PS4 & XBone emulated?

[alexsok]

http://kotaku.com/people-are-already-working-on-emulators-for-the-ps4-and-1479934807

Sorry if I posted in the wrong section, but how realistic is it?

 

[Rodéric]

x86-64 CPU so no need for emulation really, same goes for the GPU, more like wrapping/translating layer...
It sounds like it could be done quickly, especially as early titles probably don't use every new feature, likely will be harder later lon when things get finely tuned and all features used...

 

[pjbliverpool]

What if emulation was restricted to those with GCN 2.0 GPU's and the Mantle API... seems to me in that case the biggest hurdle would be memory management.

 

[Arwin]

Definitely far easier in theory, and probably also in practice. This is no coincidence - both Microsoft and Sony are looking to stream their games in the future as well, so there are some additional benefits here.

Still, something that uses hardcore integration of CPU and GPU could still be difficult, unless you also use a similar CPU/GPU chip. And yeah, Mantle would definitely help here.

Probably best to just reverse engineer the code of the original game however and then recompile on PC.

And of course, it will be necessary for fewer and fewer titles, as a lot of them will be multi-platform anyway.

 

[HMBR]

the first xbox is over 10 years old, basically a PC (a very modest one in current terms) and I don't see any emulator... I see for the PS2, but it still is far from perfect.

 

[Arwin]

Xbox 1 emulation not existing could be from lack of motivation perhaps? Not that many games only on that system that everyone still wants to play I think. PS2 is different, but then is a far harder system to emulate thanks to especially the fast VRAM.

 

[HMBR]

Xbox 1 emulation not existing could be from lack of motivation perhaps? Not that many games only on that system that everyone still wants to play I think. PS2 is different, but then is a far harder system to emulate thanks to especially the fast VRAM.

maybe, but I'm sure if it was that much easier one would exist? the Xbox had games like PGR, Forza, Ninja Gaiden, Conker, not to mention the console only games like I don't know... Time Splitters 2, many star wars games, Criterion games... if the first xbox was emulated, it would be the optimal one for playing many old console-only titles like these on the PC.

GameCube have a great emulator, PSP have a great emulator, the xbox seems to be the only one missing, and it's (not exactly I know) a Pentium 3 + Geforce 3 (modestly clocked) and very little memory at 6.4GB/s

maybe lack of interest is the main reason, but...

 

[Trawler]

I can see the possibility of spinning up an Xbone VM in Azure (and potentially locally in Hyper-V, though MS may not like the business case for this) so perhaps emulation will be a moot point.

 

[sebbbi]

Unified memory and cache coherency between CPU and GPU are quite hard things to emulate (at high performance). It could be easier if you had a APU with HSA. But it will take still several years until we get powerful enough APUs to match next gen consoles.

 

[Grall]

Unified memory and cache coherency between CPU and GPU are quite hard things to emulate (at high performance).

Good observation! It's these "little" architectural things that will trip up emulators the most and be the hardest to deal with. If you'd basically need to re-write the game to get it to run properly, or at least at anything approaching playable framerate, then the era of the MAMEs and NESticles and SNES9xes and so on is pretty much over.

Even though these new consoles feature x86 CPUs, wouldn't you still have to pretty much emulate the whole CPU anyway? Isn't dosbox doing that even on PCs (which is why it runs so damn slow I would think)?

 

[Raqia]

the first xbox is over 10 years old, basically a PC (a very modest one in current terms) and I don't see any emulator... I see for the PS2, but it still is far from perfect.

PCSX2 is very very good today with 80%+ of games playable and fast to boot, provided you have the resources execute at least 3 threads well in parallel. From reading their dev blogs, it sounds like they take many shortcuts to avoid moving data to and from the PC's GPU across PCI-E, avoiding the modern PC's relative weaknesses and exploiting its massive buffers. When the system ram is 32 MB + 4 MB eDRAM, they can afford to just duplicate and speculatively update instead of move.

Dolphin, the best Wii/GC emulator has 73%+ of games playable. I know of few emulators that are "perfect," even for the SNES. (BSNES is an attempt at full hardware emulation and that requires a Core 2...) The furthest along Xbox emulator to my knowledge is CXBX:

http://www.caustik.com/cxbx/progress.htm

Looks like the stumbling block here is the high level emulation of intercepting the XBox's DX calls.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Unified memory and cache coherency between CPU and GPU are quite hard things to emulate (at high performance). It could be easier if you had a APU with HSA. But it will take still several years until we get powerful enough APUs to match next gen consoles.

"Several years"?!

What do you mean by "several"? Do you have any doubts that we'll have commercial desktop APUs using DDR4 that carry better GPU performance than either consoles until the end of 2015?

 

[McHuj]

"Several years"?!

What do you mean by "several"? Do you have any doubts that we'll have commercial desktop APUs using DDR4 that carry better GPU performance than either consoles until the end of 2015?

For PS4, I don't think we'll have an APU on a 176GB/sec bus any time soon, even with DDR4, I bet the bandwidth won't reach half that any time soon.

As far as the xbox 1, emulating the eSRAM maybe very difficult. But it maybe possible with an Intel CPU that has a huge L4 cache like some Broadwell CPU's may have, but I doubt it.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

For PS4, I don't think we'll have an APU on a 176GB/sec bus any time soon, even with DDR4, I bet the bandwidth won't reach half that any time soon.

