14:56 <gpent5> Hi all, I'm curious about the relative computational power between the ulx3s 85F with (85k luts) and the Terasic de10-nano with (110k luts). Both seem to be clocked at around 25MHz, and the ulx3s 85f seems to have around 25k (or approx 22%) fewer luts compared to the de10-nano.

14:56 <gpent5> So, would it be safe to assume that the ulx3s 85f would on average be 20 to 30% less powerful than the de10 nano. If not 20 to 30% less powerful, what would be a more reasonable estimate?

14:56 <gpent5> I ask this because I've seen the de10-nano emulating Playstation 1 consoles (via the Mister Project). Do you think the ulx3s 85F is powerful enough to emulate a PS1 along with 3D graphics support?

14:56 <gpent5> I'm interested in purchasing a fpga board for hobby emulator development, and the opensource toolchain supported by the ulx3s 85F looks very appealing to me. But I'm worried if it might not be upto the task of emulating 3d graphics capable hardware.

14:56 <gpent5> Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

14:57 <Sarayan> #1 issue is memory size and bandwidth and latency. #2 issue is available multiplies

14:57 <Sarayan> multipliers

14:58 <Sarayan> the psx1 core uses all of them, in the cyclonev

15:03 <Sarayan> looks like the 85 has more internal ram and a little more dsp blocks than the sx120f, so if you manage to connect fast enough memory it's not immediatly impossible

15:05 <Sarayan> the existing 32M sdram could be enough. Not having a cpu core to handle the cdrom i/o simulation may be an issue though

15:06 <Sarayan> looks like a very interesting board honestly

15:06 <tnt> It's annoyingly in that zone of "not large enough to say 'yes' for sure and not small enough to say 'no' for sure".

15:07 <tnt> Sarayan: it has a ESP32 attached that could do things.

15:09 <Sarayan> tnt: ah nice, didn't see it

15:16 <gpent5> Nice, thank you very much Sarayan and tnt for the responses. If I understood correctly, it looks like the 85F might not be too far behind the de10-nano. This is making me lean more towards getting the 85F.

15:27 <Sarayan> tnt: oh, you'd use the bluetooth chip to handle the sd card? Now that's perverted :-)

15:29 <Sarayan> only 520K of ram in there, that's not a lot

15:39 <gpent5> Sorry, I assumed that the 85F had 32 Mb of memory. By 520Kb of ram, are you referring to like a  faster on-die memory / cache? Does this internal 520 Kb of memory limit the bitstream size, meaning that I won't be able to run very large and complex emulated hardware. Or does it constrain some other aspect of the fpga design?

16:08 <gpent5> Okay, I got it. 520K of ram refers to the max amount of ram available on a ESP32. Sorry for the confusion, please ignore my previous message. '=D

16:33 <Sarayan> gpent5: yeah, it's the esp32 :-)