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ZX-Poly platform (a mutiprocessor Spectrum)

RaydacRaydac
edited January 2007 in Hardware
Hello All

May be it would be interestingly for you

In the New Year 2007 vacation I wrote the emulator of my platform ZX-Poly (idea since 1994) which represents four-cpu spectrum, so I have written the technical reference of it but unfortunately it is still in russian only (but has a lot of graphic figures). The page of the platform is http://www.igormaznitsa.com/zxpoly/zxpoly.html

P.S.
Sorry for my English
Post edited by Raydac on
<a href="https://poly" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ZX-Poly project page</a><br><br>

Comments

  • Uros ZupanUros Zupan
    edited January 2007
    Sounds interesting! And it seems that Spectrum Loki rises again! :)
  • SaboteurSaboteur
    edited January 2007
    That's pretty interesting.

    Any of you hardware bod's know if it would be possible to build one of these ??

    Does using 4 processors make things faster or just overcome things like the ULA and no hardware sprites and scrolling ??

    cheers
  • Uros ZupanUros Zupan
    edited January 2007
    I am not quite sure because documentation is still in the russian language only.
    But if we consider promised compatibility with existing software library there are quite interesting times in front of us.
  • RaydacRaydac
    edited January 2007
    Saboteur wrote: »
    That's pretty interesting.
    Any of you hardware bod's know if it would be possible to build one of these ??
    Does using 4 processors make things faster or just overcome things like the ULA and no hardware sprites and scrolling ??

    cheers

    I sure that the architecture can be build in hardware (because it developed to be implemented in the hard login in the start of 90-th)..

    There is not any hardware graphic accelerator in the architecture, all speed of work is produced by one time use of all processors.. so you can select the way of use to make multithreading or graphic work.. I have tried to write multithreading in Z80 :) it is more interesting than in Java :)
    <a href="https://poly" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ZX-Poly project page</a><br><br>
  • RaydacRaydac
    edited January 2007
    Uros Zupan wrote: »
    I am not quite sure because documentation is still in the russian language only.
    But if we consider promised compatibility with existing software library there are quite interesting times in front of us.

    I'd like to explain that there is possibility to make support not only for old games but it is possible to make both text editors and viewers (of course not all) to be able to work in 512x384 with correcting fonts in the software only..
    <a href="https://poly" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ZX-Poly project page</a><br><br>
  • SaboteurSaboteur
    edited January 2007
    Is it possible to do multiple cores in a FPGA and run them simultaneously ??

    I'd love to see one of these made just to see what it could do.
  • pmsrpmsr
    edited January 2007
    aowen wrote: »
    You can see what it will do on the emulator. An FPGA with sufficient room for four T80 cores would cost a fortune.

    Not quite. A t80 core uses something like 18% of an Altera Cyclone EP1C12Q240C8N. This fpga costs a tad less than $50 in quantity one. It would fit four cores easily, even if it would leave little space for the ULA and miscellaneous logic.

    /Pedro
  • SaboteurSaboteur
    edited January 2007
    aowen wrote: »
    You can see what it will do on the emulator. An FPGA with sufficient room for four T80 cores would cost a fortune.

    Yeah I know, but it's never quite the same as having physical hardware.

    I'm not quite sure why but the WOW factor always seems diminished by emulating something on a dual core 4gb super computer that has more cache than your first computer had memory. :)
  • RaydacRaydac
    edited January 2007
    I have added TR-DOS support in my ZX-Poly emulator. You can download it with old link from my page http://www.igormaznitsa.com/zxpoly/zxpoly.html
    <a href="https://poly" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ZX-Poly project page</a><br><br>
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