A Moogle  🏳️‍🌈 💻 🎮 🎶 🇸🇪

The bitstream that gets uploaded to an FPGA, unless it's concretely set in some ROM, is ostensibly software. It can be changed at run-time to configure the functionality of those logic elements. It is far more akin to software than even firmware.

When a CPU runs microcode is it hardware or software? If someone turned the verilog into an ASIC is it still software?

If someone turns the Verilog into an ASIC, is it suddenly a more accurate representation of the hardware?

No. But if the verilog was derived from a chip decap it is.

If that information is plugged into an emulator running on a PC, you now have an emulator with the same level of accuracy. People treating FPGA emulation like some kind of religion act as if it's accomplishing something PC-based emulators *can't* do, and that's not the case.

The emulation could be perfect on either or could be completely botched on either. One thing a PC can't do is reduce the latency to zero.

And I'm happy to suggest FPGA-based emulation as a solution to that. But this woo-woo "magically accurate" crap is the technical equivalent of MMS or Jilly Juice, and can fuck right off. Functional accuracy comes from effort, it's not an inherent aspect of the solution.

I adore the amount of effort that's being put into FPGA-based emulation. If it weren't for that, 1942 would *still* have a broken title screen in MAME. There's nothing inherently bad with FPGA-based emulation itself. But the way it tends to be promoted leans on half-truths.