Using a PC as an accelerator? Had an idea last night....

[freqmax]

I found this thread today
And would like to say it's definitely feasable. The paths to accomplish it may be:
0) Buy an 68000 in-circuit hardware emulator for x86-PC. And write the PC end of it.
1) Buy an PCI-FPGA card ~100 EUR. And wire the I/O to an 68000 cpu socket. Keep lengths short though!
2) Software program that runs on an unmodified Amiga, but makes the Amiga a slave via SCSI. Ie read instruction+data, amiga->pc, execute, pc->amiga, write/read, repeat..

Latency IS an issue. This makes USB/Ethernet/Firewire unsuitable. This is especially true for usb. Usb were force feed by putting those {bleep} interface chips on the motherboard without asking. Something along firewire would been a better performer.

As for the amount of data, just for 7,14 MHz it will be at least >500 Mbps.

Gains: Cycle exact sound & graphics. Though CPU cycle lengths may may vary
Something all software based emulators will struggle with is latency!

[freqmax]

Ofcourse the 100% FPGA route is the prefered way. But if you going to do the x86-accelerator path. Then my listed alternatives might be valid.

The only catch with FPGA is that it requires a whole set of transistors to "fake" one real ASIC one. Which translates mainly to speed and functionality per chip.

I think the most interesting board right now is the fpgaarcade one. It has the potential for 020/AGA.