I've been reading a lot about emulation lately and have been learning a lot about some of the parts of the N64 architecture. I didn't really know before that the big RCP chip had two major parts: the RCP and the RSP (Reality Signal Processor?). The name makes me think it usually deals with audio. I've also read that N64 has some sort of vector unit, this must also be the RSP's task.
I was hoping someone could shed some light on these two pieces. How many things did the RSP end up doing in a typical game? Am I correct in assuming that the "microcode" that many developers hand-tweaked was run on the RSP?
How capable was the RSP/RCP at doing its tasks? Was it really a good idea for Nintendo to keep a dedicated sound chip out of N64? I can't imagine sound is all that cheap. If it was, Gamecube and Xbox (dunno what's in PS2) wouldn't have their own dedicated audio chips.
N64's CPU is really a wimp, and like some have told me on here, it was even more handicapped by the latency of the garbage RDRAM (wtf was N thinking using that stuff?). I'd imagine that doing as much as possible on that RCP chip was the only way to get good performance.....you don't want to try to push any more info across that unified memory than absolutely necessary.
I was hoping someone could shed some light on these two pieces. How many things did the RSP end up doing in a typical game? Am I correct in assuming that the "microcode" that many developers hand-tweaked was run on the RSP?
How capable was the RSP/RCP at doing its tasks? Was it really a good idea for Nintendo to keep a dedicated sound chip out of N64? I can't imagine sound is all that cheap. If it was, Gamecube and Xbox (dunno what's in PS2) wouldn't have their own dedicated audio chips.
N64's CPU is really a wimp, and like some have told me on here, it was even more handicapped by the latency of the garbage RDRAM (wtf was N thinking using that stuff?). I'd imagine that doing as much as possible on that RCP chip was the only way to get good performance.....you don't want to try to push any more info across that unified memory than absolutely necessary.