Skip to article frontmatterSkip to article content
Site not loading correctly?

This may be due to an incorrect BASE_URL configuration. See the MyST Documentation for reference.

CPU integration

The wrapper and the bus adapter

M68kMachine (src/cpu.rs) wraps the vendored pure-Rust m68k core (crates/m68k/). The core sees the machine through an adapter implementing its AddressBus trait, so every CPU-visible access -- RAM, ROM, custom registers, CIA, RTC, autoconfig, Gayle, Akiko -- routes into the shared Bus and is billed in colour clocks:

Selectable models: 68000, 68010, 68EC020, 68020, 68030, 68040, 68060. [cpu] fpu fits a 68881/68882 to any 020/030 (and is on by default for the 68040, whose FPU is on-die): the vendored core executes the 6888x instruction set in true 80-bit extended precision via a pure-Rust software floating- point engine (crates/m68k/src/fpu/softfloat.rs). Arithmetic (add, sub, mul, div, sqrt), ordered compare, round-to-integer, scale, getexp/getman, the format conversions, FMOVE/FMOVEM in every operand format (including packed decimal), the constant ROM, FBcc/FScc/FDBcc/FTRAPcc, control registers, the FPCR rounding mode/precision and the FPSR exception/accrued bytes, and the FSAVE/FRESTORE state frames (NULL after reset, 68881-style IDLE once touched) are all modelled. The transcendentals (FSIN/FCOS/FTAN, FASIN/FACOS/FATAN, the hyperbolics, FETOX/FETOXM1/FTWOTOX/FTENTOX, FLOGN/FLOGNP1/FLOG2/FLOG10) and FSINCOS run in extended precision too: a double-FloatX80 (“double-double”, ~128-bit) layer (crates/m68k/src/fpu/dd.rs) evaluates Taylor/atanh series over reduced ranges and rounds the result to extended under the FPCR mode, setting INEX and the domain flags (OPERR/DZ). Accuracy is validated against an arbitrary-precision oracle (the pure-Rust astro-float, a dev-only dependency; crates/m68k/tests/fpu_accuracy.rs): every function is within 1 ULP across a wide sweep and all four rounding modes, and round-to-nearest is correctly rounded in practice. They are not chip-bit-exact -- the real 6888x uses its own CORDIC/polynomial microcode, and on a bare 68040 these trap to a software FPSP. FMOD/FREM compute the exact remainder and the FPSR quotient byte. This covers Kickstart’s detection and per-task FPU context switching. The 68000’s per-instruction cycle counts in the vendored core have been corrected to exact totals across the SingleStepTests 68000 cycle corpus (see crates/m68k/CYCLE_TIMING_GAP.md), which is what makes cycle-budgeted pacing trustworthy.

Prefetch

The 68000’s two-word instruction prefetch queue (IRD/IRC) is modelled in the vendored core (prefetch_queue in crates/m68k/src/core/cpu.rs): the next opcode is fetched before the current instruction finishes, so self-modifying code that overwrites the next instruction executes the stale pre-write word (real MC68000 Class 1 SMC behaviour), while a taken branch flushes and refills the stream from the target. The queue lives in the backend core rather than a Copperline-side bus cache, because correct flushing depends on the CPU’s own control flow, exceptions, and interrupts. It is gated to the 68000 and 68010 (prefetch_enabled); 68020+ fetch directly at PC through the bus adapter (their real pipelines hide behind the instruction cache model instead). Chip-RAM probes pin both cases: cpu_prefetch_probe_documents_self_modified_next_opcode_behavior (stale fall-through) and cpu_prefetch_probe_branch_refetches_self_modified_chip_ram_target (branch refetch).