Intel has already started to address the issue of memory bandwidth for the iGPU. God helps AMD if by 2015 they're still using just a dual-channel DDR3/4 for their top-end APUs.

By the end of 2015 I think we'll probably have 4266MT/s DDR4 like we have 2133MT/s DDR3 today. Using quad-channel DDR4 at those speeds, AMD APUs could reach ~136GB/s and that would be at least competitive with the xbone and ps4 on the memory front.
They could also implement a huge L4 cache like Intel, or bring back HyperMemory (GPU being able to use DDR3+onboard GDDRx) for performance.
Whatever they do, they can't just keep using 2 channels of off-the-shelf standard memory.

As far as the xbox 1, emulating the eSRAM maybe very difficult. But it maybe possible with an Intel CPU that has a huge L4 cache like some Broadwell CPU's may have, but I doubt it.

I wasn't commenting on being easy/hard to emulate, just the expected performance of future APUs during the next couple of years. I think both Microsoft and Sony have taken the necessary measures to block PC emulation for their consoles' lifetime.

 

[homerdog]

I wasn't commenting on being easy/hard to emulate, just the expected performance of future APUs during the next couple of years. I think both Microsoft and Sony have taken the necessary measures to block PC emulation for their consoles' lifetime.

Considering these consoles should last at least as long as their predecessors and they are not exactly high spec to boot, I'd say we could have working emulation well before the end of their lifetime.

Of course the motivation to build it may be a problem since most games are available on PC anyway.

 

[3dilettante]

Intel has already started to address the issue of memory bandwidth for the iGPU. God helps AMD if by 2015 they're still using just a dual-channel DDR3/4 for their top-end APUs.

Do you want to believe the alleged leaks of AMD's roadmap?
The platform, socket, memory, and graphics portion do not appear to change for 2015.
The CPU core changes, but the TDP actually falls. The likely processes in use by that point probably mean that the drop in TDP is going to constrain Carizo's ability to beat console APUs like Orbis that might have an extra 50-75 (100?)% thermal budget.

Whatever they do, they can't just keep using 2 channels of off-the-shelf standard memory.

I'm guessing by the emphasis that you really mean that you feel strongly that they shouldn't stick to that, not that there is a physical reason why they can't let the desktop sockets stagnate.

 

[homerdog]

There would be little point to a PS4 level APU with 128bit DDR3. So either they fix that or give up. It could go either way.

 

[alexsok]

Is there anything the next-gen consoles do better than high-end PCs that would hinder any emulation attempts? After all, they ARE mid-range PC's essentially.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Do you want to believe the alleged leaks of AMD's roadmap?
The platform, socket, memory, and graphics portion do not appear to change for 2015.
The CPU core changes, but the TDP actually falls. The likely processes in use by that point probably mean that the drop in TDP is going to constrain Carizo's ability to beat console APUs like Orbis that might have an extra 50-75 (100?)% thermal budget.

Would you please show me what roadmap you're talking about? Is it this one?
I don't remember seeing any roadmap mentioning anything about total memory bandwidth at all.. which doesn't mean it won't change - it just means they preferred to talk about something else at the time.

I'm guessing by the emphasis that you really mean that you feel strongly that they shouldn't stick to that, not that there is a physical reason why they can't let the desktop sockets stagnate.

If AMD APUs stagnate on dual-channel DDR3/4 for two more years, they will be eaten alive in all fronts by Skylake (which AFAIK has 128MB L4 by default).
Looking at the HD7750 DDR3 vs. GDDR5 numbers, we know Kaveri already reached the point of being anecdotal IMO. The iGPU will do only ~65% of what it could do with GDDR5. I wonder if the gaming performance will be that much better than the 6 months-old (8 months by release time) Iris Pro 5200.

How will AMD iterate their iGPUs from there? Keep throwing more shader units and TMUs to their designs, in the hopes that no one notices the pink elephant in the room that is the memory bottleneck?

If they don't fix that, even the top-end ARM SoCs will start breathing down their necks with dual-channel 64-bit LPDDR4 in a couple of years.
I think homerdog put it really simple:

There would be little point to a PS4 level APU with 128bit DDR3. So either they fix that or give up. It could go either way.

Is there anything the next-gen consoles do better than high-end PCs that would hinder any emulation attempts? After all, they ARE mid-range PC's essentially.

Yes, the GPU<->CPU interconnection is a lot faster and better implemented than any PC system at the moment.
Kaveri could have similar capabilities in that area, but the iGPU is a lot slower and the available memory bandwidth is about 20% of what the consoles have.

 

[3dilettante]

Would you please show me what roadmap you're talking about? Is it this one?
I don't remember seeing any roadmap mentioning anything about total memory bandwidth at all.. which doesn't mean it won't change - it just means they preferred to talk about something else at the time.

Yes, although I think there might be another similar one floating around.
The socket doesn't change, and the memory tech is DDR3.
Nothing changes but the core and a drop in the power ceiling needed to compete with the console APUs.

If AMD APUs stagnate on dual-channel DDR3/4 for two more years, they will be eaten alive in all fronts by Skylake (which AFAIK has 128MB L4 by default).

Probably.

How will AMD iterate their iGPUs from there?

For the desktop? Start with "if", first.