Hacker News: faragon

New comment by faragon in "Jev introduces a new shape of LLM"

faragon — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 07:42:22 +0000

Is it 100% deterministic?

New comment by faragon in "Recreating Voodoo Graphics and a Late-1990s Gaming PC on an FPGA"

faragon — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 18:24:25 +0000

New post by @nand2mario. This is the continuation of his work in his z486 FPGA core ([1]), now adding the implementation of the original Voodoo Graphics GPU. In addition to the linked blog post, it is also published a video ([2]), and a SD image for testing ([3]) with the Xilinx KV260 dev kit, as this time the FPGA used in the MiSTer FPGA project is not enough for fitting the CPU core and the GPU.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49308269

[2] https://x.com/nand2mario/status/2096133116066992568

[3] https://x.com/nand2mario/status/2096454368929485184

Recreating Voodoo Graphics and a Late-1990s Gaming PC on an FPGA

faragon — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 18:24:25 +0000

Article URL: https://nand2mario.github.io/posts/2026/zsst-voodoo/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49589336

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by faragon in "How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?"

faragon — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 08:01:07 +0000

Accurate or not, there are many risks other than those that could bring AI companies value to 0. E.g., systems not requiring passing over all the data continuously, but in small regions running at L2-L3 cache memory speed. Once someone figures out that, the need for high bandwidth memory would end.

New comment by faragon in "z486: A 486-Class Pipelined FPGA CPU with Integrated Floating-Point"

faragon — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:24:54 +0000

Games, very few, if any. But software in general, quite a lot.

New comment by faragon in "z486: A 486-Class Pipelined FPGA CPU with Integrated Floating-Point"

faragon — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 13:59:44 +0000

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.

New comment by faragon in "Firefox 153 available with support for Vulkan video decoding, JPEG-XL"

faragon — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:59:52 +0000

8K decoding needs HW acceleration, unless having 8-16 cores with AVX-512.

New comment by faragon in "China's open-weights AI strategy is winning"

faragon — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:42:49 +0000

1) open-weights

2) critical mass

3) de-facto monopoly

4) closed-weights on frontier models

5) profit

New comment by faragon in "Linux on the Sega 32X. Who needs hardware synchronization primitives anyway?"

faragon — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:32:30 +0000

Thank you very much! Is the SSFv2 mapper supporting memory writes in the MiSTer FPGA, too? (Megadrive and/or 32x cores). Also, now that there's a SH3 core already available ([1] for replicating the Cave CV1000 system), it could be mind blowing having a system with 512MB of RAM on a SH3 at 100MHz running Linux.

[1] https://github.com/ika-musume/HS3

New comment by faragon in "Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly"

faragon — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:40:51 +0000

They may consider rewriting their web-based apps into native apps using IA.

New comment by faragon in "[dead]"

faragon — Sat, 30 May 2026 04:16:08 +0000

https://archive.is/RsXYO

New comment by faragon in "Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March"

faragon — Sun, 03 May 2026 10:06:38 +0000

Microsoft degrading user experience plus lower price on Mac computers it maybe their downfall. E.g., removing local accounts, unwanted advertising, arbitrary decisions (forced TPM requirement), etc.

New comment by faragon in "How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?"

faragon — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 07:52:33 +0000

"All your Copilot are belong to us"

New comment by faragon in "OpenAI to double workforce as business push intensifies"

faragon — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 05:45:08 +0000

Wasn't their target to replace humans with AI? Why is that not applicable to their business?

New comment by faragon in "Monkey Island for Commodore 64 Ground Up"

faragon — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:12:05 +0000

IIRC, the original CGA/EGA version was: 8x 360KB 5.25" disks, or 4x 720KB 3.5" disks.

New comment by faragon in "The Eternal Promise: A History of Attempts to Eliminate Programmers"

faragon — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:41:46 +0000

Maybe it's time for creating simpler languages, easier to validate with a mix of LLMs, grammar validation, and test-covered aggregation/integration.

New comment by faragon in "Arm wants a bigger slice of the chip business"

faragon — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 06:27:58 +0000

It's "fair": ARM takes 1% of the iPhone CPU, i.e., less than 0.1% of the total phone price, while Apple takes 30% of the apps in the iStore

New comment by faragon in "IBM tripling entry-level jobs after finding the limits of AI adoption"

faragon — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 08:47:09 +0000

With the workforce may happen like with DRAM and NAND flash memories: unexpected demand in one side leaving without enough offer in other sides.

New comment by faragon in "xAI joins SpaceX"

faragon — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 08:34:04 +0000

My question is how they'll update the hardware, if AI processors get outdated every 4-5 years? Or they will keep outdated satellites just for routing and Internet-related services?

New comment by faragon in "Nexphone-A phone that runs Android, Linux, and Windows?"

faragon — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 08:36:19 +0000

Is it working for phone calls when running Debian and Windows?