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From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: LIFE on a 68020 (Re: Tom)
Message-ID: <8609221813.AA04648@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 22-Sep-86 14:13:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: cory.8609221813.AA04648
Posted: Mon Sep 22 14:13:47 1986
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>I just sat down last night and wrote a 68000 assembly language Life
>routine which does 494,000 generations per second in the data-independent
>mode, and averages about 600,000 generations per second in the
>data-dependent mode.  This is on the Amiga's 7.2 MHz processor.
>Maybe I should post it so someone can move it to the Mac?

	I think you meant to say cells/sec.

>I'm thinking of writing a general-purpose life program, complete
>with cut-and-paste and library cells (like glider guns and various
>flotillas), forward and back panning, true infinite plane (until
>memory runs out; on a 2.5Meg Amiga, that shouldn't happen too soon.)


	Yah! Go for it (but it would be nice if it worked on a 512K amiga)
If you want to really make it cool, how'bout using sparse matrices and 
implementing infinite space... and be able to zoom in or zoom out (allow
zoomout to go beyond 1cell/pixel .. 16cells/pixel, etc...) on any particular
section.

>Oh, by the way.  I suspect that my 68000 life program will actually
>run faster than the blitter when run on a 68020 Amiga; anyone have
>one out there?
>

	With its cache, a 68020 doing simple blits would use most of bandwidth
(100% for simple copies).  Since a 68020 usually has a faster clock than a
68000, it would easily beat out the Amiga's blitter.   Additionaly, you
wouldn't need multiple blitter passes.

	Of course, the disadvantage is that it uses the processor... the system
would basically stop while you're doing the blit.  But hell, you only live
once.

				-Matt