Re: [web-audio-api] (JSWorkers): ScriptProcessorNode processing in workers (#113)

> [Original comment](https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=17415#14) by Marcus Geelnard (Opera) on W3C Bugzilla. Fri, 15 Jun 2012 12:58:46 GMT

(In reply to [comment #12](#issuecomment-24244364))
> I agree it should, but I don't think it will. What should an emulator/VM
> developer do? Render off main-thread as well?

I guess it depends a lot on what kind of system you want to emulate, and to what extent you need CPU cycle exact state coherence (e.g. do you want to emulate a few popular games, or do you want to implement a fully functional virtualization of a machine?).

For instance for implementing a SID chip for a C=64 emulator, I'd imagine that you can simply post time-stamped messages from the main thread to an audio worker (possibly batched as a time-stamped command buffer per frame or whatever), where the worker implements all SID logic. A similar solution should work for the NES sound HW too, I guess.

For emulating the Paula chip on the Amiga, you'd have more problems since it uses DMA for accessing CPU-shared memory. On the other hand, I think you should be able to come quite far by setting up a node graph that effectively emulates the Paula chip using automation for timing etc, eliminating a lot of the problems that you would otherwise have with a 100% JS-based mixer.

In any event, this does strike me as a show-stopper for having audio processing in workers. Especially given that machine emulators are usually quite odd, both in terms of architecture and actual use cases.

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