Do you think we are playing games here?

ESP_Sprite
Posts: 8921
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2015 4:08 am

Do you think we are playing games here?

Postby ESP_Sprite » Thu Dec 17, 2015 5:31 am

Because, well, we are. We have a Sega Master System emulator running on the ESP31 (which, as you all know, is the beta version of the ESP32), as a demonstration of the power inside this little processor:

Image

Image

And some (unfortunately slightly choppy) video (Youtube link)

So yes, this is basically an older version of SMSPlus running on a single core of the ESP31 chip. It has been trimmed down a bit to fit the memory that's available, and some tricks are used like stashing the video RAM in the 2nd cpu's IRAM segment. Video is output to a 320x240 LCD using the SPI port. Unfortunately, the LCD can only accept about 15 frames per second over SPI, and in the current setup pushing bytes out over the SPI interface takes some time anyway, so the FPS is a bit low, but it's still very playable. Audio is output over the I2S port to an I2S codec. This emu still uses only the first core of the ESP31.

Ah, you also want to play? Good thing we released binaries and sources then. Get them on Github.

WiFive
Posts: 3529
Joined: Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:35 am

Re: Do you think we are playing games here?

Postby WiFive » Thu Dec 17, 2015 10:54 am

Nice! No spi DMA?

ESP_Sprite
Posts: 8921
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Do you think we are playing games here?

Postby ESP_Sprite » Thu Dec 17, 2015 11:00 am

Nope; it's not in the SDK but also it's not needed here. I don't really have the memory to make an 16-bit framebuffer here, and I can get the speed by manually refilling the SPI FIFO.

WiFive
Posts: 3529
Joined: Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:35 am

Re: Do you think we are playing games here?

Postby WiFive » Fri Dec 18, 2015 12:51 am

Makes sense. So DMA spi operations are possible though?

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