#65837 - legalize - Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:58 am
Its my understanding that the gamelink cable provides master/slave style communication for synchronizing gamestate between multiple GBAs, but is the communication truly one way, or is it possible for "slave" GBAs to act as coprocessors to the main GBA?
For instance, computing fractals is costly. Would it be possible to gang up multiple GBAs via a link cable with the "master" sending out instructions for areas to be computed and the "slaves" sending back the results of the computations for aggregation and display on the master?
#65844 - ScottLininger - Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:43 am
Absolutely.
The "slave" GBAs are running at full speed with their full processor available, so they can do whatever rendering you require. In fact, they have to render their own screens, because it's impossible to transfer enough data each frame for the master GBA to actually send the screen contents out to the other GBAs.
All that you're typically exchanging is the game state. It's usually safest to have the master GBA be the "authority" on the game state.
Alternatively, it's possible for the GBAs to just share, say, their button states, and have each GBA figure out the game state as it changes, but the chance of getting out-of-sync is high.
-Scott
#65876 - Ultima2876 - Fri Jan 06, 2006 1:27 pm
What do you mean by "game state"?
#65900 - tepples - Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:47 pm
Mostly, where all the characters are, how fast they are moving, how much health they have, etc.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#66307 - legalize - Mon Jan 09, 2006 6:19 pm
There's no game involved in this scenario.
There's also no (useful) rendering going on the slave GBAs in this scenario, either.
The point is to use the slave GBAs as essentially coprocessors for the master GBA and feed data back to the master that was computed on the slave.
How much bandwidth can you get out of a gamelink cable? Is it comparable to RS-232 (if so, what baud rate?) or ethernet?
#66334 - Ultima2876 - Mon Jan 09, 2006 8:56 pm
Apparently the figures are 262000 bps and 115200 bps, depending on mode. However, in my experience, the hgihest I've got is about 16 kbps (32 bytes/frame), which is pretty slow...
#66336 - Fatnickc - Mon Jan 09, 2006 9:20 pm
| legalize wrote: |
There's no game involved in this scenario.
There's also no (useful) rendering going on the slave GBAs in this scenario, either.
The point is to use the slave GBAs as essentially coprocessors for the master GBA and feed data back to the master that was computed on the slave.
How much bandwidth can you get out of a gamelink cable? Is it comparable to RS-232 (if so, what baud rate?) or ethernet? |
Despite the fact there is no game-style application in your case, the fact that the rendering can be done and the game state can be passed to and fro indicates that you can have other GBAs doing work.