Hypothetically, what could be gained from a developer side if SRAM was supported?
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SegaSnatcher
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Hypothetically, what could be gained from a developer side if SRAM was supported?
Just a thought experiment and obviously would have to be limited to Digital IO boards with the extra 40 GPIO pins, but let's say just for fun an add on SRAM memory board was available to developers, what gains could they possibly see while developing cores? I hear SRAM in terms of performance is 2nd after BRAM. Not saying an SRAM board would ever be implemented or needed, but I would assume in some situation it could possibly be a benefit.
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Newsdee
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Re: Hypothetically, what could be gained from a developer side if SRAM was supported?
From what I know, having an additional fast RAM bank (even a small one) can make writing/porting some cores easier, but it's not guaranteed.
There's some ZX-Uno cores written for 2MB of SRAM which I think are difficult to port due to RAM access timings they rely on; but they're not much to be excited about considering other cores available on MiSTer (e.g. the PC-186: https://www.zxuno.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=815 )
If somebody were to write a new core, having more available RAM banks makes things a little easier just because you don't have to come up with (simple) tricks to handle memory access without clashes. But that doesn't mean they can't be solved, Sorg and others did some magic with Neogeo and ao486 already...
There's some ZX-Uno cores written for 2MB of SRAM which I think are difficult to port due to RAM access timings they rely on; but they're not much to be excited about considering other cores available on MiSTer (e.g. the PC-186: https://www.zxuno.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=815 )
If somebody were to write a new core, having more available RAM banks makes things a little easier just because you don't have to come up with (simple) tricks to handle memory access without clashes. But that doesn't mean they can't be solved, Sorg and others did some magic with Neogeo and ao486 already...