Japanese article about PS3 backwards compatablilty

You woncder if BC by SW will be better than HW?

Would SW BC be enhanced whereas HW BC would not be? Enhanced as in upscalling and maybe some other filtering?

Otherwise, you might want the early units with the actual silicon.

Of course, by the time SW BC is enabled, you might be getting 65 nm Cell/RSX combos in a different form factor (maybe with HDMI) for a lower price.
 
Its these reports come to fruition then the answer is none, as the hardware is not guaranteed to to be there for the duration of the console.
 
Black Dragon37 said:
Isn't usin the PS2 chipset for the PS3 a good thing, compatibility-wise? It'll at least conform to 100% BC from Sony... right?
Not if it adds no benefits over using a PS2, IMO. It's just adding cost to the machine.
 
Titanio said:
I think the solution already is a hybrid of sorts of software and hardware-supported emulation, with simply a heavy dependency on the presence of certain hardware for now. Over time they'll reduce that dependency..maybe later the EE will be removed altogether, for example. But I have my doubts if they'll ever remove all the hardware and solely rely on the core PS3 hardware.


I'm not intimately familiar with ps2 hardware but wasn't the embedded ram located off the graphics processor? If so, would it not be possible to leave this portion in ps3 and let cell emulate the ps2 cpu? This would still cost more than not having any ps2 hardware in the system but the cost shouldn't be that high and the embeded ram could be useful for other things ps3 related.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Not if it adds no benefits over using a PS2, IMO. It's just adding cost to the machine.

Isn't there suppose to be some kind of upscaling and/or filtering?

Of course, they would have to figure out a way to read in your PS2 game saves.
 
TheChefO said:
I'm not intimately familiar with ps2 hardware but wasn't the embedded ram located off the graphics processor? If so, would it not be possible to leave this portion in ps3 and let cell emulate the ps2 cpu? This would still cost more than not having any ps2 hardware in the system but the cost shouldn't be that high and the embeded ram could be useful for other things ps3 related.

Not the eDRAM is a part of the GS; the Cell will no doubt be able to emulate EE at some point, but the question is more when the day for the emulators release comes, will they stick a GS - or GS-like - chip where the EE+GS once sat on the board, or is there a software workaround for that as well... or is there some sort of transistor consideration on the RSX?

Might as well mention thge possibility of the last one since it's been discussed before at length.
 
leechan25 said:
Hey Guys,

What task could developer off load to the ee/gs within PS3?
Not sure what you mean. Like run some code on the EE/GS while the ps3 cell/rsx is doing its own thing?

If so, if and when Sony decides to take the EE/GS out, wouldnt that cause problems for old games that used the EE/GS for other tasks?
 
xbdestroya said:
Not the eDRAM is a part of the GS; the Cell will no doubt be able to emulate EE at some point, but the question is more when the day for the emulators release comes, will they stick a GS - or GS-like - chip where the EE+GS once sat on the board, or is there a software workaround for that as well... or is there some sort of transistor consideration on the RSX?

Might as well mention thge possibility of the last one since it's been discussed before at length.


The issue from what I can see is how can you emulate bandwidth which you don't have?

Along this line of thought is where my question/suggestion comes from. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying in your reply but from what I understand of ps2 arch, this bandwidth/edram needs to be in the ps3 to ensure bc unless they find some magic way to emulate the bandwidth. This ability to emulate 48gb/sec in ps2 without having 48gb/sec in ps3 doesn't seem logical to me.
 
Chef-O I think you're not reading my post.

Yes, *obviously* the GS bandwidth is the problem area. The question is how will that be resolved. It needn't be with a straight GS; the question is whether it can be done without hardware or not. I think hardware is required, but... I'm just taking a 'wait and see' view to it until more info leaks.
 
xbdestroya said:
Chef-O I think you're not reading my post.

Yes, *obviously* the GS bandwidth is the problem area. The question is how will that be resolved. It needn't be with a straight GS; the question is whether it can be done without hardware or not. I think hardware is required, but... I'm just taking a 'wait and see' view to it until more info leaks.

So were on the same page then - you agree it's highly unlikely that ps3 will be able to emulate ps2 without having this bandwidth(edram) on board. Right?
 
TheChefO said:
So were on the same page then - you agree it's highly unlikely that ps3 will be able to emulate ps2 without having this bandwidth(edram) on board. Right?

I think it will be highly unlikely that the PS3 will be able to emulate the PS2 bandwidth - later on when it lacks EE+GS - without some sort of hardware consideration. Obviously the eDRAM seems to me the most logical answer, but other theories have been floated before in other threads.
 
xbdestroya said:
I think it will be highly unlikely that the PS3 will be able to emulate the PS2 bandwidth - later on when it lacks EE+GS - without some sort of hardware consideration. Obviously the eDRAM seems to me the most logical answer, but other theories have been floated before in other threads.


Have the extra transistors in RSX been accounted for yet?
 
TheChefO said:
Have the extra transistors in RSX been accounted for yet?

Not yet, but don't expect eDRAM. If the solution is on the RSX, it's something else.
 
xbdestroya said:
Because it's not eDRAM - we already know this to be the case. Kutaragi went so far as to say, 'no eDRAM in PS3...'

Kutaragi also said there wouldnt be a hdd in ps3 because there wasn't one on the market that would be big enough. ;) Kuta says a lot of things but I'd hardly take his statements as fact. If his software team can't get a workaround for bw then they will have no choice but to include edram. Unless someone here can think of a workaround which I'd be curious to see.
 
So were on the same page then - you agree it's highly unlikely that ps3 will be able to emulate ps2 without having this bandwidth(edram) on board. Right?

You don't... But then again you don't necessarily need to emulate "bandwidth," you need to handle the behaviors that the bandwidth is being burned to output. There are bigger problems to resolve handling the GS than bandwidth...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
archie4oz said:
You don't... But then again you don't necessarily need to emulate "bandwidth," you need to handle the behaviors that the bandwidth is being burned to output. There a bigger problems to resolve handling the GS than bandwidth...


How is it possible to emulate the ps2 without having sufficient bandwidth and without rewriting the original code?
 
Back
Top