Asymmetric multiprocessing...
Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 4:49 pm
First a disclaimer: this came out of a JOKE on the QL Forum IRC yesterday. I slept on it and want to float it here, just because it is an interesting idea.
It is possible to connect secondary processors of different architectures to the QL.
In this example, a Z80 or 6502 is connected to the A port of a 64K dual port SRAM. The B port is mapped on the QL. The QL can write a ROM image into the SRAM and reset the CPU to launch it with that OS. The CPU can do all the things it would do with that 64K as though it were a full computer, and the QL side would "just" need to know how the alternate system operated. It could then do proxy keyboard input, etc. It's even possible to map some of the DPRAM to the IO area so the guest CPU could access IO directly, if some kind of interrupt/halt mechanism is constructed.
We found this quite an amusing idea, although we couldn't immediately think of any practical uses for it!
So, if you could have any real world second CPU, what would it be and what would you do with it?
What's POSSIBLE?
It is possible to connect secondary processors of different architectures to the QL.
In this example, a Z80 or 6502 is connected to the A port of a 64K dual port SRAM. The B port is mapped on the QL. The QL can write a ROM image into the SRAM and reset the CPU to launch it with that OS. The CPU can do all the things it would do with that 64K as though it were a full computer, and the QL side would "just" need to know how the alternate system operated. It could then do proxy keyboard input, etc. It's even possible to map some of the DPRAM to the IO area so the guest CPU could access IO directly, if some kind of interrupt/halt mechanism is constructed.
We found this quite an amusing idea, although we couldn't immediately think of any practical uses for it!
So, if you could have any real world second CPU, what would it be and what would you do with it?
What's POSSIBLE?