MCU for Better FPGA Gaming on Tang Console

The article describes how the author initially used a softcore CPU to improve FPGA gaming cores on the SNESTang but found it limited by slow performance and high resource usage. After collaborating with Sipeed, they integrated the Tang board's onboard MCU (Bouffalo BL616) to overcome these issues. This development led to the release of TangCore 0.6, which enhances core switching and menu systems for FPGA gaming.

A year ago, I added a softcore CPU to SNESTang, to make FPGA gaming cores easier to use. Over the past months, this allowed me to implement features like an improved menu system and core switching. While the softcore served its purpose, its limitations—slow performance, inability to handle complex peripherals like USB, and FPGA resource consumption—became apparent. Now is again the time to introduce some changes. After extensive collaboration with the Sipeed team, we've finally found a way to tap the Tang boards' onboard MCU a Bouffalo BL616 chip to address these challenges. The result is TangCore 0.6, along with all four gaming cores. In this post, I'll discuss integrating the MCU with the Tang gaming cores.