valhalla v0 project

Greetings from the cold! :)

I decided to start a new blog for one of my pet projects of Valhalla.

V0 shall be the first microprocessor design [and Verilog implementation later] in the Valhalla family of microprocessors.

The first goal is to implement a somewhat-RISC-like processor with features for implementing virtual memory as well as multithread/multicore platforms.

Initial platform will attempt to implement a retro-style gaming console as well as a chiptunes synthesizer; I plan on emulating the Commodore 64 SID soundchip as well as the good old SAM speech synthesizer I first encountered on my beloved Commodore 64 around the early 1980's. :)

I shall now list some goals for the V0 console project.

• V0: 32-bit RISC-like microprocessor with miscellaneous extra features inspired by the likes of Cray 1 and RISC-V
• a relatively low resolution of 720x480 pixels or show
• 12-bit pixels represented as 16-bit values in memory; RGB444-format
• 32x32-pixel sprites with mask bitmaps
• framebuffer support to access video screen as a flat array of pixels
• simple 2D graphics acceleration of objects such as lines and polygons
• burst-mode graphics bus transfers
• BLT-support (block transfer)
• graphics double-buffering
• 44.1KHz 16-bit CD-rate audio output
• PS/2 keyboard and mouse support
• 2 digital joystick ports
• hardware support for C64 SID soundchip and audio files
• hardware support for SAM-like speech synthesis
• hardware subtractive synthesis interface
• Mjolnir Rogue-like cyberpunk adventure game
• VAS assembler with V0 machine code backend
• intermediate language V for code transfer from compiler to assembler
• A new or retargeted/ported C compiler to build software for V0
• small multitasking kernel with paging done on memory cards or OTG-drives

That's all for now folks, I'll stay tuned. Have fun! :)