Lots of potential in the ST018 chip for the snes

[johannesmutlu]

The ST018 chip was only used in 1 snes game for AI jn a board game,HOWEVER, i do see lots and lots of potential in that chip because that ST018 chip is a 32bit ARM chip running at 21mhz, so i was wondering, why not use that chip port doom on it???

 

the snes does have enough bandwidch to stream rendered graphics at 200x160 pixels at 30fps,far more then the 16bit superfx chip was capable off,also that super fx chip only accepted a max of 2MB rom space??

 

what we could do is,

1,port the jaguar version of doom to the ST018 chip,then take all the music from the original snes doom and put it in the homebrewed version of it, but those sound effects needs to replaced with those sound effects from the jaguar version albeit at a higher pitch, by using the flexible sound driver engine,we can swap voices & sound samples in and out in order to get around that 64K ram limit,to allow sound streaming on the snes as well?

 

so we can have better graphics,sound and a waay better response time in doom on snes that way,,

 

and while randy linden did his best to squeze as much data in that 2MB rom space and he tryed to optimize his reality game engine as much as he could, the simple fact is just that even the superfx2 chip(despites offloading some data to the snes such as BG layers & sound) just wasn’t powerful enough to run doom ,sadly?,randy linden just should,ve opted for the st018 chip instead ,it would,ve saved him alot of painstaking time consuming work,

 

it’s sad that the st018 chip didn’t get much recognition as the super fx chip,because it deserves it.

 

 

[Punisher5.0]

The SuperFX2 is probably better suited to a game like Doom than the ST018. I couldn't find much info on the processor though. Regardless, last I checked the ST018 wasn't emulated in flash carts so there is no point in this large endeavor.

[Sir Guntz]

On 5/12/2021 at 7:22 PM, johannesmutlu said:

the snes does have enough bandwidch to stream rendered graphics at 200x160 pixels at 30fps,far more then the 16bit superfx chip was capable off,also that super fx chip only accepted a max of 2MB rom space??

 

 

 

Yes, but how do we know the ST018 can do that?

[johannesmutlu]

14 hours ago, Sir Guntz said:

 

Yes, but how do we know the ST018 can do that?

Because the st018 chip is an arm based 32bit processor running at 21mhz, so it’s more powerful then the 3DO and the gba cpu chip, in fact, that st018 chip was supposed to became the 32bit cpu for the snes CD,but it eventually ended up in 1 snes game called “hayazashi nidan mirota shogi 2 (a very hard name to pronounce,remember and spelling),it was only used for AI in that game, but theres no denie that theres lots and lots of potential in that chip,because it’s waaay more powerful then the super fx2 chip,wich is btw a 16bit risc chip.

[jeffythedragonslayer]

Ok, I'll try to get the ball rolling on ST018 documentation at SnesLab.  I've been encouraged to do this by more than one person.  If anyone can send me a copy of the game, that would also help.

[WavyGravy]

IIRC, the ST018 doesn't really communicate very well with the SNES. It was made to accelerate Shogi moves, and not really do anything else, so it doesn't have the memory logic needed to transfer large amounts of data back to the SNES. For that reason, it's impractical for most real-time operations like drawing or logic. Could be useful for other kinds of turn-based games, though, like Chess or even strategy games like Fire Emblem or Tactics Ogre. Maybe helping to calculate physics in a golf game or something?

[jeffythedragonslayer]

1 hour ago, WavyGravy said:

IIRC, the ST018 doesn't really communicate very well with the SNES. It was made to accelerate Shogi moves, and not really do anything else, so it doesn't have the memory logic needed to transfer large amounts of data back to the SNES. For that reason, it's impractical for most real-time operations like drawing or logic. Could be useful for other kinds of turn-based games, though, like Chess or even strategy games like Fire Emblem or Tactics Ogre. Maybe helping to calculate physics in a golf game or something?

Fullsnes says the chip is pre-programmed.  That sounds to me like the ST018 machine code is on the ST018 chip itself and is not being loaded from the regular Game Pak ROM that simple games that don't have enhancement chips use.  More specifically, Near says the ROM is on-die:

 

https://github.com/ares-emulator/ares/blob/master/ares/sfc/coprocessor/armdsp/memory.cpp

 

So, it sounds to me like all it can run is Hayazashi Nidan Mirota Shogi 2 and we can't reprogram it to do golf physics.  So, I believe that is the answer - the reason the ST018 isn't talked about much is moreso that it can't be programmed to play other games, not because it was unpopular (only used in one game).

Edited May 21, 2023 by jeffythedragonslayer

[jeffythedragonslayer]

Disregard previous message; command A5 is the key to reprogramming the ST018.  See the note at the very bottom of http://problemkaputt.de/fullsnes.htm#snescartsetast018preprogrammedarmcpu1game

Edited May 21, 2023 by jeffythedragonslayer

[SlidellMan]

Looks like Nintendo was experimenting with ARM processors earlier than I had originally thought.

[johannesmutlu]

10 hours ago, jeffythedragonslayer said:

Fullsnes says the chip is pre-programmed.  That sounds to me like the ST018 machine code is on the ST018 chip itself and is not being loaded from the regular Game Pak ROM that simple games that don't have enhancement chips use.  More specifically, Near says the ROM is on-die:

 

https://github.com/ares-emulator/ares/blob/master/ares/sfc/coprocessor/armdsp/memory.cpp

 

So, it sounds to me like all it can run is Hayazashi Nidan Mirota Shogi 2 and we can't reprogram it to do golf physics.  So, I believe that is the answer - the reason the ST018 isn't talked about much is moreso that it can't be programmed to play other games, not because it was unpopular (only used in one game).

Well if that’s true that the st018 chip was preprogrammed beforehand and that theres no way in hell to reprogram it to your desire,if theres no data bus added to it to pump large chunks of data,that will be very dumb and disappointing because i was thinking that we might otherwise could port the GBA version of doom or v rally 3 to it and then run it trough the snes,

but what if we could clone that st018 chip trough a fpga chip and add the option to reprogram it to your taste,then add the necessary data bus to it,the we might could do stuff on the snes wich would be otherwise impossible,we should also not forget that the st018 chip was supposed to be in the 32bit snes CD addon to probably function like a powerful beast,so i just don’t see why i can’t be done,

my wetdream is to see full color fully textured 3D games running on a snes.