Instruction handlers can move the final prefetch earlier than the generic end-of-instruction top-up when 68000 microcode does so. That matters for register-only forms too: immediate ALU and CMPI to Dn perform the final prefetch before the data-register write or compare flags, and long register forms spend their trailing internal clocks after that prefetch. Plain CMP.L <ea>,Dn computes its flags before the final prefetch, then spends its 2-clock long-compare tail after that prefetch. Long ADD/SUB/AND/OR <ea>,Dn forms write Dn before the final prefetch, then spend their 2- or 4-clock long-ALU tail after it depending on whether the source operand came from memory. ADDA/SUBA and CMPA likewise place their address-arithmetic tail clocks after the final prefetch. EOR Dn,Dm follows the memory-destination EOR ordering: flags are computed first, then the final prefetch/tail runs before the Dm writeback. Register ADDX/SUBX Dm,Dn also poll IPL on the final prefetch before writing Dn, with long forms flushing their 4-clock tail first. MOVE SR,Dn also waits until after the final prefetch and 2-clock tail before storing the SR word into Dn. MOVEA <ea>,An has no flags or tail clocks, but still delays the An update until after the final prefetch and IPL sample. The privileged MOVE An,USP and MOVE USP,An forms use the same prefetch-before-register-update point. Status-register writes also have instruction-specific side-effect timing: MOVE <ea>,CCR/SR and ORI/ANDI/EORI #imm,SR spend their internal status-write delay before the architectural CCR/SR mutation and post-write refill, while immediate-to-CCR mutates the CCR before that delay on the 68000. MOVEM.L <regs>,-(An) also exposes the 68000’s word-step predecrement microcode on the bus: each long transfer writes the low word at An-2 before the high word at An-4, leaving memory big-endian while matching the observed access order. For Bcc/BRA/BSR, the branch-long $FF displacement-byte sentinel is gated to 68020 and later; on the 68000/010 the same byte remains the signed 8-bit displacement -1, so no extension word is consumed. CHK.W on the 68000 tests the upper bound before the lower bound; upper-bound traps take the shorter pre-frame comparison path. A negative Dn that reaches the lower-bound test also takes that shorter path when the preceding signed upper-bound subtraction overflowed; ordinary lower-bound traps spend two more clocks before stacking the group-2 exception frame.

68010

The 68010 shares the 68000’s bus interface and two-word prefetch queue but adds the vector base register, the format-stacking exception model (format 0 four-word frames, format 8 bus/address-error frames, RTD), and DBcc loop mode: a DBcc that branches -4 back to a loopable one-word instruction holds the body/DBcc pair in the prefetch queue and re-executes it with no instruction fetches until the condition turns true, the counter expires, or an exception intervenes (loop_mode in crates/m68k/src/core/cpu.rs; the loopable set and the DBcc entry/exit arms live in core/decode.rs). A looping DBcc iteration costs 6 internal clocks and touches the bus only for the body’s operands, which is what makes tight copy/clear loops measurably faster on a real 68010. crates/m68k/tests/loop_mode_timing_tests.rs pins engagement, the 68000’s non-engagement, and the no-fetch iteration cost.

The 68010’s own cycle costs where they differ from the 68000 are calibrated against the vAmigaTS CPU/Timing/CPU/Timing2 measurements (cross-checked with Moira’s cycle-exact 68010 path, which matches A500+68010 photos): MOVES spends per-EA-mode internal clocks between the address calculation and the SFC/DFC data cycle, MOVE from CCR and privileged MOVE from SR both cost 4 clocks to a register and perform their final prefetch before updating Dn, MOVE from CCR to memory prefetches before its write, long register shifts/rotates use the same base-8 cycle total as the 68000 rather than the later barrel-shifter timing, a format-0 RTE is 24 clocks (the format word is read once, not re-read), and an interrupt dispatch is 46 clocks (12 internal before the four-word format-0 frame) against the 68000’s 44. STOP semantics shared with the 68000: the SR operand is loaded VERBATIM (a single-stepped STOP observes S and T exactly as written; the SST m68000 fixtures pin this), and an S-clear SR stops only momentarily -- at the next instruction boundary the stopped state’s supervisor check raises a privilege violation stacking the STOP itself, so the handler’s RTE re-executes it; a pending trace (T set in the SR the instruction started with) has priority and recovers from the stop, while a T bit loaded by STOP does not fire while stopped. crates/m68k/tests/stop_and_68010_timing_tests.rs pins all of these.

