Radical New Idea: Hardware MAME

[Trimoor]

I'm sure all of you know how terribly slow many of the newer games run, as well as some of the oldies.

The problem is emulation.  Sure, your brand new 2.4GHz processor might be hundreds of times faster than the old games, but it doesn't have the same circuitry as a game CPU, so it has to emulate it.  This can take several more processor cycles than the original, making the emulated version slower.

What I propose is to use the actual CPUs from the original games to perform the nessesary calculations.  The computer will still be responsible for loading roms from the HDD, controller inputs, AV output, and system RAM.

The extra hardware will be a circuit board with dozens of classic CPUs on it, utilizing either PCI or USB2 interface.

Depending on the game, some of the load will be assisted by the system CPU, taking over for some of the CPUs that emulate best.

Well, what do you think?  Is it feasible?

<unrealistic optimism>
I hope this will revolutionize MAME!
</unrealistic optimism>

[NIVO]

well the idea sounds good, but simply put if its cheap, and you have and endless supply of the proper chips, then yes it'll sell.

[crashwg]

I highly doubt that if it was even posible that the results would be worth the cost of setting something like this up.

But good luck and have fun!

[telengard]

I'm sure all of you know how terribly slow many of the newer games run, as well as some of the oldies.

The problem is emulation.  Sure, your brand new 2.4GHz processor might be hundreds of times faster than the old games, but it doesn't have the same circuitry as a game CPU, so it has to emulate it.  This can take several more processor cycles than the original, making the emulated version slower.

What I propose is to use the actual CPUs from the original games to perform the nessesary calculations.  The computer will still be responsible for loading roms from the HDD, controller inputs, AV output, and system RAM.

The extra hardware will be a circuit board with dozens of classic CPUs on it, utilizing either PCI or USB2 interface.

Depending on the game, some of the load will be assisted by the system CPU, taking over for some of the CPUs that emulate best.

Well, what do you think?  Is it feasible?

<unrealistic optimism>
I hope this will revolutionize MAME!
</unrealistic optimism>

Isn't someone already doing something like this?

http://home.freeuk.com/fpgaarcade/

~telengard

[fredster]

Yes, they are already around.  Have been in "bootleg" boards for years, Pacman and MSpac were some of the first.

Now they are making 39 in 1 jamma boards that emulate the classics.

You buy them from RGVAC and someplace in Asia.

[RayB]

I dunno if it's all that feasible. There are SO MANY different CPUs. For example the 6502, also had variations, like 6502c, etc. Then there's the 6508. There's the Z80. There's the 68000 and its variations.

Then there's custom video chips, and sound chips like Atari's pokey, which cannot be purchased since they are proprietary technology.

[ericball]

Nope, ain't gonna fly.

Take a look at the MAME source code and the number of modules for each custom graphics chip (many of which don't have off-the shelf equivalents).  And it's those graphics chips which are CPU intensive to emulate because they are often massively parallel.

[Lilwolf]

There isn't a real reason.

Sure, you could change mame around to use real cpus.

but remember... you have to actually make sure they have access to memory, sync them all, that will slow down the chips.  You might be able to change how the emulation where you emulate the board, and hope that your computer is fast enought to fill in each chips requests before the next tick.  

But you would end up slowing down games that run find on new machines.

And the processors for the non-100% games would be cheaper just to build a bootleg board.