Emulation Description Language

[SavourySnaX]

Hi everyone,

I`m new here, I joined because of a post someone had made about writing a language to help writing emulators ( I was googling around for competing projects) . Funnily enough I have been working on such a thing recently in my spare time. The language is still evolving and will be for a while yet, its currently geared towards processor description (and not general systems).

The language has no concept of I/O and as such is not capable of boot strapping. In fact, in some regards perhaps it could be thought of as a data driven cpu description language at present. I have implemented what in theory is a pin cycle accurate emulation of the Intel 8080 with the new language. Hopefully i've included the images below correctly showing it running.

Space Invaders (video/input are currently handled by C code)



A timing window (it shows exactly what the cpu pins are doing in realtime) - A logic analyser basically.



If you are curious its all hosted at This Site

[dosfan]

Wow, this is a fascinating project. I'm surprised you didn't receive any replies here.

My hobby interests have moved on to FPGAs recently so I can appreciate what is involved to produce a cycle accurate emulation (simulation?)

I've seen various "softcores" in VHDL and Verilog. How does this language compare to HDLs ? Isn't it essentially the same thing (though non synthisizable) ?

[DavidCooper]

I meant to comment on it, but I was waiting for other people with greater knowledge to lead the way. It looks seriously cool to me, though it isn't doing anything I'd ever need an OS to do. Anyway, if there had been a like button on it, I'd have clicked it long ago.