Dreamcast Emu?

[Aninhumer]

Sonic Rush on the DS was okay.
It was technically 3D, unless you meant actual 3D gameplay.

Had all the silly friends and childish story, but then I just bash the A button until they go away.

 

[CPUnltd]

I don't think a playable dreamcast emu is really that far away or requiring a newer model of the Pandora... most every emulator to date is extremely unoptimized... especially since the hardware acceleration is still sorely lacking... and a lot of the emu's so far are working at good speeds... upon unlocking the Pandora's hardware capabilities, I'm sure a lot of what we think is not quite doable with it will become commonplace and easy... Whether they meant to or not, OP picked the perfect name for this device, because until the hardware has been fully implemented for all its capabilities, Pandora's box still has yet to actually be opened...

 

[zoranc]

I don't think a playable dreamcast emu is really that far away or requiring a newer model of the Pandora... most every emulator to date is extremely unoptimized... especially since the hardware acceleration is still sorely lacking... and a lot of the emu's so far are working at good speeds... upon unlocking the Pandora's hardware capabilities, I'm sure a lot of what we think is not quite doable with it will become commonplace and easy... Whether they meant to or not, OP picked the perfect name for this device, because until the hardware has been fully implemented for all its capabilities, Pandora's box still has yet to actually be opened...

Although you are theoretically right keep in mind that the emulators which run perfect typically emulate 1-10 MHz processor (PSX and N64 are the only exceptions as far as I know). But emulating 200MHz processor on a 600-850MHz machine at a good speed is pretty much impossible. As a rule of thumb you need about 10x faster processor than the original one. I know some people do some wonders like dynamic recompilation and such (Exophase I've read your blog), and other techniques like emulation of bios calls with native code are maybe an option (also a LOT of work), but still some things are just not possible.

 

[gruso]

As a rule of thumb you need about 10x faster processor than the original one.

Politely pointing out that no such rule of thumb exists, before some points it out more rudely.

 

[CPUnltd]

I can see how the 10x concept would be a safe bet... but I can understand where Gruso is coming from...

 

[ari64]

But emulating 200MHz processor on a 600-850MHz machine at a good speed is pretty much impossible. As a rule of thumb you need about 10x faster processor than the original one. I know some people do some wonders like dynamic recompilation and such (Exophase I've read your blog), and other techniques like emulation of bios calls with native code are maybe an option (also a LOT of work), but still some things are just not possible.

This has been discussed many times. The clock frequency of the CPU is generally not the limiting factor. The ability to emulate Dreamcast is mainly dependent on the speed of the RAM, L1/L2 cache, FPU, GPU, and, for games that use virtual memory, how much overhead the TLB emulation incurs.

 

[CPUnltd]

when you say speed of RAM, cache, FPU, and GPU, are you speaking of operating frequencies? (MHz, GHz, etc) for each emulated/clocked component? or did I miss the boat and found myself dangling out in left field on this one?

 

[ari64]

when you say speed of RAM, cache, FPU, and GPU, are you speaking of operating frequencies? (MHz, GHz, etc) for each emulated/clocked component?

Generally no. The RAM in the Pandora is clocked low, but that's not the only problem. The cache is small compared to other CPUs like Intel's Atom, and there is only a 32-bit data path to the RAM. Most laptops have at least 64-bit RAM nowadays.

 

[CPUnltd]

that doesn't exactly answer my question... I'm asking more along the lines of how that effects possible Dreamcast emulation on the Pandora.

 

[ari64]

that doesn't exactly answer my question... I'm asking more along the lines of how that effects possible Dreamcast emulation on the Pandora.

So you're asking if slow memory would make a Dreamcast emulator slow? I fail to understand why you think it would not.

 

[CPUnltd]

you're still missing my question... I will read back on your statments so I can properly rephrase my question so that we are on the same page... I can't think of exactly what I meant, but I know your response is not in the direction I was going... no big... I'll rephrase asap...