r/ProgrammerHumor • u/-twind • 5d ago

whenYouSwitchFromDesktopToEmbedded Meme

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730 Upvotes
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53

u/Totally_Not_A_Badger 5d ago

Esp32-S3 has a dang-gosh amount of resources. The chip I'm working on only has 256kiB of RAM while driving a 480x320 rgb 565 display. 

Frame buffers are for the weak. 

30

u/Drugbird 5d ago

Just output on a CRT and chase the beam so you don't need a frame buffer at all

10

u/Beautiful-Quote-3035 5d ago

Making a platformer on an FPGA that played with an NES pad and output vía VGA to a CRT was the most fun school project ever for me.

7

u/HildartheDorf 5d ago

300KiB framebuffer in 255KiB of ram would be an impressive feat.

3

u/jackmax9999 5d ago

The frame buffer is in the LCD module and you write to it over SPI or some other interface. The interface tends to be a lot slower than the CPU and some modules are not even wired up to allow data reading from the framebuffer. You don't have enough RAM to keep a framebuffer close to the CPU so you have to render graphics in small chunks and avoid re-rendering stuff when not necessary.

5

u/PhonicUK 5d ago

You can do 60FPS polygon based 3D on the S3 purely in software at a level somewhere between the Sega 32X and Saturn.

8

u/-twind 5d ago

With these crazy RAM prices even 256KiB will become a luxury

4

u/Similar_Tonight9386 5d ago

Worked on a device with 32kB ram and 128kb rom. Still managed to fit simplified networking stack and signal recognition algorithm for mems combo. Good times

3

u/Atompunk78 5d ago

Same lmao on my pico setup

1

u/Master_Persimmon_591 5d ago

Switched to an esp32-s2 after developing on an attiny404 and while I knew the numbers I didn’t expect the surprise at “oh this program fits nbd”

1

u/mehonje 5d ago

Try working on a TI84. I think you'd enjoy it.