FPGA for dummies

[persia]

My question is since this is emulation in hardware how is it closer to or further way from Amiga hardware than UAE?

[persia]

Interesting, so it is or isn't emulation depending on how you define emulation, sort of emulation in a cheshire cat or perhaps a Schrödinger's cat sort of way.

[persia]

In the end UAE or FPGA, you are still running on silicon and silicon that is different to the original hardware.  I have no problem with that, it's all Amiga to me, I was just wondering how you justify one over the other.

[persia]

The FPGA isn't a 68K chip, it's emulating one.  A different FPGA emulates the custom chips.  Amiga OS runs on top of this emulated hardware.  UAE emulates a 68K in a program, this same program emulates the custom chips.  Amiga OS runs on top of this emulated hardware.

[persia]

In other words FPGAs are "set it and forget it" emulation whilst software emulation is not. It's a much purer form of emulation.  

But if you tell the FPGA to create a gate, how does it do that?  What is the FPGAs actual method of creating a gate inside itself?  How does it remember that gate? What is actually going on at the physical level?  Surely there aren't a lot of nano-bots building and tearing down hardware inside the FPGA.

[persia]

So why is this important again?  

As I understand it an FPGA is a simulation or mock up of hardware, there is both a hardware and software component whilst with UAE is a pure software solution.  Further FPGA could easily be made into a hardware solution (but not at all likely in this case).  They represent opposite ends of the emulation spectrum.

[persia]

@wawrzon

For bout 100 bucks you can find out what an XMOS does. It's basically a small computer you can program and place in remote situations.  If you have a robot for example, you program the XMOS chip to run your robot and plug it into the robot.  It's cheap and efficient.

[persia]

And it's not really recreating the circuitry of the original chips, that's unknown, what it's actually doing is creating a "soft" circuitry that reproduces the results of most, if not all of the original "hard" circuitry results.

Yes, compared to modern hardware the Amiga custom chips are extremely simple, but still what you have is a simulation of what the Amiga was.

But why is this important?

[persia]

Perhaps it is this:

[persia]

@amigadave

ditto.

[persia]

@xyzzy

And the same could be said for UAE.

[persia]

Both UAE and FPGA are real Amigas.  Now we can all be one happy family.

[persia]

This thread has outlived it's usefulness......

[persia]

What I and others have disagreed with is the purity control folks who think that this is somehow more pure than UAE.  You may like the hardware emulation of FPGA more than the software emulation of UAE, but they are both valid ways to get a Classic Amiga like experience on modern equipment.  One's not superior to the other, they are just different approaches.  The last thing we need to to divide ourselves into more camps.

[persia]

UAE originated on Linux, it was ported to MS Windows.  Having an underlying OS doesn't really matter since you are emulating a system that doesn't have much CPU power.  I will give you that FPGA is a more efficient emulation, allowing for emulation on a much less powerful host, but is it going to be cheaper?