[HN Gopher] MetalNES: Transistor Level NES Simulation ___________________________________________________________________ MetalNES: Transistor Level NES Simulation Author : ingve Score : 121 points Date : 2022-02-26 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | aliswe wrote: | iirc this is what they said would never be possible with any | computer, whatever the specs (at real life speed). | gary_0 wrote: | Reminds me of GateBoy, which was posted a while back: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28396927, | https://github.com/aappleby/MetroBoy | | GateBoy runs surprisingly fast for a gate-level simulation. | pubby wrote: | MetalNES is by the author of NESticle. Like Visual2C02 and | Visual2A03, presumably it runs at such a slow speed that games | are unplayable. Like, it may have taken hours to reach the SMB | menu screen, but I would love to be corrected :) | dr_dshiv wrote: | Absolutely sick. Chip community is so rad. | ReactiveJelly wrote: | 0.5% of realtime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30482633 | DarylZero wrote: | is this allowed for speedruns | danaris wrote: | Allowed? Maybe, maybe not. | | Helpful? Extremely not. | | I just ran this on my high-end M1 Max, and it rendered 2 frames | in roughly 3 minutes. | | Hardware-accurate emulation is, generally speaking, _not_ fast | emulation. | rl3 wrote: | Hardware-accurate emulation in _software_ is typically not | fast. FPGAs however can achieve low-level emulation with a | high degree of hardware accuracy: | | https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki | monocasa wrote: | The 6502 unfortunately relies on some effects that can't be | described in FPGA synthesizable logic. You might get a lot | of speed up over the extremely simplified spice style | simulation you have to do that still might get you to real | time, but it's not the slam dunk you might think. | russdill wrote: | Sounds interesting. Any citations where I can read more | about those effects? | comex wrote: | Out of curiosity, what effects are you talking about? | monocasa wrote: | The internal buses are basically true highz buses with | multiple drivers and latches hanging off of them. | theogravity wrote: | Would be really cool to see a video of this in action. | danaris wrote: | I don't really pretend to understand much of what I'm seeing, | but I've recorded a short video of it running and uploaded it | to my server [0]. | | From what I can tell, this 3-minute video shows the process of | generating 2 and a bit frames. | | [0] http://topazgryphon.org/metalNES.mp4 | loeg wrote: | ~9000 cycles/sec (displayed in the video), wow! For | comparison, the NES ran at 1.8 MHz, or about 200x faster. | From the number of frames drawn and time, I'm guessing this | simulator is actually averaging much lower than 9 kHz. | Scuds wrote: | go lil' electron beam, go! | | 9000 cycles/s / 1.79 MHz = 0.5% of realtime. The only time | you ever see rendering a line at a time is single stepping | through an emulator. | | I wonder if this is how FPGA developers working in | VHDL/Verilog see the world? | https://www.patreon.com/posts/37038491 here's a short clip of | the VRAM of a PSX rendering about half of a completed frame | of Final Fantasy 7's battle screen. | hedgewitch wrote: | That it would. I don't have access to a Mac or time to get it | building elsewhere, so a video would be great. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-26 23:00 UTC)