Caches

The on-chip caches are silicon, so they are modelled by default on the parts that have them: the instruction cache on the 68020/68EC020/68030/68040 and the data cache on the 68030/68040 (CpuModel::has_instruction_cache/ has_data_cache). CACR (and CAAR on the 020/030) are always stored; software (AmigaOS at boot) enables and clears the cache exactly as on hardware. A cache hit costs no bus cycle, so a cached instruction fetch does not contend with chip-bus DMA -- which is the point: 020/030/040 code looping out of chip RAM otherwise pays a bitplane-DMA arbitration stall on every fetch and runs at roughly half speed, drifting an AGA demo’s interrupt-driven music or animation to half its intended rate. The data cache only covers expansion RAM/ROM because chip and slow RAM are DMA-visible and cache-inhibited, as on real machines. A 68000/68010 models no cache. [cpu] icache = false/dcache = false opt a cached CPU back out; with no cache modelled, the cache-control instructions are no-ops and self-modifying code always executes fresh bytes (the safe direction).

Each cache is a power-of-two array of direct-mapped longword entries (src/cache.rs): 64 entries (256 bytes) on the 020/030 -- the exact 68020 instruction-cache geometry -- and 1024 (4 KB) on the 68040. The larger 040 capacity is the part that matters here: a chip-RAM loop bigger than 256 bytes stays resident on a 040 where it would thrash a 020. The 040’s 4-way set-associative, 16-byte-line, copyback organisation is deliberately not modelled, and need not be -- copyback is unobservable because the data cache only covers expansion RAM, which is not DMA-visible, so write-back versus write-through cannot be told apart. The 040 also redefines CACR (only the IE/DE enable bits, no freeze or clear strobes) and moves invalidation to the CINV/CPUSH instructions; the model maps a CINV/CPUSH to a whole-cache clear of the indicated cache(s) -- over-clearing line/page scopes, which is always coherent (a push has no dirty data to write back in a write-through model).

The instruction cache does not snoop writes (authentic 68020 behaviour), so a line stays valid until DMA or the CPU rewrites its backing memory, or software clears it (via CACR on the 020/030, via CINV/CPUSH on the 040). Restoring a save state that predates cache modelling (or was captured with the cache disabled) re-establishes the model’s cache cold and re-derives its enable bits from the restored CACR, so the machine keeps the cache its CPU has rather than silently running cacheless after a load.

The 68060

The 68060 is modelled as the full part: on-die FPU and MMU, the 8 KB caches (in the same pragmatic direct-mapped host model as the other parts), and its own timing engine.

Instruction set. The 060 dropped instructions from silicon; on real boards the OS-side 68060.library (Motorola’s 68060SP) emulates them via the chip’s trap interface, and Copperline models exactly that contract. The unimplemented integer set (MOVEP, CHK2/CMP2, CAS2, misaligned CAS, 64-bit MUL/DIV) raises vector 61 with a format 0framestackingthefaultinginstruction,gatedbeforeanyarchitecturalsideeffectsothehandlercanredecodeandreexecute.TheunimplementedFPUset(thetranscendentals,FINT/FINTRZ,FGETEXP/FGETMAN,FMOD/FREM/FSCALE,FSINCOS,FMOVECR,andtheFDBcc/FTRAPcc/FSccconditionals)raisestheLineFvectorwiththesixwordformat0 frame stacking the faulting instruction, gated before any architectural side effect so the handler can re-decode and re-execute. The unimplemented FPU set (the transcendentals, FINT/FINTRZ, FGETEXP/FGETMAN, FMOD/FREM/FSCALE, FSINCOS, FMOVECR, and the FDBcc/FTRAPcc/FScc conditionals) raises the Line-F vector with the six-word format 2 frame the 68060SP dispatches on - next-instruction PC stacked, the calculated operand EA in the frame, FPIAR pointing at the instruction. Packed decimal is the unsupported-data-type exception (vector 55), dynamic-list FMOVEM and immediate packed operands the unimplemented-EA exception (vector 60). [cpu] unimplemented = "native" executes the whole set directly instead, for systems without the library. LPSTOP is implemented as STOP semantics.

