Possible Ps2 Emu?

[MiniSinisterMinister]

My point was not that PS2 emulation is impossible due to the file system or the maximum size of current SD cards. Yes you can use a different file system just for PS2 emulation and yes do not have to put 30 PS2 games on a memory card all at the same time. But overall, PS2 emulation, even if possible, won't be nearly as comfortable as emulating older systems. The fact that PS2 is not in Pandora's "weight class" can be deduced from the very storage technology used for the handheld. It is not fit to handle a lots of DVD images comfortably.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

Want a smart ass answer?
Here is it: PS2 Linux Kit.

[post='http://playstation2-linux.com/']PS2 Linux[/post]

Ah, PS2 Linux, I still have my kit, I did my university dissertation on it too!

Steve

 

[ldesnogu]

Unless MS comes out with Win7 for ARM (which is unlikely, but certainly not impossible), don't expect double-digit market share for non-x86 netbooks.

I often see that argument. Now if someone was kind enough to explain me how having Win7 without apps would change anything for ARM netbooks... I would be very surprised to see companies porting their software to ARM just because MS has Win7. For that you'd need an existing market. Vicious circle.

 

[ldesnogu]

Imagine if an FPGA is mounted via ARM coprocessor interface and you could define custom operations that can do anything on a given register, including using any state available to the FPGA. That'd be pretty slick.

IIRC ARM coprocessor interface is deprecated. I even wonder if any chip had it really exposed.
Anyway I'm not sure FPGA can reach very high frequency, so they'd be more useful to build large blocks.

 

[ldesnogu]

It's possible to do a dual-processor dynamic recompiler. One CPU begins running an interpreter and sends the addresses that are executed to the second processor. The second processor recompiles the code, then signals the first CPU to execute the compiled blocks instead of the interpreter. After awhile the second CPU is mostly idle, but it improves the startup time.

That approach has an issue: you'd need to sync dcache of CPU1 with icache of CPU0. This means cleaning dcache of CPU1 and invalidating icache of CPU0 (on A9 you'd only need to invalidate icache but the coherent traffic will have a non-negligible impact...).

 

[Despellanion]

ah ok interesting stuff hehe. I just never thought the ps2 was that much more powerfull in comparison to PsP as they have about the same graphics to look at...but I guess the psp is prolly running at ? around half the resolution of the ps2 i think? forget what standard def resolution is. I know ps2 emu is, or at least was slow/buggy last time i looked on computer still. Oh well. I still want a pandora lol

I think you are giving the PSP way too much credit here. It's more like PS1 graphics.

 

[Pleng]

I often see that argument. Now if someone was kind enough to explain me how having Win7 without apps would change anything for ARM netbooks... I would be very surprised to see companies porting their software to ARM just because MS has Win7. For that you'd need an existing market. Vicious circle.

Hardly.

If M$ were to port Win7 to ARM they would also port Office and Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger and Silverlight. You can be sure communities would port Firefox and Thunderbird.

I'm also pretty sure that any software written in .NET languages would run without recompilation as the .NET libraries are included in Windows 7 OS.

 

[ldesnogu]

Most of these softwares have equivalent ones that run perfectly under Linux. I personally only use Linux even in places where MS is used and I have no issue interacting with people using MS software. The only thing where Linux lacks is gaming.

 

[second exodous]

I often see that argument. Now if someone was kind enough to explain me how having Win7 without apps would change anything for ARM netbooks... I would be very surprised to see companies porting their software to ARM just because MS has Win7. For that you'd need an existing market. Vicious circle.

Hardly.

If M$ were to port Win7 to ARM they would also port Office and Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger and Silverlight. You can be sure communities would port Firefox and Thunderbird.

I'm also pretty sure that any software written in .NET languages would run without recompilation as the .NET libraries are included in Windows 7 OS.

I don't agree with most of what Microsoft stands for or does, but typing M$ just says a lot about you.

 

[Chip]

Now if someone was kind enough to explain me how having Win7 without apps would change anything for ARM netbooks...

It would say "Windows" on it. If you make a netbook for less than $300, with 12+ hours of battery life, that says "Microsoft Windows" on the box, it will sell more units than every other Linux netbook to date, regardless of architecture. People are dumb. They know what they know, and they're afraid of what they don't know.

