Subject: Re: VHDL for use in accelerator?
From: bobryan9@my-deja.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 03:21:13 GMT
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Interesting idea.  How much do VHDL chips cost?  A friend of mine does VHDL
programming, and the chips that he is currently working with are at least $100. 
He is using reprogrammable VHDL chips.

From what I understand about these chips, you should be able to program one with
the necessary parts of a 6502 or 65816 chip, with the cache and timing
components necessary to interface with the Apple bus.  You might even be able to
put the cache on the chip (I don't know if VHDL's are available with RAM
integrated, or if you could program them to include RAM.)

This could be the route to developing and producing "low cost", 'easy' to build
accelerators for the IIgs and IIe. You can take care of alot of the hardware
with the VHDL, and eliminate the cost of doing so much hardware prototyping.

VHDL, RAM chips for cache, power supply.

This seems like a practical application of the 65XX VHDL.  I don't see why you
would want a processor VHDL by itself.  Why
not just go buy a 50 cent 6502?

Bob

In article <388B7776.3891B5F3@cyberhighway.net>,
  Frank Carney <frankc@cyberhighway.net> wrote:

> Could that VHDL image be used to create a single chip or close to
single
> chip accelerator?
>
> The main 6502 processor could be coupled with additional logic to
access
> cache and provide the correct timing to the motherboard.
>
> Is this doable or am I just talking out my XXX?
>
> If it is doable then maybe a 65816 VHDL image would be great for the
> IIGS.
>
>

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