Registers and frames. PCR (MOVEC 808)carriestheidentification/revisionwordwithEDEBUG/DFP/ESSwritable;BUSCRsharesMOVECcode808) carries the identification/ revision word with EDEBUG/DFP/ESS writable; BUSCR shares MOVEC code008 with the 040’s DACR0, dispatched by model. The 060 CACR persists the cache/branch-cache/store-buffer enables with CABC/CUBC as write-only clear strobes. The part has a single supervisor stack: the SR M bit is storable (and interrupts clear it) but never banks A7, and MSP/ISP are gone from the MOVEC set. Access errors push the eight-word format 4framewiththefaultaddressandFSLW(composedfromtheMMUwalkcause,R/W,size,andtransfermodifier),andRTEpopsitalongwiththe040sformat7,whichpreviouslyformaterrored.TheFPUstateframeisonelongwordforNULL(aseverypartsincethe68881;execshandbuilttaskcontextsdependonit)andthreeforIDLE.TheMMUsharesthe040sthreelevelwalkerandTC[15]enable;PTESTisgone(undefinedFline)andPLPAR/PLPAWtranslateanaddressintoAn,faultingwiththeformat4 frame with the fault address and FSLW (composed from the MMU walk cause, R/W, size, and transfer modifier), and RTE pops it - along with the 040's format 7, which previously format-errored. The FPU state frame is one long word for NULL (as every part since the 68881; exec's hand-built task contexts depend on it) and three for IDLE. The MMU shares the 040's three-level walker and TC[15] enable; PTEST is gone (undefined F-line) and PLPAR/PLPAW translate an address into An, faulting with the format 4 frame.

Timing. crates/m68k/src/core/timing_060.rs replaces the 020+ scaling formula for the 060: every opcode word classifies (a build-once 64K table over a pure function) into the MC68060UM Chapter 10 dispatch classes with a pOEP cycle cost - most ALU/move instructions one clock, data-dependent costs derived from the 68000-reference count as (raw/4).max(1). Costs are pOEP occupancy at zero-wait: memory latency stays billed by the host bus per access, so bus-bound code shows no pairing benefit, which matches silicon. Superscalar dual issue is modelled retrospectively: an instruction that satisfies the UM Table 10-1 dispatch test against the previous instruction’s open sOEP slot (pOEP|sOEP class, simple EA, no RAW/WAW against the head’s defs, CCR rule, one memory operand per pair, both fetches icache hits, PCR.ESS enabled) refunds to zero additional cycles. The 256-entry branch cache (CACR.EBC; CABC/CUBC clears) folds correctly predicted taken branches onto the preceding instruction’s cycle - a lone predicted branch still issues for one clock, which both matches the canonical one-clock subq/bne loop and guarantees a bare bra self idle loop advances emulated time. Both structures are serialized: prediction state changes cycle counts, and cycle counts change chipset interleaving. timing-test rows 28-30 measure the pair/RAW/loop cases end to end (a 50 MHz 060 runs row 30 at exactly one clock per iteration).

Residuals, all deliberately pessimistic (they under-pair, never over-pair): the sOEP EA subset and dual-memory rule are coarser than UM Table 10-1; the 96-byte IFU FIFO and AGU change/use stalls are not modelled; the store buffer is stored (CACR.ESB) but writes bill at bus rate; pairing across a folded branch is not modelled, and a branch folds only when a pairing window is open; the FSAVE EXCP frame is not generated (the softfloat FPU retires every operation completely); FPSR quotient-bit and denormal traps behave as on the other parts rather than through the 060’s unsupported-data path.

68020+ timing

The 68000/68010 cycle counts are validated against the SingleStepTests (TomHarte) corpus, but no equivalent vectors exist for the 68020, 68030, or 68040 -- the project publishes cycle-accurate vectors for the 68000 only. That is not an oversight: the 020+ parts have an instruction cache, a three-stage pipeline, and dynamic bus sizing, so there is no single cycle-exact count per instruction and therefore no widely-trusted reference to generate vectors from.

