On: RP2040 Doom

[klelatti]

Isn’t it a __lot__ more powerful than a 286? 32 bit dual core at 133 MHz - roughly a Pentium say?

Plus some of the early 8 bit machines drove a display with minimal extra hardware - eg the ZX80 / ZX81 although it was very very slow as a result!

[ChuckMcM → klelatti]

In terms of instructions per clock and I/O bandwidth it compares more favorably to 16 bit architectures than 32 bit ones even though the Cortex-M family is nominally 32 bits.

[klelatti → ChuckMcM]

I think memory bandwidth is key and I don’t know how the RP2040 stacks up but even 486 wasn’t superscalar and maxed out at 66MHz by comparison.

[happycube → klelatti]

RP2040 is designed to provide full bandwidth to both cores at once without bandwidth contention. Combined with the PIO's you can do some really impressive bitbanging.

[klelatti → happycube]

Thanks - that’s good to know. Must be into at least 486 territory then - with the exception of floating point.