Monday, March 14, 2016

Virtual Machines and CPU emulation - update.

In previous episode I presented version 2.0 of my MOS 6502 simulator.
I wasn't yet fully satisfied with the character I/O emulation performance, so I started looking if anything could be improved in this area.
First of all, my character I/O emulation was designed to always be performed on a virtual text display device emulator (class Display). This approach required the contents of the virtual text display memory to be frequently updated on the console screen (each time the content was updated). This caused performance issues and flicker when characters were put to the emulated screen at high rate of speed. My friend suggested that I should use native STDIO for rudimentary text I/O. I thought it was a very good idea and even better idea was to always keep a shadow copy in the virtual display device. This way, when executing code in debug mode (either one of the step-by-step modes: S - step, N - go number of steps with or without registers animation - command 'F', or continuous code execute modes: C - continue or G - go/cont. from new address), the contents of the emulated console could always be recalled to the screen (command 'T') when code was interrupted or the screen contents messed up. In these modes native STDIO is not used to directly emulate character I/O - the display device is refreshed to the screen at the same rate as the contents of the text are updated - just like in previous version. 
It is OK for debug modes, they don't need to be fast.
However for continuous code execute mode (X - execute from new address), I wanted to have good performance and non-flicker character output. In this mode, I use native DOS/shell console STDIO to output text. The emulated text device keeps a copy of everything (to its capacity of course) that went to the console though. However it is not output to the console as the characters are already output via native STDIO.
This came along nicely and performance in DOS console improved greatly, flicker is gone. Surprisingly though, this STDIO native mode is much slower on Linux. Perhaps because I am connecting to my Linux box via network while I work on my DOS console directly. The display device emulation works faster in Linux shell than in DOS console though and has no or almost no flicker. 
Also, due to Linux default character output behavior (no buffer flush unless new line is output), I had to add flush of the 'cout' stream after each character output.
Well, I found the new version satisfactory and better than previous one despite the disappointing performance problem on Linux, so i updated code on github. Let's call it version 2.1.
As for the future plans, in addition to goals I set in previous blog update, I am also thinking of making this emulator cycle-accurate and switch to GUI at some point.
But I am having a bit of a burnout with this project, so perhaps I will take a break from it, go to my other open projects and return with renewed enthusiasm later. In the meantime, enjoy this version.






3/15/2016
M.K.

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