N64 emulation possible on PS3?

[FloW3184]

Is it possible to emulate N64 on the PS3?

I mean... ok, it has Linux... BUT:
afair:
1. You can't access the hardware directly, so: only 1 core and not even full access for it (slow)
2. No 3D hardware support for the PS3 under Linux...

the Cell is as fast as a P4 with SSE3 @ 3,6Ghz:
Cell Broadband Engine Architecture and its first implementation
(at least for Linpack 1kx1k)

so this means no software emulation for N64. only maybe something like this software plugin from nemu64 0.7 i think is possible...

 

[Doomulation]

The Cell is 3.2 GHz any lacks out-of-order execution, narrow execution window and no branch prediction among other things. I am tempted to say that, unless it can access other cores, then no. But only time can tell.

 

[Flash]

Is it possible to emulate N64 on the PS3?

I mean... ok, it has Linux... BUT:
afair:
1. You can't access the hardware directly, so: only 1 core and not even full access for it (slow)
2. No 3D hardware support for the PS3 under Linux...

Castrated linux - castrated emulation. Without 3D acceleration N64 emulation is slow like hell, without direct access to all cores it's worse than AthlonXP 1500 -
try to run Mupen64 with software plugin on 1GHz machine and you'll get the idea, how fast it will be.

 

[FloW3184]

is there a PPC port for mupen on linux?

 

[BRP]

Then again, it IS a 3.2GHz kinda-PPC. If you asked me, it'd happen, just not all that quick, and at first not too quickly. And the GPU access... yeah, that hurts. A lot. But that's something that could be fixed in the future.

(There's mupen64 for PPC Mac, so chances are it could be done for Linux, but I haven't seen PPC Linux mupen. It's open-source, though, so you can make it happen if you have the skill...)

 

[Doomulation]

Then again, it IS a 3.2GHz kinda-PPC.

A crippled 3.2 GHz. The architecture is just pathetic. As I stated, no out-of-order execution, narrow instruction window, no branch prediction...
You can't compare the Cell's main 3.2 GHz core against a single core PC Processor. It's like comparing apples and oranges. The Cell's core is clearly INFERIOR.

And when it comes to emulation, there will be a lot of but/ifs, and that's where branch prediction comes in real handy.

 

[BRP]

I insist that it could be done, but it'd need to take a different approach. For example, a 300MHz PII with a Voodoo2 is clearly inferior to my MacBook in many respects (incidentally: , but it can still run UltraHLE, which is HLE and runs a whopping... like 20 games? You may not consider that "emulation", but it gets the job done, and that's what many people are going to care about.

Second point: No, it would not run fast the first time someone made the code go on a Cell. It'd still be emulating, but slowly, and that's still emulating. Taking the proper tweaks, shortcuts, precautions, and paradigm shifts necessary, I'm sure there will be an N64 emulator running full-speed on the PS3 in a couple years (it's not happening this year, and if it does, I'll buy whoever does it a large case of Jolt Cola). It will most likely involve other cores of the Cell, but even then, there would be a lot of work going on the main core (if you don't know why, well, let's just say that there's a lot of work that's difficult to synchronize betwixt different cores, which is why PCSX2 barely does dual-core and I don't think I've seen any N64 emulator do it).

I'm pretty sure Linux on the PS3 will let you use the SPU's (or SPE's as Sony calls them... but I like Big Blue better. Call me nostalgic.) via what an upperclassman CS student described to me as "Christian magic that only six people in the world understand well... and all of them work at IBM, on the Cell". I think people will figure it out eventually. In that case, I'll say the big bad bottleneck is the GPU, for which there are no decent drivers (3d-wise), and won't be for a while (seeing as to how Sony probably wouldn't let nVIDIA do it for profitability reasons, and that the open-source DRI for nVIDIA project has got a long way to go because they have to reverse engineer a lot of things... but watch/contribute to the "noveau" project if you're interested!).

 

[Doomulation]

Until someone magically finds a way to run the emulator on the different cores, there's no way you will get decent emulation on the PS3.

 

[swaaye]

Multithreaded emulators. The next great pain in the ass.

 

[Doomulation]

Remember that the cores aren't general purpose. The emulator won't benefit from the SPEs are much since they are made for specific purposes.

 

[FloW3184]

afaik the PS3's Cell has only 1 real cpu core that is able to execute 2 threads like intels hyperthreating. The SPE's are totally out of use for emulation/linux.
Thats the reason showing 2xTux @ linux start screen.
You will get more performance out of Linux, when you use a single P3 500mhz with 512MB ram.
SNES/Genesis/Neo*Geo emulations are the best we are going to see on the PS3's Linux.
Or maybe the same weird stuff they are doing to the PSP... emulating N64 on PSP... is like....hmmm.... trying to navigate a cruise missile via the PS2.

qoute from IBM: "We still don't know why they are using our Cell as CPU for the PS3."