Ant64: tomorrow, as advertised yesterday
Big headlines. Bigger enthusiasm. Thirty-one imaginary magazine adverts for a computer that would have made quite a splash on a wood-panelled desk.
Original retro advert mockups inspired by late-1970s and early-1980s computer advertising. These are playful concept illustrations of the current design; the linked documentation describes the hardware.
Small name. Rather big ideas.
Meet the reconfigurable home computer for musicians, coders and creative explorers. Eight illuminated jog dials. A portrait touchscreen. Four joystick ports. And an FPGA at its heart.
Explore the keyboard, jog dials, controller ports and system overview.
Your next band member has eight knobs.
Illuminated jog dials and USB MIDI put creative control at your fingertips. Pulse joins the band, while FireStorm brings Tempest audio and Blaze graphics to the show. Give your imagination a volume control.
Read about FireStorm and the hands-on controls.
Blaze a trail. Raise a Tempest.
EE is the FPGA Execution Engine. Blaze is FireStorm graphics. Tempest is FireStorm audio. Pulse is the separate audio and control system. A bright idea with a sound future.
Take a closer look at FireStorm and the Execution Engine.
FOUR PORTS. NO SHORT STRAWS.
Four joystick ports. One illuminated power button. Invite the competition round. Ant64 makes room for company.
GO ON. GIVE TOMORROW A TWIDDLE.
Eight illuminated rotary encoders. Eight push buttons. Hands-on control with a colourful personality. Meet Cranky, the Ant64 jog dial controller.
YOUR BEST IDEAS DESERVE MORE THAN THE BACK OF AN ENVELOPE.
Meet the FPGA Execution Engine. A RISC-V heart for a reconfigurable computer. Write something worth staying up for.
A LITTLE SLOT FOR SOME VERY BIG IDEAS.
Game ROMs. FPGA personalities. Active cartridges. The Ant64 cartridge port opens the door to more possibilities.
WE HAVE PUT YOU IN TOUCH WITH THE FUTURE.
A portrait touchscreen beside a proper keyboard. A circular display above it. And eight illuminated jog dials ready for your next bright idea.
THE ORCHESTRA FITS ON THE DESK. THE CONDUCTOR IS UP TO YOU.
Tempest brings FireStorm audio. Blaze brings FireStorm graphics. Pulse is the separate audio and control system. Ant64: give your imagination an encore.
More machines than desks
Home micros, consoles and arcade personalities bring the spirit of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to both Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. The range depends on the available FPGA cores, their integration and the software each personality needs.
THE AMIGA HAD A FUTURE. LET'S GO THERE.
Amiga personalities: OCS, ECS and AGA. Explore the planned AAA recreation of Commodore's unshipped chipset, and SAAA, our own extended design. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum: a new home for old ambitions.
ST TODAY. STe TOMORROW. SAME DESK.
Atari ST and STe personalities. A familiar world of music, graphics and programming, reimagined in FPGA hardware. On Ant64 and eZX Spectrum.
YOUR FIRST COMPUTER. AND YOUR OTHER FIRST COMPUTER.
C64. BBC Micro. Two very different childhoods, one reconfigurable idea. Explore home-computer personalities on Ant64 and eZX Spectrum.
THE CONSOLE WAR HAS MOVED INTO ONE HOUSE.
Nintendo NES and SNES. Sega Master System and Mega Drive. Console personalities for Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. Choose a system. Pick up a controller. Settle it on screen.
THE ARCADE IS OPEN. SLIPPERS WELCOME.
Bring arcade personalities home with Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. Reconfigurable hardware, four controller ports, and decades of inspiration. Your living room has just levelled up.
OLD MACHINES. NEW TRICKS. NO EXTRA BOARD.
The built-in Accelerator connects FPGA personalities to shared AntOS services: display, sound, input, storage and networking. Graphics layers can sit above and below the guest display. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum.
CHANGE THE COMPUTER. KEEP YOUR COMPOSURE.
AntOS stays running when the FPGA changes personality. Files, tools and a scriptable environment stay at your fingertips. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum: different personalities, a familiar home.
10 PRINT "WHAT'S NEXT?"
Built-in AntBASIC. Built-in Luau. Start at the Ready prompt, then make the machine your own. Learn, experiment and script AntOS on both Ant64 and eZX Spectrum.
Explore the personality designs, Accelerator, AntOS, AntBASIC and Luau. AAA is a planned recreation of an unshipped Commodore chipset; SAAA is this project's own extension.
YOUR COMPUTER WOULD LIKE TO MEET THE OUTSIDE WORLD.
GPIO opens the door to hands-on electronics. Connect a suitable breakout. Read switches. Light LEDs. Turn a bright idea into a blinking one. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum: curiosity, connected.
TODAY, A FLASHING LIGHT. TOMORROW, WHO KNOWS?
A GPIO port. A breadboard. A head full of ideas. Explore inputs and outputs with Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. The most interesting peripheral could be the one you make.
YOUR NEXT HIT COULD START WITH A COMPUTER KEY.
USB MIDI brings instruments and controllers into the picture. Compose, experiment and make some noise with Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. DIN MIDI is available through the MIDI/audio expansion. Give your imagination a keyboard solo.
