[tombert]

> FPGA doesn't really solve your other two issues, nor is it practical for anything post-PlayStation/Saturn/N64

I agree with most of your point here, bus is that particular one true? Doesn't the Gamecube (for example) use a PowerPC chip? I would be very surprised if isn't an effort to make FPGA implementations of the PowerPC.

I realize that there's a lot more to making a clone system than "just recreating the CPU", but why would making an FPGA for something after the N64 be impractical?

[emodendroket]

As I understand it, the hardware they’re using isn’t up to the task and it would be prohibitively expensive. The complexity is also greater but perhaps that isn’t insurmountable.

[tombert]

I don't know a lot about FPGAs, but I guess I just assumed that they're like basically everything else in tech where they get cheaper and better as time goes on. If that's correct then I don't see why we couldn't have a GameCube or Xbox clone system eventually.

I think this might be more important as time goes on as well. Getting cycle-accurate emulation of anything more complex than the Dreamcast I think will become pretty prohibitive to do in-software. I suspect something like CEN64 might end up being the last cycle-accurate emulator out there (though I would absolutely love to be wrong on that). The advantages of FPGAs would make themselves substantially more apparent at that point than the Gameboy or NES.