040 Accelerator
some software may be able to run MUCH faster, but I have seen too many
incorrect claims for 040 floating point performance and overall
performance. I'll bet that an 040 at 25mhz isn't too much faster than an
030 at 50mhz unless code is specially optimized for the 040. While some
claim huge floating point speed gains for 040 (specifically the misleading
Amiga World article recently), note that the built-in floating point on the
040 is only simple arithmetic – sines, cosines, etc. must be emulated in
software. The 040 does NOT have a complete 881/882 type capability built
in, only add/subtract/multiply/divide (maybe square root, too?). those four
functions should be REAL fast, though, even much faster than they would be
on an 881/882. My guess is that real world benchmarks will tell. I tried
FractalPro on Progressive Peripherals' prototype 040 board at AmiExpo
October 1990 and it was about 20-30% faster than a 25mhz 030 (using a 25mhz
040 prototype chip). FractalPro is ALL integer code – no floating point.
That should tell you something – claims for 20Mips IMPLY that the 040
should run about 10X faster than a 25mhz 030 – but, plain and simple, IT
DOESN'T. I may be able to re-code FractalPro's math to optimize its
performance on 040 when it becomes truly available at reasonable cost as it
has larger caches, but I've already paid a great deal of attention to
020/030 optimization (not to mention optimization of the separate routines
in FractalPro for those machines which have 68000/010). I'm not sure how
much extra speed I'll squeeze out of the 040 with code which is already
pretty optimized on 020/030. FractalPro is a good benchmark, though,
nearly and acid test of integer performance. I want one, too, though! To
paraphrase Vince Lombardi, Speed isn't everything … it's the ONLY thing.