FastRam block copy new commands thoughts
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 9:31 pm
I was actually wondering about doing some sort of simple blitter internally in the PLD logic to block copy data or clear data in fast ram...
The thought came around in light of recent booster ideas of copying ROM to FastRAM via the PLD logic alone. Pretty much the PLD would copy and write data at the same time.. Not so simple with fastram to fast ram copy.. was still actually possible..
Basically what we would have is a start register, end register, and block size register. Where the PLD do the copying direct to and from fast ram and the CPU is only used to program the three registers. It will be a lot faster (aka less clock cycles) to do a copy this way rather than using the CPU..
Similar, a block clear could be done extremely fast by the PLD logic. Basically how it would work is a counter internally in the PLD is just set with the start address, and it would count up from this address according to the block size register. As the fast ram will be 10ns speeds, a block wipe can be done extremely fast. Obviously a block copy could be done pretty much with the same counters internally..
The question is, would such new functions be useful or even be used in future or current software ?
The thought came around in light of recent booster ideas of copying ROM to FastRAM via the PLD logic alone. Pretty much the PLD would copy and write data at the same time.. Not so simple with fastram to fast ram copy.. was still actually possible..
Basically what we would have is a start register, end register, and block size register. Where the PLD do the copying direct to and from fast ram and the CPU is only used to program the three registers. It will be a lot faster (aka less clock cycles) to do a copy this way rather than using the CPU..
Similar, a block clear could be done extremely fast by the PLD logic. Basically how it would work is a counter internally in the PLD is just set with the start address, and it would count up from this address according to the block size register. As the fast ram will be 10ns speeds, a block wipe can be done extremely fast. Obviously a block copy could be done pretty much with the same counters internally..
The question is, would such new functions be useful or even be used in future or current software ?