r/QuadCortex

Hello.

For the past few months I have been working on reverse engineering the QC as a personal research project. I have successfully managed to get my own code running on it. As a test I decided to see if I could implement a NAM A2 inference engine for the SHARC+, and it turns out that, yes, I could. NAM A2 Lite can run on a single SHARC+ core (with a bit of headroom to spare!).

A2 Full is almost certainly out of the question, even distributed across all SHARC+ cores, but the SHARC+ is an unfamiliar architecture for me so it is likely that I am still leaving some performance on the table despite my best efforts to keep everything as tight and vectorized as I could.

Unfortunately I do not have any plans on releasing this as I do not see a clear path to do so without exposing myself to legal risk by redistributing the firmware. I am also unable to release my firmware patching tools due to DRM restrictions :(. I may release the SHARC+ NAM implementation, but it requires ADI's proprietary toolchain to compile, which costs $1,300 for a license so it's not of much use to the average person.

Anyway, NAM A2 Lite is completely within the realm of technical possibility for the QC.

New tiny do-it-all gig board. QC Mini, DVP 4, Chocolate MIDI controller mounted on a Rockboard Duo 2.0. Still scratching the surface of what the QC is capable of but sounds are stellar so far.

I set the Chocolate vertically to get everything to fit nicely on the board. Easy to access the switches in this “kick” configuration for me.