Slashdot Mirror
The NES Classic is a $60 Single Board Computer Running Linux
"Nintendo's accurate NES emulator apparently needs no less than a quad-core CPU," joked Ars Technica. "The next step, of course, is unscrewing of the nostalgic little box to see how it ticks -- and whether its limited functionality might ever be expanded, either officially or by hackers." Slashdot reader romiz summarizes what's inside Nintendo's new miniature emulator for classic games:
With a quad-core ARM Cortex-A7, 256 MB of RAM, and 512 MB of NAND Flash, it is typical of the hardware found in Linux single board computers, like the Raspberry Pi 2. Surprisingly for Nintendo, there does not seem to be any custom components in it, and it looks like it even does run Linux. [YouTube video] The GPL license for the kernel and many other open source components is visible in the legal information screen. The source, however, is not yet available on Nintendo's open source page.
But it is the re-edition a 1980s video console: there is no network access, no hardware expansion port, and the 30 games cannot be changed. Changing the system running on it will probably be difficult.
But it is the re-edition a 1980s video console: there is no network access, no hardware expansion port, and the 30 games cannot be changed. Changing the system running on it will probably be difficult.
That would have been a more elegant solution; but why would Nintendo use a ~$70 FPGA to do something they can get a bottom-feeder ARM SoC to do; with the added advantage of being able to share the emulator software with any of their other products that are adequately powerful?
If cost-per-unit were the binding constraint, Nintendo would presumably be best served by building their own, hopefully less eccentric, version of the NES-on-a-chip hardware that you find under a glob top in the assorted 'famiclone' consoles of the world; but doing that would both make doing the design relatively expensive; and be useless for any of their products that don't have the resulting hardware embedded.
Emulation is kind of an ugly, brute force, approach; but it gives Nintendo the flexibility to add 'NES' to just about anything powerful enough just by providing a copy of the software.
If they haven't yet posted the source for linux, then they're violating the license.