear to be fully compatible with the old 68ks used in old Macs and Amigas, and Googling around it doesn't appear to have had much uptake if any. It's not being made anymore either.
Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by CompAidedPoster on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @08:16AM
(#23758382)
Coldfires are definitely still in production.
Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by xeeeeeeeeeeenu on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @11:49PM
(#23766732)
FireBee (http://firebee.org), which is a modern clone of Atari ST, uses it.
Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by cmrdporcupine on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @08:32AM
(#23758496)
No new Coldfire processors made in years, unfortunately. Freescale/NXP seems to be just leaving it.
Re:Google offers free fabbing for 130nm open-source chips
by pantalaimon on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @06:43AM
(#23757730)
I guess everyone is just using ARM now.