9 comments

  • bArray 5 hours ago ago

    Looking at the M5Stack Tab5 IoT Development Kit [1] based on the ESP32-P4 - it's a really nice piece of kit.

    [1] https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-tab5-iot-developme...

    • nottorp 2 hours ago ago

      Yeah, the first thing I thought of when seeing this was "how long till this tablet thingy will be out of stock everywhere?".

  • swiftcoder 7 hours ago ago

    How performant is this - are we able to achieve similar speeds as an actual 68k Mac on embedded hardware?

    • vardump 5 hours ago ago

      At 8 MHz, a 68k can execute at most 2M instructions per second. So the answer is going to be yes, if this manages to execute one 68k instruction per ~200 cycles.

      I think executing an instruction is going to be closer to 20-50 cycles than 200, so it should be much faster than a real 68k CPU.

      I think performance is likely to be in the ballpark of a 68040 @20 MHz, but that's just a guess. This would leave 20 cycles for each emulated instruction. With JIT you could reach 200 MHz+ comparable speeds.

      • rasz 3 hours ago ago

        Everything is coming from PSRAM including frame buffer (at 15 fps) so performance is going to be abysmal.

        • vardump 3 hours ago ago

          You should be able to cache hot code and data in the SRAM. Although it'd significantly increase complexity.

    • iamflimflam1 5 hours ago ago

      The P4 is pretty high spec with a 400MHz dual-core RISC-V

      • cardanome an hour ago ago

        Especially as there is a decent working BasiliskII port for the PlayStation Portable with its 333MHz single-core MIPS CPU.

        So this should be much easier.

  • anthk 5 hours ago ago

    VMac would be lighter.