why cant an x86 chip be emulated on an fpga?

9    24 Feb 2016 13:29 by u/pushthis

i feel like i could spend a min in hell for this but...

what stoping the emulation of a x86 chip on an fpga? like cloning unix. sure itd be illegal right?

7 comments

4 u/forgetmyname 25 Feb 2016 01:24

Xlinux FPGAs does not have enough gates to simulate at anywhere near useful speeds, you are into the 1 instruction per second range. (1 Hz versus. 3 000 000 000 000 Hz )

There is this js x86 emulator that you might have missed? https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/878571

Edit: Zet is a simple 16 bit x86 FPGA implementation of a circa ?1990? chip http://zet.aluzina.org/index.php/Zet_processor

0 u/pushthis [OP] 25 Feb 2016 01:26

ty

0 u/forgetmyname 25 Feb 2016 01:53

note that intel has gone and implemented an fpga into some new x86 chips for "expandability"

0 u/pushthis [OP] 25 Feb 2016 02:03

yeah i get that.. im so disenchanted with computer hardware.

1 u/Stavon 25 Feb 2016 00:39

Technically it should be doable on a huge FPGA and very slow.

Legally, probably as long as you won't sell it. Or just make it in China, they also copied a MIPS processor for their supercomputer.

0 u/pushthis [OP] 25 Feb 2016 00:42

yeah, loonson.. i had two of em. (e, emtec's gdium liberty 1000)

are you sure current xilinx products dont have enough logic gates?

1 u/Stavon 25 Feb 2016 00:48

No, no I'm not.