Creator Of New Open-Source Game Boy Disagrees That FPGA Is Superior To Software Emulation

Additional Layers are always worse than direct Dialog.

If i talk to you in your Language it is always faster, as if i need a Dolmatcher that translates what i am saying, no matter how good the Dolmatcher is.

Emulation Vs FPGA argument aside, the 3D printed case is always a worry from a quality perspective.

So yeah an FPGA is an emulator (hardware). We already knew this. And no emulator is perfect. But especially on more power demaning software emulators it is absolutely better to create a hardware emulator. Since that actually mimics the hardware architecture and not just the software architecture.

Yeah I'm very much in agreement here. Software-based emulation and FPGA (which you could consider "hardware emulation") are simply good at different things in my view.

There's nothing to be gained for us by pitting the two technologies against each other. – There is, however, a marketing incentive for Analogue to brand their products as "zero emulation". Which is, yeah, misleading, and by design.

We're getting into the 'Are we the same person as we were a decade ago due to cell division?' territory here. Sure since we are here, is all of our cemented poop in the sewer-nether more mentally potent than the individual?

There is also the issue of timing. Timing can never be accurate on software emulators because they are running on top of a foreign OS, which itself is running on top of foreign hardware. Software emulation is at the mercy of its host’s OS and hardware timing. It cannot be accurate in that sense.

I think the problem with this argument is that Emulators themselves vary wildly in quality and accuracy and are full of hacky workarounds.

Yes cycle accurate emulators exist but you aren’t putting one of those on a pcb and they still won’t be perfect.

They are right that just because something is on an FPGA doesn’t make it perfect, but pretending to be the hardware is more accurate than guessing the results of what think the hardware is doing.

Anyway I’m confused as to why they are ranting about the definition of FPGA’s while building a me-too device FPGA device for an already flooded market of GB clones

Damiin, do you prefer software or hardware emulation?

Endlessly frustrating discussion that devolves into petty semantics every single time.

We should stop using the term "emulation" unadorned. It should always be specified as hardware or software emulation. Always. Full stop.

That said, while the claims of FPGA makers like Analogue of "zero emulation" are disingenuous, it's equally disingenuous to just define them both generically as emulation and assume the audience now sees them as equivalent.

Any emulator — hardware or software — is only as good as whoever programmed it. But if we were to put a hypothetically perfect software solution against a hypothetically perfect FPGA solution and judge them on sheer fidelity, the FPGA would come out ahead. The difference might be negligible, but you can't escape the reality that one option necessarily puts some layer of processing between the player and the game while the other does not. But there are other factors at play than fidelity. Convenience, versatility, user options and quality of life features...

These are different solutions to the same problem and both come with too many pros and cons to list here. In order to choose the best option for their needs consumers should be educated on the difference, but clearly not by any of the people trying to sell these products because they're all guilty of misrepresenting reality.

He's absolutely nailed it.

The truth is FPGA based emulators are marketed by and to people who rarely have any idea how FPGAs work

FPGAs have huge benefits but they are far from a panacea.

More importantly they shift the burden of owning original hardware to owning this new hardware.

Had issues with some games on the Mega SG and Super NT, that works perfect on software emulation. And as usual, Analogue leaves the old FPGA consoles in the dust, even when there is bugs left to fix. So I went back to original hardware instead.
Still got an Analogue Pocket though.

I know the FPGA elite, won't admit to these things. As emulation is a dirty word to them

As long as it plays the game correctly, I don't care if it's hardware or software emulation.

@Razieluigi it's not true that a perfect hardware solution would beat a perfect software solution.

The perfect software solution would win by portability alone.

A cycle perfect emulator that you can compile to any platform? That's insanely better than you have to buy this specific complex piece of hardware.

Game Bub?

BUB

Admit it you heard that in your head as if Logan/Wolverine was saying it

Emulator is good for testing preservation of games while FPGA is good for running preservation of a game so both could still co-exist with one another. One is just software emulation and the other is hardware emulation, there's nothing wrong with preferring one over the other.

@Fragcula That's why I specified "on sheer fidelity" and went on to note "there are other factors at play than fidelity. Convenience, versatility, user options and quality of life features..."

This discussion is like trying to decide whether forks are better than spoons. And instead of acknowledging that some people are eating steak and others are eating soup, we keep getting mired in some conversation about how both are utensils.

As an old school programmer...

Software emulation has to focus on multiple issues that arise for different games and write code that resolves those issues. Many issues can arise.

Hardware emulation (FPGA) just has to focus on programming the hardware and that's it. If the developer does an accurate job at programming the hardware, all games work! No need to create fixes per game.

Software emulation is guess work as there is nothing to measure. Just analyzed by what the developer thinks they see or how they think it should behave.

FPGA measures the signals of the hardware and replicates those readings for the FPGA. So yes, more accurate.

Sorry but the "software engineer" Eli Lipsitz has no idea what he is talking about.

