power on to play
shelf
the chip · measured
The screen is a page of the chip’s own memory. Nothing draws it but this page.
the gates are real · sampled
Every gate is a switch that exists on this die, and it conducts exactly when its own control line is high on the chip running this game. Nothing simulates a clock phase. The letter is the channel that is open right now.
this console
A console whose frames are run on a transistor-level MOS 6502. The screen is a page of the chip’s own memory and nothing draws it but this page. The builder pages and the editor are here too.
Why it is slow, and what that measures
A frame costs 600 half-cycles, and every one of them is solved switch by switch on the die: this is a simulation of the transistors, not of the instruction set. That is where the time goes. Over the API the whole machine travels to the engine and back on each frame besides, because the server keeps no sessions; the engine key on the strip, and the settings page, hand the same machine to a chip running in this page instead, where there is no trip left to pay for. The frames a second above is the measurement, either way.
A cartridge is one gzipped file carrying the ROM, its tiles and the contract it was written to. Mint one with POST /v1/cartridge, then load it here or link to it with ?cart=. Everything published so far is on the builder pages, and publishing one happens in the editor.