Subj : Re: TheA1200
To   : tenser
From : Nightfox
Date : Thu Dec 04 2025 16:52:09

  Re: Re: TheA1200
  By: tenser to Nightfox on Fri Dec 05 2025 12:44 pm

 Ni>> Yeah, though I was thinking that a FPGA hardware solution would be more
 Ni>> interesting.  And is FPGA actually considered emulation?  I thought I had
 Ni>> read somewhere that some people don't consider that emulation, as FPGA
 Ni>> basically re-creates the original capabilities in hardware; also, I think
 Ni>> that should theoretically be 100% compatible and run just as well as the
 Ni>> original hardware, whereas software emulation can be a bit tricky and not
 Ni>> always be 100% compatible with all software for that platform.

 te> FPGAs are programmable logic.  You compile a program written in a language
 te> like VHDL, (System) Verilog, or BlueSpec classic into a bitstream that you
 te> can them load into the FPGA, and the bitstream defines what the logic part
 te> does.  Today's bigger FPGAs contain a lot of stuff like DRAM, PHYs for
 te> various protocols (PCIe, I2C/I3C, eSPI, USB, CAM, UARTs, ethernet MACs,
 te> whatever).  But if used to implement a CPU core, we call such a beast a
 te> "soft core", since it's defined by software: the source
 te> VHDL/Verilog/BlueSpec/Chisel/Whatever program.

 te> In that spirit, FPGAs running soft cores exhibit many of the same quirky
 te> properties of software emulations of these older CPUs.

Ah, that makes sense.

Nightfox
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