If anyone has tried to write emulation for the audio chip in a Tandy 1000 (Texas Instruments SN76489) knows that its audio is effected by the power supply voltage. Rough to do via software emulation and usually not that accurate. Hardware behavior is best to test and program for any system.

@avcrypt I will have to disagree but agree that it does come down to the wisdom of a developer. A just ok developer could have the best of the best to work with but will be limited by their knowledge.

Anyway, FPGA compared to software is like ASM when compared to C or BASIC languages. It's the lowest level and its development relies on the knowledge of the developer. The more experienced developer will develop more accurate and optimized code when working with the lowest level of technology.

I'm not going to argue this topic any further as this my belief from my own experience. But to each their own.

The rub is easy.

Nobody who plays these games and isn't a massive nerd about accuracy is going to notice a difference when a good software emulator and FPGA are pitted head to head in a blind test.

People who get twisted on this are the weird, retro enthusiasts who nitpick. These older games aren't even that complex in a way where cycle accuracy is so vital that software emulators can't play them effectively.

If you listen to FPGA diehards they'd have you believe something like Kiby on Gameboy was borderline unplayable on your PC, phone or laptop. Which is a hilarious notion. They'd tell you something to the effect of "once you notice the input lag, it just becomes a horrible experience!" as if they were playing launch Street Fighter 5 lmao!

The only time it would well and truly matter is for speedrunning. People who play these games at their highest level and require 100% accuracy to how the game operates on native hardware.

I can boot up DKC2 right now on my FPGA or my PC and the experience is going to be roughly the same. It will still look and feel the same and to any person who doesn't obsess over stuff like cycle accuracy - it will be an equivalent experience.

What gets me and makes me laugh at all the FPGA cultists is that speedrunning for the most part doesn't even allow FPGA hardware lmao! They still require native hardware for your times to be counted lol.

If even they don't think your hardware is accurate enough for their precision sport - then it's not much better than software is it?

There's an elephant in the room that no one mentions: FPGAs, like all hardware, eventually go out of production. Now you'd hope cores written for one would be portable to another, but it isn't that straightforward. Software emulators, however, generally are portable so in terms of preservation may be the better choice.

@avcrypt One of the biggest problems with emulation has been the N64. I believe the Analogue 3D with solve this and I can not wait for its release. Well, for it to be delivered.

@Martin_H That I can agree with.

Stating the obvious about FPGA and hardware emulation, really.

Wish them well with the project but having a 3D printed case for this console is a bit of a non-starter for me, open source or not.

His confidence, while being objectively wrong, is astounding.

@TenEighty You're very wrong for someone talking so big and talking down others.

Software emulations aren't less accurate than FPGA hardware emulations by any theoretical limit and they are based on the same reverse engineering methods as FPGA hardware emulators are. In fact, as far as I can tell, more often than not, at least with gaming consoles, hardware emulator developers heavily rely on hardware research that was done by the developers of software emulators.

At the end of the day FPGA hardware emulators model the behaviour of original hardware using digital, sequential logic, executed/accelerated by an FPGA. How close that logic is to the circuits of original hardware heavily
depends on what information was available to the developer and how carefully the developer implemented it. There is no guarantee that the model produces correct outputs for all inputs. For most systems you can't even measure a lot
of meaningful information using logic analysers or decapped chips. And even if you can, this doesn't guarantee a perfect and hack-free implementation. For instance the logic in some devices, like the original Game Boy, not all logic uses sequential circuits and certain behaviour depends on gate propagation delays, which not even a FPGA implementation can model without hacks.

By the way, FPGA emulators can be simulated with software, by using something like Verilator to compile the HDL model into software. Now, that simulation might be very slow, but it shows that your argument,
that software emulators somehow are intrinsically less accurate / "has to focus on [X]" is unsound.

Software emulators therefore can implement the same hardware models,
that FPGA emulators do and compared to something like Verilator, they can use higher-level abstractions and optimizations, where the use of them provably does not affect the output.

Cycle-accurate software emulators will do this and those that have been developed for a long time by dedicated developers will routinely outdo FPGA emulators in accuracy tests that have been developed in a comparatively short amount of time, especially if it's for some quick cashgrab handheld device.

Finally I often read the argument that FPGAs are more efficient than CPUs at simulating hardware, due to the parallel nature of FPGAs. This is technically true, but what people always forget is that there is a hard limit
to what you can fit on a reasonably affordable FPGA board and run in realtime too. For example the developer Robert Peip, who worked on FPGA GBA and other cores, stopped working on his Nintendo DS FPGA implementation, because he couldn't fit it on his target FPGA.

I really wonder where your self-proclaimed experience comes from,
because your knowledge of the topic appears extremely outdated, if put charitably, and otherwise completely wrong.

Signed, an annoyed emulator developer with experience in cycle-accurate emulation

I mean...yes? Of course they're only as good as they're programed to be. That's beyond common sense. What an odd statement to make.