Copperline handles this by approximation rather than precision. scale_cycles_for_cpu_type (crates/m68k/src/core/cpu.rs) derives 020+ timing from the corrected 68000 counts: the pipeline and cache make most instructions cost roughly half their 68000 cycles, with a two-cycle floor, and memory-bound work is dominated by the host bus model anyway. The flat scale is wrong for a few instructions whose 020 cost does not track the 68000 count, so those carry an explicit 020 cycle value (still pre-scale): the barrel-shifter shift/rotate, the fixed-cost MULU/MULS, a taken DBcc’s pipeline refill, and MOVE (register vs memory-source read latency). These are calibrated against a cycle-exact A1200 reference (FS-UAE) using the timing-test/ ADF -- with the instruction cache enabled, since that is the A1200 default; timing-test/compare.py checks each row against the reference. This is good enough because Copperline paces to wall-clock time and models the CPU:chipset clock ratio and chip-bus arbitration exactly; per-instruction 020 cycles matter far less than those for Amiga software, which is overwhelmingly 68000. The 68000/68010 paths are left untouched so the TomHarte-validated timing is never disturbed. If 020+ accuracy ever becomes a real requirement, the Motorola 68020/030 user-manual timing tables or differential testing against Moira/Musashi are the realistic sources.

On the A1200 the 020 chip-bus timing is calibrated against a cycle-exact FS-UAE A1200 (the 6/8 scaling above, a 32-bit Alice chip-bus data path, and a two-entry longword fetch latch). The 020’s chip-bus cycle is modelled as 3 CPU clocks, not the 68000’s 4: after the granted colour-clock slot the access bills only the shorter remaining tail (one clock -- half a cck at the stock 2-clock ratio, none at 14 MHz where the 3-clock cycle fits inside one slot), which is the whole chip-slot cost at the native 14 MHz ratio. On Alice, reads, writes, and custom-register reads all consume that granted slot without an additional colour-clock bubble; adding one over-stalls AGA 020 chip-RAM read/modify/write loops, while the A1200 timing-test chip-read row remains aligned without it. On OCS/ECS machines the 020 still talks to the 16-bit chip bus, so chip/slow/custom reads pay a one-CCK data-return wait when the 3-clock short bus cycle is otherwise hidden inside a single colour-clock slot. The tail’s fractional cck are carried so none are lost; the 68000/010 keep the full 4-clock (2-cck) cycle (Bus::cpu_short_bus_cycle). Residuals: per-frame throughput still runs below the reference, and the cycle model does not reflect instruction-cache hit/miss latency (only its bus-traffic effect), so software that toggles CACR cache-on/off and depends on the exact transition timing can diverge.

MMU

The 68030, 68040, and 68060 model the on-chip MMU (has_pmmu), so software that sets up and enables address translation runs rather than having its MMU writes ignored. The two parts differ enough to need separate walkers: the 68030 uses its programmable table walk (CRP/SRP selection, the optional function-code lookup level (TC FCL), the TC index fields TIA-TID, 4-/8-byte descriptor modes, early-termination descriptors, indirect descriptors when the configured levels are exhausted, and the long-format supervisor-only bit), while the 68040 has a fixed-format three-level walk (root -> pointer -> page, 4 KB or 8 KB pages, URP/SRP split by supervisor) keyed off its own TC layout. Both share the transparent translation registers (TTRs: the 030’s TT0/1, the 040’s ITT0/1 + DTT0/1), which short-circuit the walk for a matching address range. Accesses carry their function code into the walk: MOVES translates in the SFC/DFC space (mmu.library’s 030 MMU-detection probe remaps the user-data space and reads it back with MOVES from supervisor mode), and PTEST/PLPA probe the DFC space.

One register set (mmu_* in CpuCore) is canonical for both paths, so the 030 PMOVE writes, the 040 MOVEC writes, and the walker can never desync (the 040 root pointers overload the CRP/SRP address slots, dispatched by cpu_type). The enable bit differs by part -- TC[31] on the 030, TC[15] on the 040 -- via tc_enable(). PMOVE/MOVEC load the registers (including the 030 MMUSR via PMOVE PSR); PLOAD/PFLUSH are accepted as no-ops on the 030 walk (which has no ATC to flush).

