Retro-Computing with FPGAs

zoid.com writes "I ran across a couple of really interesting projects using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processors. First is the C-ONE project that is a reconfigurable computer. The default mode is a C64 compatible one, but the machine just boots the FPGA from an IDE device at power on, so it could theoretically be pretty much anything. The second one is the FPGA Arcade. This site is about recreating gaming hardware from the past in modern programmable devices. They currently have Pacman, Space Invaders and Galaxian implemented in FPGAs."

Why not...

[g4dget]

Why not get one of these [mini-itx.com] and run this [t-online.de]? You can get a complete system with power supply and nice case for less than just the C-ONE board alone costs.

Re:Custom SETI@Home chip.

[Space cowboy]

I thought about doing this for my own radio telescope [gornall.net]. One day I might just get around to it :-)

The interesting thing about using an FPGA would be the speed of the FFT. With FFTW (the Fastest Fourier Transform in the West), I get approx 230 us (microseconds) per fft. Using an el-cheapo FFT, best efforts would be on the order of 15us, or approximately 15x faster... Bung several on a few PCBs, and you're talking super-computer speeds :-)

Say you use 16 FPGA implementations, that'd be the equivalent of 240 Athlon 1800XP's... With those sorts of speeds, you could do realtime chirp analysis for doppler effects on an incoming signal. That *would be cool* :-)

Simon.

This is sooo absolutely cool.

[JensR]

I can't believe it. I've been playing around with the c64 and 2600 idea for ages, but didn't have the means to actually do it. And these people did it. It's so cool.

It's a great way to keep those old arcade game alive - an emulator is only - well- an emulation. The original PCBs age over time and may get unusuble and unrepearable if any custom circuits die completly and become unavailable. Using FPGAs is a great way to keep exactly the same hardware around.

(And to all those #@!&-ers who ask "why bother?": BECAUSE THEY CAN !)

Re:Jeez!

[SN74S181]

Have you priced the FPGA prototyping kits recently?

They're expensive. For one-off projects, it gets expensive really fast. You can't just grab a big FPGA chip and solder it onto your board. The pin density is high enough that you HAVE to have a custom board built, or dedicate an expensive prototyping kit to each project.

I've seen a few people on eBay selling FPGA chips that have been tin-snipped out of scrapped assemblies, though. Because most FPGA board layouts include feedthroughs-per-hole around the FPGA chip for hardware probing and verification, that is a somewhat workable solution.

FPGA Graphics Card?

[BigDish]

Here's an interesting thought. I see someone mentioning that some cryptography company uses FPGA's on a PCI card in a PC. What about taking that one step further, and making the GPU on video card a FPGA? Imagine if, when you launched a game, it would be able to reconfigure the card optimally for that game. Rather than leaving parts of the GPU unused, it could convert them into something it can use.

This would also allow graphics cards to be upgraded, for instance, if today's graphics cards were FPGA based, DirectX 9 support could be added to existing cards.

Are we going to see this technology this year? I doubt it. But 5 years down the road, I bet your graphics card will be based on an FPGA.

Internet Reconfigurable Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

This [xilinx.com] prototype media appliance runs completely on FPGAs and downloads new hardware configurations from a webserver. Applications include VoIP phone (w/ TCP I/P stack), MP3 player and, yes, Space Invaders... complete with sound and a touch screen.

Part of Xilinx's whole Internet Reconfigurable Logic initiative... update hardware over the network.

Re:It uses a CPU, not an FPGA

[cojoco]

I think that this would break many C64 games. The 65C816 has some
instruction set differences to give the chip more functionality
over the original 6502. These new instructions were placed in
"holes" in the original 6502 instruction set, to preserve
backwards compatibility with old machine code.

Unfortunately many C64 games used these instructions, which had
weird but documentable effects, as an anti-piracy measyre.
They made it harder to reverse-engineer the anti-piracy code.