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VoodooChi|d said:IIRC linux can't use the RSX... so if the processor alone can emulate the Wii then maybe...
That is quite a bold statement. Mind elaborating how you came to this conclusion? Looking at the F@H slides, the Cell has about 50% of the "folding performance" of an x1900xtx. If the Wii is as underpowered as I am told by everyone, the Cell should have little trouble keeping up.Rocketpig said:Not going to happen. The Wii may be underpowered by modern standards, but there's no way the Cell alone could emulate it.
drizzt81 said:That is quite a bold statement. Mind elaborating how you came to this conclusion? Looking at the F@H slides, the Cell has about 50% of the "folding performance" of an x1900xtx. If the Wii is as underpowered as I am told by everyone, the Cell should have little trouble keeping up.
FoolOnTheHill said:The biggest problem with emulating one console on another console is undoubtedly the architectural difference. Sure, the Cell has a good amount of raw power, but in order to render Wii games, it would also have to pretend to act exactly like the Wii in order to do so. This would be no small task, and I'm highly skeptical that it'll be pulled off anytime soon, if at all.
Rocketpig said:Exactly. And then double that effort since it can't use its GPU to render the Wii graphics.
If you had RSX, I think you could do it. The Cell uses the basic PowerPC ISA. Theoretically, you wouldn't need to do instruction-level emulation, and that would save a lot of CPU time. Think in terms of VMWare, for instance, rather than Bochs. The CPU in the Wii is also closer to a G3 than a G5 - it doesn't have a lot of those fancy instructions that got added in later PPC CPUs.Rocketpig said:BTW, the Wii runs a 729mhz PPC processor and depending on who you talk to, that's the equivalent of a 900mhz-1.1ghz x86 chip (arguments vary on this subject).
It also runs a 243mhz GPU with 64 megs of GDDR3 memory.
While not a barnburner by any means, it's still too powerful for CPU-only emulation IMO.
erwos said:If you had RSX, I think you could do it. The Cell uses the basic PowerPC ISA. Theoretically, you wouldn't need to do instruction-level emulation, and that would save a lot of CPU time. Think in terms of VMWare, for instance, rather than Bochs. The CPU in the Wii is also closer to a G3 than a G5 - it doesn't have a lot of those fancy instructions that got added in later PPC CPUs.
The GPU is relatively primitive feature-wise, by modern standards, and lacks programmable shaders. I'm not saying it would be easy to emulate, but I don't think it's the toughest problem I've heard of. I mean, the 360 guys wrote a pretty decent emulator of the original Xbox, and the Wii isn't THAT far ahead of it, at least with current software.
erwos in reference to the wii gpu said:and lacks programmable shaders
erwos said:If you had RSX, I think you could do it. The Cell uses the basic PowerPC ISA. Theoretically, you wouldn't need to do instruction-level emulation, and that would save a lot of CPU time. Think in terms of VMWare, for instance, rather than Bochs. The CPU in the Wii is also closer to a G3 than a G5 - it doesn't have a lot of those fancy instructions that got added in later PPC CPUs.
The GPU is relatively primitive feature-wise, by modern standards, and lacks programmable shaders. I'm not saying it would be easy to emulate, but I don't think it's the toughest problem I've heard of. I mean, the 360 guys wrote a pretty decent emulator of the original Xbox, and the Wii isn't THAT far ahead of it, at least with current software.
Rocketpig said:With the RSX, you're at least in the realm of it possibly happening. Like you said, the 360 guys emulated the XBOX pretty well and across the board, the specs are similar (PS3/360 vs. Wii/XBOX). I doubt it would ever run that well (the Wii is a bit more powerful than the XBOX), but they could probably get it to run.
With that said, without the RSX, no chance in hell.
PS3 couldn't emulate it, because it doesn't have the memory bandwidth...period, Wii has ultra mega super duper fast ram.Rocketpig said:Not going to happen. The Wii may be underpowered by modern standards, but there's no way the Cell alone could emulate it.
Spaceman_Spiff said:In this case, though, you're talking about running the emulator on top of linux, which will slow it down even more. I'm not exactly sure how the 360 does its emulation but I'd be willing to bet that they communicate directly with the hardware at certain times (probably in assembly) where speed is essential, bypassing the os completely. Either that, or the 360 os was designed with these hardware hooks built in, seeing as this was intended to be a major feature (something like paravirtualization, perhaps?). Some hobbist programmer wouldn't have these luxuries with the ps3 under this environment.
This used to be true when the Gamecube was new and shiny, but if you actually look at the specs of said RAM, the stuff in the 360 and PS3 exceeds it handily.MrBojangels said:PS3 couldn't emulate it, because it doesn't have the memory bandwidth...period, Wii has ultra mega super duper fast ram.
erwos said:This used to be true when the Gamecube was new and shiny, but if you actually look at the specs of said RAM, the stuff in the 360 and PS3 exceeds it handily.
Just using GDDR3 doesn't give it the same memory bandwidth. The latency is presumably going to be similar, since both are running at 700mhz (or so Wikipedia claims), but the bus size itself is smaller. The dedicated video memory is Gamecube-esque, which is to say, not all that impressive, although you can apparently access main memory from the GPU now (which will prove handy!).Rocketpig said:Doesn't the Wii use GDDR3? Am I missing something?
Wrong.No console or computer can emulate the gamecube yet at full speed
pr0pensity said:Wrong.
There is at least once Gamecube emulator that can run commercial games.FoolOnTheHill said:If you don't mean the Wii, then what are you referring to?
Yeah...and it has the same name that the codename for the gamecube has.erwos said:There is at least once Gamecube emulator that can run commercial games.
I forgot, the wii can lolpr0pensity said:Wrong.