A 68040 table walk costs three descriptor fetches, far too much to pay on every access, so the 040 walker is fronted by an address-translation cache (crate::mmu::atc, mirrored on the real 64-entry ATC): a direct-mapped cache of (logical page -> physical page) keyed by page frame and supervisor flag. It is a pure cache -- never serialized (restored empty) -- and is flushed when the mapping could change: a write to TC / a root pointer / a TTR, or a PFLUSH. Like real hardware a plain write to a descriptor does not auto-flush; software must PFLUSH, which is where the ATC is cleared.

The 68040 enforces page protection: a write to a write-protected page (the W bit, accumulated across the table and page descriptors) or a user access to a supervisor-only page (the S bit) raises an access fault, delivered as a 68040 format-7 access-error stack frame at the bus-error vector. The faulting instruction is rolled back and its PC stacked, so after the handler fixes the mapping an RTE restarts it (the demand-paging / memory-protection model). The ATC carries the protection bits, so a cached translation cannot bypass the check. The frame’s SSW reports the read/write direction, the access size, the transfer modifier (function code), and -- for faults that came out of the table walk rather than the physical bus -- the ATC bit; that bit is how an OS-level page-fault handler (mmu.library, VMM, Enforcer) tells a translation fault it must service from a real bus error it must pass on, and mmu.library’s lazily-materialized user tables guru without it (issue #90). A faulted write is reported in writeback slot 2 (WB2S valid bit, size and transfer modifier, address and data in WB2A/WB2D): a handler that clears WB2S.V has absorbed the store -- how Enforcer/MuForce discard writes into protected pages -- and RTE honours that by discarding the restarted instruction’s matching write. A handler that completes the writeback manually but leaves V set gets the restart’s store instead (a double store to plain memory, the restart-model gap). The other writeback slots and continuation fields stay clear; mid-instruction continuation is not modelled.

A data access through an invalid/unconfigured descriptor raises an access fault -- this is how Enforcer/MuForce catch low-memory and freed-memory hits. An instruction fetch through an invalid descriptor instead falls back to identity: a 68040 enables TC before all of its code is mapped during boot, so faulting the fetch stream there would derail it. The bus-error delivery sets the exception-processing flag, so the frame writes and vector fetch do not re-translate (and a fault while delivering a fault is a clean double-fault halt).

PTEST (68040) walks the addressed page and reports the physical address and resident bit in MMUSR (the cache-mode/used/modified attribute bits are not yet filled in). The 68030 PTEST performs a real level-limited walk in the extension word’s function-code space and composes the 16-bit MMUSR (B, S, W -- reported for read tests too -- I, T, and the level count N); with the A bit it hands back the physical address of the last descriptor examined, which is how mmu.library’s fault handler locates the shared descriptor slot to materialize.

68030 faults push the long bus-cycle fault frame (format $B, 46 words): SSW (DF/RW/SIZ/FC for data faults, FB|RB with the stage B address for instruction faults), the data-cycle fault address, and -- for write faults -- the write’s value in the data output buffer. RTE supports both continuation protocols on top of the rollback/restart core: a handler that fixed the mapping RTEs with DF set and the instruction restarts; a handler that completed the data cycle itself clears DF, supplying a faulted read’s result in the data input buffer (mmu.library emulates lazily-zeroed pages this way) or absorbing a faulted write, honoured as a one-shot substitution on the re-executed instruction’s matching access. Remaining: the used/modified/limit MMUSR bits and descriptor write-back, CRP limit checks, and the DT=1 page-descriptor root; the 030 walk has no ATC, so every access re-walks the tables.

Interrupts and STOP

Paula’s INTENA/INTREQ levels are delivered as M68K autovectors through the modelled IPL pipe and boundary sampling described in The timing model. When the CPU executes STOP, the frame loop fast-forwards device time to the next event that can raise an interrupt instead of spinning -- behaviour the debugger’s Step control inherits.

Exceptions

If the guest triggers something unimplemented (an exotic custom-register edge case, say), the CPU may halt with an EXCEPTION. This is non-fatal: the window stays alive showing the last framebuffer, and the debugger can inspect the halted state.