For eZX Spectrum, USB MIDI applies to the primary and Next-compatible images. DIN MIDI uses the MIDI/audio expansion. See the eZX MIDI specification and Ant64 hardware overview. The electronics scenes illustrate project ideas, rather than wiring diagrams.
REACH OUT AND PHREAK SOMEONE.
Meet Phreak: the scriptable wireless subsystem for Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. Dual-band Wi-Fi 6. Bluetooth LE. Text AT commands through AntOS. Optional LoRa and GPS add new directions to explore.
NO INTERNET? STILL ON SPEAKING TERMS.
Add Phreak's optional LoRa radio for direct, low-power links. Messages. Sensor readings. Turn-based games. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum: keep the conversation going. Range depends on terrain, antennas and settings.
SHALL WE EXPLORE A NETWORK?
Phreak puts a wireless workbench inside Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. Explore Wi-Fi and BLE signals, map your own network, and learn in a home hacking lab. Curiosity is the best password.
Explore Phreak, communications and Phreak projects. LoRa and GPS require their optional hardware. The terminal scene is a fictional home-lab homage to early-1980s computer thrillers.
DEAL YOURSELF A NEW ADVENTURE.
Games on NFC cards. A pocket-sized library for Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. Each card points to its game. The vision: tap, load, play.
GOOD COMPUTERS GOSSIP.
Meet Gossip, the communications system built into AntOS. Messages, files and game data, shared peer to peer. Choose your friends. Make the connection. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum.
YOUR NEXT BIG IDEA STARTS WITH BASIC.
From first program to university laboratory. AntBASIC includes ARM64 and RISC-V assemblers: explore two instruction sets from your BASIC listing. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum. Small computers. Serious education.
WHY JUST PROGRAM A COMPUTER WHEN YOU CAN DESIGN ONE?
Explore digital logic with Verilog and reconfigurable FPGA hardware. Learn about counters, state machines and processor design. Ant64 and eZX Spectrum: give your ideas a logic of their own.
The NFC advert illustrates the planned game-card experience: cards contain a link, not the game payload; downloading and launching titles remain development work. Explore NFC game cards, Gossip, AntBASIC, its ARM64 assembler and RISC-V assembler, and FPGA personalities.
THE BACK OF THIS COMPUTER IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.
A rear-mounted 40-pin GPIO connector opens Ant64 and eZX Spectrum to DIY electronics, experiments and expansion. Connect your ideas. Build your own peripherals. Add an optional accelerator module through a suitable adapter.
The rear-facing header exposes 28 GPIO signals alongside power and ground. An external accelerator is an optional co-processor expansion using a dedicated adapter, separate from the built-in compute hardware. The advert illustrates expansion concepts; see the GPIO pinout and accelerator adapter design for the electrical and mechanical requirements.
WE PUT A LOT OF THOUGHT INTO THIS COMPUTER. LITERALLY.
PROCESSORS
FireStorm EE: 64-bit RISC-V, dual-issue, target ~380 MHz.
DeMon: CM5 Lite, four ARM Cortex-A76 cores, running AntOS and user games or applications. FireStorm EE can act as the chipset processor, handling real-time graphics and audio to free DeMon for application work.
On-die RISC-V monitor: 32-bit, 800 MHz.
Pulse: dual 400 MHz RISC-V cores plus a 40 MHz low-power core.
MEMORY
FireStorm DDR3: 1.125 GB / 2.25 GB / 4.5 GB by model; 72-bit bus.
Wide SRAM: up to 4.5 MB, 36-bit bus.
HyperRAM: two banks, 32 MB total.
On-chip BSRAM: approximately 765 KB.
DeMon: its own 1 or 2 GB LPDDR RAM; upgrade by changing the Compute Module.
Pulse: its own 32 MB PSRAM.
ENOUGH GRAPHICS TO MAKE A SCENE. ENOUGH SOUND TO CAUSE ONE.
BLAZE GRAPHICS
Up to 16 hardware display layers.
Hardware blitter: moves, transforms, blends and transparency.
Beam-synchronised Copper control for raster effects.
Sprites, tilemaps, vector graphics and scanline composition.
TEMPEST AUDIO
128+ voice design: samples, FM, virtual analogue, granular and physical modelling.
AND THE BAND PLAYS ON
Pulse: dedicated sequencing, MIDI and AMY software synthesis.
DeMon: triple SID emulation, nine SID voices, plus SAM speech.
Graphics, music and the Execution Engine share the FireStorm FPGA.
Design specifications, not benchmark results. Capacities vary by model: FireStorm DDR3 is 1.125 GB on Ant64S, 2.25 GB on Ant64 and 4.5 GB on Ant64C. DeMon's dedicated page specifies 1 or 2 GB; the memory summary lists 2 GB with module upgrades. See DeMon, memory, FireStorm, Blaze graphics, blitter and Pulse.
BASIC THAT GIVES YESTERDAY'S MACHINE CODE A RUN FOR ITS MONEY.
Games written in AntBASIC can outrun assembly-language games from the old days thanks to modern hardware. For more speed or direct hardware control, write ARM64 or RISC-V assembly inside your BASIC listing. Performance depends on the program and hardware compared.