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Dream features for a new PCI-e card for arcade games?
John Blund:
Regarding video, would it be of any use to add display port connector to the card? It would then be able to send video ans sound over the cable to a TV or display. What do you think, is it sufficient with VGA and JAMMA RGB or would displayport be of any use?
emphatic:
Display port? Is that like, what Apple computers use?
John Blund:
--- Quote from: emphatic on July 23, 2012, 04:28:36 am ---Display port? Is that like, what Apple computers use?
--- End quote ---
Yes.
And it's a royalty free standard from VESA. It's like HDMI without DRM and license fee's.
But it's unnecessary to make it mandatory, if no one wanted to use it. Signals like that could be put on one of the headers.
One thing I have been thinking about is to make a developer kit, made for new Shoot 'em up games development. As this card has some insane parallel computing power and ASIC emulation, I think it will take about 20 years before it could possibly be emulated on a PC. Any thoughts on that? As it's also possible to encrypt games that will only be able to run on one specific card. This could be used for new arcade games.
emphatic:
What code languages would work on this kit?
John Blund:
--- Quote from: emphatic on July 23, 2012, 01:45:34 pm ---What code languages would work on this kit?
--- End quote ---
Well almost any language. But if I made a arcade SDK (software development kit), I will make special support for one or two languages that will make it extra easy to make games. And if anyone has suggestions then I can see what I can do.
I have been reading up what the chip I am going to use can do. And it looks like it's extra suitable to run MIPS processors. You could have at least 50 pieces of MIPS processors at 100Mhz without any problems. Each capable of 300 million instructions per second. It was MIPS processors was used for nintendo64 and playstation2.
And I 'm thinking about putting 2 real hard ARM processors on the board, each running at 800Mhz, but I don't know if the two ARM processors will fit the 400 euro budget right now, and I don't want to step over that line. But in any case, there will be loads of power in this JAMMA card.
And at the moment I'm looking a lot at different memory configurations for bigger external memories. This to maximize the preformance within this budget. It would be fun if you could outperform many of the current systems. Making this board like a real up to date arcade platform. But the interesting thing is that you can come up with new processor configurations after this card has been shipped via USB-update.
But how this platform can be used is somewhat depending on what people want this to go. It can change over time, after that people has bought cards. You don't need to buy any new hardware, to make this platform evolve over time and improve it's capabilities. So if I say I think of doing this and that, doesn't say that it can be changed over time to meet what people want to use this for. The door is open for anything.
So there is basically no limitations what languages that can be used to program this platform. And as it will be capable of emulating a lot of systems directly in hardware, the possibilities is somewhat endless.
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