Article: SPU Emulation BETA 2 (Let your x86 emulate the SPU) - Now with Dumping Features

[damanptyltd]

this is not for emulating games

But maybe in like 2 years when its been properly developed and computers are powerful enough

[fivee]

But maybe in like 2 years when its been properly developed and computers are powerful enough

the computer power is not really a problem here, most modern graphics cards have much more processing power than a cell cpu, even when combined with th RSX

yes i said a graphic card, not a cpu, since AFAIK cell processor has more in common with a GPU than a x86 cpu.

the numbers vary, and somehow they seem to focus on "perfect" CELL's (8 SPU's and 4GHz) when on a ps3 you actually only have 7 working at 3.2GHz

so doing the math you get 3.2GHz x 4 x 2 x 7 = 179.2 GFLOP's

then you add the 400 GFLOP's of the RSX and you get....well less than a half of and averadge computer nowdays



my gpu, a gtx560 ti is capable of 1311 GFLOP's

[Lorck]

the computer power is not really a problem here, most modern graphics cards have much more processing power than a cell cpu, even when combined with th RSX

yes i said a graphic card, not a cpu, since AFAIK cell processor has more in common with a GPU than a x86 cpu.

It has more in common with digital signal processors than both.

GPUs suffer horribly performance wise if your code branches a lot, the CELL cpu shouldn't. Also, you can't just do math with the CPU's clock if you don't know how many instructions said processor do per clock.

Also, for good emulation, you need a machine much much more powerful than the one you are going to emulate. One exemple: for perfect SNES (16 bit CPU at 22MHz) emulation you need a ~2.4GHz 32bit machine and bsnes emulator. Another one: the Wii's hardware is much worse than the ps3's, and if you use Dolphin emulator you can see it suffers even with fast machines today.

PC hardware nowadays isn't capable of emulating PS3's at full speed, and of course, there is lots of details about the system we don't know yet.

[ahou]

the computer power is not really a problem here, most modern graphics cards have much more processing power than a cell cpu, even when combined with th RSX

yes i said a graphic card, not a cpu, since AFAIK cell processor has more in common with a GPU than a x86 cpu.

the numbers vary, and somehow they seem to focus on "perfect" CELL's (8 SPU's and 4GHz) when on a ps3 you actually only have 7 working at 3.2GHz

so doing the math you get 3.2GHz x 4 x 2 x 7 = 179.2 GFLOP's

then you add the 400 GFLOP's of the RSX and you get....well less than a half of and averadge computer nowdays



my gpu, a gtx560 ti is capable of 1311 GFLOP's

Uh, the ps3's cell can do a max of about 230 gflops. Though that is an absurdly silly way to measure performance of a cpu that is built almost purely for FP operations.

But yes, the power of the ps3 is in fact a huge problem for emulating it. Accurate emulation typically requires a bare minimum of 10x more power than the original system. And realistically for something as complex as the ps3, you'd need a lot more than that.

and if you use Dolphin emulator you can see it suffers even with fast machines today.

Dolphin can actually run all games at full speed or faster with a high end cpu. And bsnes isn't exactly a fair comparison, since the accuracy there is far, far beyond what is needed to play pretty much every game without issue. If you really wanted to, you could emulate a snes at the transistor level, and get a highly optimized emulator running at probably less than a frame per day. There's little reason to actually take it that far though.

[KNBT]

for second I thought this was for emulating games lol. anycase this is a good tool to understand the inter workings of the ps3.

[JoeJoe]

Fantastic work KDSBest, a lot less cumbersome than going through IDA, any updates on DMA support and the all important Mailbox? also a great addition would be to include the full pack of known functions. I am sure that this will lead to more shared knowledge. Many thanks

[KDSBest]

Fantastic work KDSBest, a lot less cumbersome than going through IDA, any updates on DMA support and the all important Mailbox? also a great addition would be to include the full pack of known functions. I am sure that this will lead to more shared knowledge. Many thanks

The knownFunctions are sony code, so i won't share mine ofc.
Maybe on thursday I got some time and will finish mailbox and DMA then.

[JoeJoe]

Thanks KDSBest, keep up the good work, highly anticipate the Mailbox addressing for obvious reasons, and yeah forgot about KnownFunctions, silly me. Its just sometimes I wonder if I have a complete list in order to systematically go through the code, any ideas?? I would greatly appreciate some guidance on a few technical issues, would you mind if I PM you? thanks.

[KDSBest]

Thanks KDSBest, keep up the good work, highly anticipate the Mailbox addressing for obvious reasons, and yeah forgot about KnownFunctions, silly me. Its just sometimes I wonder if I have a complete list in order to systematically go through the code, any ideas?? I would greatly appreciate some guidance on a few technical issues, would you mind if I PM you? thanks.

url: irc.hellcat.net
port: 6667
channel: #TEAM_AC1D

you can nearly every night find me there. If i am not there leave a message to MK or cfwprophet.

PM in this forum is not the first choice to get back to me.

BTW. What i will finish for sure on thursday are breakpoints and more instructions.

[KDSBest]

Thanks KDSBest, keep up the good work, highly anticipate the Mailbox addressing for obvious reasons, and yeah forgot about KnownFunctions, silly me. Its just sometimes I wonder if I have a complete list in order to systematically go through the code, any ideas?? I would greatly appreciate some guidance on a few technical issues, would you mind if I PM you? thanks.

I released alpha2 via twitter, there you got the mBox and all metldr instructions.

But maybe in like 2 years when its been properly developed and computers are powerful enough

Even in 1000 years this won't emulate games, it is just for the SPU and not the PPU!