what the fuck, the sega saturn used five different processors??? three cpus and two gpus? how the fuck did anyone code for that
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this isn't multi-core stuff either this is separate processors all running their own code
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also there's a sixth cpu dedicated to doing sound but that was the norm at the time

apparently they might've been planning genesis back-compatibility because they used the 68000 as the audio coprocessor in the saturn, the same chip as the cpu of the genesis (this was common; the ps2 used the ps1's main cpu as an audio coprocessor which enabled near-perfect ps1 back-compatibility, and the gba did the same for the gbc)
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@Felthry I guess the processors were similar enough that you could offload background stuff to them if you wanted to, but I can't imagine it would simplify anything considering the synchronization and communication would be so complicated. was the cache shared at least?

@curls as we understand it there were two pairs of identical processors (that is, processors a and b were the same, and c and d were the same, but a and b were entirely unrelated to c and d) and one main controller that was a completely different architecture and also included a DSP that was used for matrix calculations for 3D graphics

I don't know if cache was shared; I think main memory was though. vram was Weird™.
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@curls as vram usually is. as i understand it it was quad-port ram, which is already pretty strange, with one port for each of the main cpus and gpus, excluding the main controller which i don't think had access to vram
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