Technicalities of Emulation

[DnFx91]

I'm just curious, i know how emulators work and all that, but i always wondered what the limit is in terms of what you can emulate on a modern X86-64 computer. Kinda hard to explain what i'm asking but, does it all come down to how old and relatively simple the machine/architecture is ?

 

for example, correct me if im wrong but the most recent "proper" console to be emulated is a PS2 right ? so in a few years when computers are faster, will we have a PS3 or PS4 emulator ? (i know theres no point, as at this point the consoles are basically PC's anyway but i digress) Or is there some kind of specific hardware configuration that simply cannot be emulated by an x86 system for physical reasons ? Like, could i theoretically write a program to emulate some benign shit like washing machine firmware, and have that emulator really think it is a washing machine ?

 

I'm rambling, please does someone understand what i am asking ?

cheers

[DnFx91]

9 minutes ago, Abyssal Radon said:

Emulating a Xbox 360 or PS3 is possible. However due to the custom hardware at play, it's much harder to accomplish this (especially the PS3). Ever used the Dolphin Emulator? GC/Wii emulator. I would look into that to learn more about emulators. 

You say that custom hardware makes it harder, but in my mind you can't get much more custom than something like an N64 in terms of processing architecture compared to a modern PC, but we can easily emulate that.

 

So the answer is, it depends on how powerful the host machine is compared to the architecture its trying to emulate ?

 

[Coaxialgamer]

11 minutes ago, DnFx91 said:

You say that custom hardware makes it harder, but in my mind you can't get much more custom than something like an N64 in terms of processing architecture compared to a modern PC, but we can easily emulate that.

 

So the answer is, it depends on how powerful the host machine is compared to the architecture its trying to emulate ?

 

Well the n64 is a lot less powerful than a ps3 , so brute forcing it isn't an issue . both the ps2 and n64 use MIPS , and emulation of that ISA has pretty much been perfected at this point . Xbox 360 µarch is fairly easy to emulate , relatively speaking ( powerpc ) , but the sheer processing power needed to emulate the fairly powerful xenon cpu is still not quite here yet , at least not anywhere near full speed. 

Emulators cannot easily take advantage of multiple threads . An hypothetical emulation of the tri-core xenon cpu used in the 360 cannot use more than 3 threads ( possibly 6 if you manage to seperate xenon SMT threads ) . Single core perf hasn't increased much .

 

Many of theses issues also keep ps3 emulation from reaching maturity . The cell BE chip is very powerful AND complex , and it's architecture ( while based on the power ISA  ) is very unorthodox and  was basically never used outside of the ps3 . Emulating a system requires near exact knowledge of how the system function , and that's ignoring the power required to run full speed.

there's also the gpu that needs to be emulated , as well as all the security features implemented by the hardware designer to prevent the system being emulated in the first place.

 

The ps4 and xbone are outliers here , as they both use x86 , but then you have the aforementioned security/DRM ( which MS/sony WILL update in case of breach/crack on any current gen system ) , plus the whole issue that the company might simply sue you out the ass .

[Coaxialgamer]

8 hours ago, Abyssal Radon said:

So you know how the Xbox One can emulate Xbox 360 games? Fuck I cannot wait for some wizard programmers to break that shit. 

The most likely explanation is that MS is using simulation. The game code isn't being emulated,  but was recompiled/modified to run on x86. 

 

That would also explain why there is a supported games list.