@fleroviux Talking down? Ouch! Not what I was trying to do. I'll just end this topic then.

FPGA is a cool development in retro gaming in recent times, but there is so much hyperbolic marketing around them. That's why I've pushed back about various myths because there is misinformation and disinformation out there. Part of that comes from how a lot of officially released emulation products were extremely shoddy leading to derision. Software emulation started in a time when hacks were necessary if the goal was to simply get games running and playable with accuracy coming later. FPGA accuracy benefits from being a more recent development where accuracy has been the focus from the beginning.

While I've had good discussions with reasonable FPGA supporters here, I've also seen some wild disinformation from people who clearly know nothing, and who seem to make accounts here just to be disingenuous for one post and then disappear. For example, one person told me I was wrong because I did not consider "display lag", as if you wouldn't or couldn't use the SAME display if you were doing lag testing. I was told lag wouldn't show up in software emulation if I was testing using frame advance, and it absolutely does and that test is effective. I've seen people complain that Mario World is literally unplayable on software emulation, and SNES emulation I think has two frames(likely one frame) of lag max in the testing I have done. Two frames is very playable, but then there's also RunAhead to reduce that to no frames, so literally playable on software emulation either way.

FPGA is great and it's wonderful that the option exists for those that find it appealing. It has advantages and benefits, though sometimes those are not what people think they are. We must not let the marketing fluff displace reality.

The currently available cores on must fpga platforms are extremely accurate. I get what they’re saying but they’re also selling fpga short with these kind of comments all these years later. Doesn’t make me interested in their product.

It's really academic because I don't think the average kid or parent can tell the difference.

I only play on real hardware but honestly when I play hardware or software emulation I'm hard-pressed to tell the difference in 99% of situations. People are welcome to argue and I'm all for best accuracy but to me it's kinda like people arguing about the resolution in Switch games or something.

I m not saying it's unimportant just because I don't get it. It's just my observation

Definitely whatever gets you to play a game instead of talking about them or watching someone else play them I think is good!

I needed to buy an MSX Turbo R and do a sound cap replacement because I just want to know what MSX Konami games most accurately play and sound like. Most people don't need to go to such lengths as we make them out to be.

He makes a very good point.

@Martin_H That's exactly the point of the MiSTeX project, it's to make the MiSTer cores easily portable across different FPGA platforms.

Also, FPGAs have architectures too, like CPUs. Like how most code written for Windows XP likely can still run today on Windows 11 because it's the same CPU architecture (And mostly same OS/APIs), you wouldn't have to completely rewrite the core to run it on newer FPGA of the same artitecture.

@Lowdefal makes sense to me. The world of modding and programming is filled with insane petty ego disputes 🤣

@RextheSheep What things do you consider fpga to be worse at than software? I can not think of one. I'm trying to find out what information people are getting and what their thinking is.

Ah it is of course a bit of a semantic discussion.. I guess analogue started 10y ago the 'no emulation' branding because they had to explain why their device was 3x the price of e.g. the retron 5 of those days..

My life in gaming just released a compilation of their old fpga videos... in their analogue nt review they copy the ' no emulation' monicker, later they start using 'hardware emulation''....

Of course they both have a place in gaming preservation...software because you can have easy access where you are.. (the best gaming device is the one in your pocket on your lap), and fpga to reduce lag and to understand how they worked on a chip level..

for me personally the analogue pocket really changed a lot.. I use to re-enjoy some carts... I use it to emulate lots of games on the go... I made a sort of mistercade out of it with a turning screen for Tate, and with the analogizer and snac I now enjoy the same device on a CRT tv too... up to 16 bit I'm now in heaven...

sill my Miyoo mini is always in my work bag.. more portable and cheaper..and achievements..

the accuracy for me is visible in the Amiga core.. I play sensible soccer on World Cup level.. and the timing of running is just off on wine cores.. the amiga was a complex beast with custom chips... you can feel the difference there

@spysmily Rather than thinking about it in negative terms, consider this: software emulation is still really good for enhancements – i.e. resolution, frame rate, or adding new features on the emulator level, particularly for newer 3D consoles. You can definitely do enhancements in FPGA too, but software is still king there in my opinion.

It's also still not really viable in the consumer space to do FPGA implementations of something like Nintendo GameCube or Xbox 360/PS3 yet. That's another reason why software emulation is still relevant.

(I also considered netplay, particularly for arcade games, which hasn't been done on FPGA systems yet to my knowledge. I'm not sure if that's even possible or not; it feels like a huge challenge, but I don't feel certain enough to say it isn't possible.)

@spysmily Oh, also, save states and suspending your game are possible on FPGA, and even on original hardware with certain Everdrive models, but it generally works better on software emulation. – That's actually one of the main reasons I still sometimes use software emulation over original hardware, even if I prefer hardware.