Gaming
cycle-accurate
What does cycle-accurate mean?
Describes an emulator that reproduces the original hardware down to every single clock cycle, not just every instruction. That extra precision catches timing-dependent tricks and glitches that sloppier emulators miss.
"That glitch only fires on cycle-accurate cores, the fast emulator skips the timing window and it never triggers."
Origin
Emulation engineering term; emulating hardware down to each individual CPU clock cycle rather than just per instruction.
Frequently asked questions
What does cycle-accurate mean?
Cycle-accurate describes emulation so precise it reproduces the original chip's clock tick by tick.
How do you use cycle-accurate in a sentence?
"This emulator is cycle-accurate, so even the tricky timing bugs behave exactly like the real hardware."
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