CLK: A latency-hating emulator of 8- and 16-bit platforms

[Radertified]

https://github.com/TomHarte/CLK

Seems to be MacOS and Linux only (for now?).

The GitHub description:

A latency-hating emulator of 8- and 16-bit platforms: the Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, Apple II/II+/IIe and early Macintosh, Atari 2600 and ST, ColecoVision, Enterprise 64/128, Commodore Vic-20 and Amiga, MSX 1, Oric 1/Atmos, Sega Master System, Sinclair ZX80/81 and ZX Spectrum.

I'd like to see C64 emulation. Amiga emulation seems to be still WIP:

Commodore Amiga emulation is also present, but for now remains wilfully inaccurate.

Definitely an interesting project. Double click on any file and it'll automatically detect which system it needs, sets it up and runs it.

[jotd]

Xenon 3 : the genesis probe

Isn't that an emulator that can predict user input and pre-compute the instructions paths so when input is selected response time is fast ?

I heard about such beasts. Eat a lot of CPU but you get less latency than on the real thing. Doesn't seem to be the case with CLK though.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by jotd

Xenon 3 : the genesis probe

Isn't that an emulator that can predict user input and pre-compute the instructions paths so when input is selected response time is fast ?

I heard about such beasts. Eat a lot of CPU but you get less latency than on the real thing. Doesn't seem to be the case with CLK though.

The method described by you might be making things worse in some situations: user input is not the predicted one, less cpu power might be available in this moment and lately would even increase ... this would make the behavior even less predictable...

But as you said: that is not what "CLK" is doing.
Interesting project - I will give it a try:

https://github.com/TomHarte/CLK

[Radertified]

Whoops. I forgot the link in my original post. Thanks for linking it, Gorf. I've added it too.

[jotd]

the predictions cost a lot of CPU. Such emulators target high end machines, you're perfectly right.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by jotd

the predictions cost a lot of CPU. Such emulators target high end machines, you're perfectly right.

Might be feasible for limited input possibilities like with games: only four or eight directions plus a few buttons ... a fast multicore cpu will be able to deliver lets say 16 possible scenarios simultaneous every few milliseconds ... most of the time the input will be "none"...

If you have analog inputs like paddles or analog joystick or if you are emulating an Amiga with keyboard and mouse, the possibilities just get too many for this approach even on high end machines I imagine.

Sorry for the side-topic: it has nothing to do with the "CLK" emulator, which tries to be low latency by classical optimization and signal processing.