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  • Hacker News
  • Absolutely excellent!

    Open Hardware takes another step forward!

    Well done!

  • This is the closer we have for having a full 32-bit x86 system with FPU. Even with the lower precision in the x87 FPU by using the FPGA DSP blocks, eventually having a "486DX" (i486 instruction set + FPU) would enable running a massive amount of PC software (1980..2000's). Taking his z386 core (based in the i386 microcode) and adding 486-class optimizations, including a simplified dual I/D L1 cache, vs the unified but more complex L1 cache in i486's, really is a beautiful and imaginative approach.
  • How many DOS games used an FPU though? I can only think of one.
  • > Related work and future work

    > ao486 is the closest related open-source design and the CPU behind the established ao486 MiSTer core.

    ao486 from 2014 recently mentioned on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49141236

z486: A 486-Class Pipelined FPGA CPU with Integrated Floating-Point · Birbla