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[] ]RISE OF THE ACCELERATORScompatibility is sufficient. These gamers go for
genuine consoles or failing that, luxury rebuilds
using genuine original tech.
Long before Nintendo launched the NES
Classic Mini, researchers had found FPGAs
could replicate original NES console hardware
and the concept has since gone commercial.
The retroU SB AVS (tinyurl.com/zv4bn6m) is
a NES-class console that runs NES cartridges
better than the original NES console itself. It
outputs 720p video
through an HDMI
output, but there’s no
actual Nintendo
hardware on-board
— it’s all powered by
an FPGA chip.
And it isn’t alone
— retro console maker
Analogue created
2016’s well-received
Analogue NT NES
console, reportedly built using remaining stocks
of genuine Famicom (Nintendo) hardware
made over 30 years ago. However, Analogue
recently announced a new smaller and cheaper
NT Mini (tinyurl.com/jo5z7t5) which claims
to maintain full compatibility with NES/console and seemingly everything else. Intel
made the first CPU chip, the 4004, back in 1971.
Since then, CPUs have broadly consisted of
separate fixed-function blocks, programmable
through the software you load to join those
blocks together into everything from
spreadsheets to games. But CPUs also have
drawbacks: because they’re programmable
via software, CPUs are usually much less
power-efficient than ASICs, thanks to the many,
many more transistors required for this greater
versatility and flexibility.
The added complexity of modern CPUs
means it’s also difficult to get more of them
running together in parallel. When Intel and
AMD struck trouble trying to run their CPUs
faster than 3.6GHz during the mid-2000s, they
began adding multiple CPUs into the one chip
— that’s where dual-core and quad-core chips
came into play. The idea was that if you couldn’t
run a single CPU faster, you could at least get
more speed by running multiple CPUs together.
But even today, it’s rare to see more than eight
CPU cores inside consumer devices.
Straddling these two extremes is a different
computing technology called Field-
Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). They’re
computing chips you can program, but unlike
CPUs where your function code or ‘algorithm’
runs as software, FPGAs turn your algorithm
into hardware. They’ve been aptly described as
a bucket of Lego bricks you can wire together
in almost any form your application requires.
But while they’ve been around in one form or
another since the mid-1980s, FPGAs have
attracted renewed corporate attention in recent
times as traditional CPUs struggle with the
global migration to cloud computing.
MAKING YOUR OWN CHIP
Creating your own chip using FPGA
technology is a little bit like making your own
gadgets using the popular Arduino
microcontroller boards. You code the function
you want your chip to perform, then that code
is used to program the chip. The major
difference is that instead of just compiling your
code and storing it in the chip’s on-board flash
storage as Arduino does, FPGA programming
involves actually rearranging an FPGA’s
internal connections. In other words, you're
creating your own hardware. What’s more,
FPGAs are reprogrammable — you can
reprogram an FPGA and completely change
its function. It’s the chip-equivalent of starting
with an iPhone 7 smartphone, updating the
code and now having a Galaxy S7.
The code to program an FPGA is similar to
the C programming language and known as
a ‘hardware description language’ (HDL). These
languages, such as VHDL and Verilog, turn a
circuit function schematic into a series of
commands that rearrange the FPGA’s internal
connections to form the required functions.
The FPGA chips themselves are not expensive
— the DEO-Nano is a US$99 development
board featuring an Altera Cyclone 4 FPGA chip
with over 22,000 logic function blocks or
‘elements’. And because these logic blocks are,
in many cases, similar to those that make up
traditional CPUs, you
can even turn an
FPGA chip into your
own custom CPU chip.FPGA AND GAMING
Some of that might
sound like
gobbledygook, but
here’s where the
electrons hit the silicon
— one surprise
application for FPGAs gaining momentum is
retro-gaming. While many gamers scratch their
occasional retro-gaming itch with an emulator
or a NES Classic Mini (if you’ve managed to
find one), there’s a group for whom nothing
short of genuine hardware and perfectOUR MODERN LIVES ARE
FILLED WITH DIGITAL
TECHNOLOGY, VIRTUALLY ALL
OF IT RUN BY SMALL CHIPS
OR 'INTEGRATED CIRCUITS'
THAT PERFORM ALL MANNER
OF FUNCTIONS.The Nvidia GeForce GT X 1080
packs in an impressive 2560
CUDA cores.RetroUSB’s AVS powers
NES games cartridges
using an FPGA chip.