The z386 project aims to implement the Intel 80386 processor core on an FPGA. Recent optimizations have significantly improved its performance, including the implementation of early start memory access and a reduction in branch jump cycles from 9.25 down to six through microcode refinements. These changes resulted in approximately a 39% increase in DOOM benchmark scores, though the project still falls short of original hardware speed and cannot yet boot Windows.
- Implementation of early start memory access for FPGA cores
- Optimization of store queues and branch jump timing
- Significant performance gains in gaming benchmarks
- Implementation of early start memory access for FPGA cores
- Optimization of store queues and branch jump timing
- Significant performance gains in gaming benchmarks
PicoClaw is an ultra-lightweight personal AI Assistant inspired by nanobot, refactored from the ground up in Go. It runs on $10 hardware with <10MB RAM and boasts fast startup times and portability.
The article details how the Intel 80386 CPU implemented backwards compatibility with 8- and 16-bit software. It explains the use of SRAM for register storage, a triple-ported register file, and a 'shuffle' network to handle different bit-width reads and writes, including interleaving the bottom 16 bits of the registers.