I would be very surprised to see companies porting their software to ARM just because MS has Win7.

They're doing it for X64. Provided MS makes it easy enough to do, why wouldn't companies compile two versions? Besides, any ARM OS MS makes will certainly have compatibility modes built in for WinCE and WiMo, so you've already got a not-insignificant collection of software right there.


Look, I said it's pretty unlikely for this to happen, but it would be the smart thing to do. ARM processors are gaining in processing power faster than Atom chips are gaining in power efficiency. They're a heck of a lot cheaper too. The ARM netbook has a lot of potential, but needs an OS that doesn't scare people away. Maybe MS will step up, maybe they won't.

 

[mali]

I guess that MS will just watch the market for a while, before they decide what to do. If ARM netbooks take off and Google aquires too much marketshare, they might offer an improved ARM compatible OS. I doubt that it will be based on Win7, though. Win7 is just a masked Vista with some enhancements here and there that pretend to be performance improvements. A rework of Win Mobile is more reasonable, imo.

 

[ldesnogu]

The switch to x64 had to be done since MS let people know they'll drop 32-bit x86 not that far in the future. How many x64 apps were available when MS put out XP-64? The number was so low that Xp-64 never got really used; and the fact drivers didn't exist or were buggy was due to poor adoption.

OTOH porting software to a new architecture and supporting it has a high cost that wouldn't be amortized if the already existing park is not big enough. It's not just a matter of recompiling: unaligned accesses are much worse on ARM than on x86; runtime code generation needs special care on ARM (on x86 I/D caches are magically coherent); all SIMD code (be it asm or intrinsics) has to be rewritten and debugged; and so on.

I don't say it won't happen (I previously wrote in this forum that MS probably already has Win7 working on ARM) or that it doesn't make sense (due to reasons you perfectly explained), just that it will take time and that it might come too late.

Anyway I'd be sorry if that'd happen: I think it's a good opportunity for Linux to gain market shares

 

[mali]

Some things I want to add: Intel has already broken the Wintel alliance by creating Moblin, so MS won't have too many qualms before entering the (still largely hypothetical) ARM sector in a more thought through attempt. My greatest concern right now is Google. They are collecting allies right now and try to concentrate power to push their 'Linux'. This might shift the focus away from the standard Linux distros. Even Canonical will support Chrome OS on ARM, which might lead to abandoning Ubuntu NBR. Extrapolating things, this leads to Android on Smartphones, Chrome OS on Netbooks and later a merge of Android and Chrome for all platforms. Full fledged Linux will become even more niche than it is right now.

 

[WizardStan]

Now if someone was kind enough to explain me how having Win7 without apps would change anything for ARM netbooks...

People are stupid. No, sorry, that's not fair. People are... afraid of change. They know Windows, and even if it looks a little different every time, it's still more or less the same. But it's not just the look, it's the name; people recognize the name, they have an idea of what to expect. Even if it's totally different, people will see "Windows" and think it's better, because they've used "Windows" before.
No, I stand by my original statement: People are stupid.

To use a car analogy, all (enclosed, four wheel) vehicles are basically the same, whether it is car, truck, or minivan; steering wheel, gas peddle, brake, wiper nob, cabin control, radio, etc...
But if you've driven an automatic your entire life, what are the odds that you'll consider a manual transmission for your next car? Or vice-versa? Or if you've always driven Fords, your parents owned Fords, you've never really driven anything else, where is your first stop when shopping for a new car likely to be? Some people might even consider a car without a radio, or with confusing heating controls for example, before thinking to look to a different dealership. Fortunately with cars, there's a lot of option within your favored brand and style, and taking them for a test drive is easy.
Operating systems are a lot harder to test drive, and unless you're already using Linux, your options are fairly limited.

edit: oh look, there was a fourth page I didn't notice. Chip already made the same argument. Sorry.

 

[mali]

No, I stand by my original statement: People are stupid.

It's much more complex than that. Nerds think that people are stupid because they don't take the time to 'discover' an OS fully. People think nerds are stupid for spending time discovering an OS.

Using the word "stupid" to describe people who have different priorities is... well... stupid

 

[krosfyah]

A more accurate version of the car analogy would be this. Person X who has only driven an automatic before tries a manual and thinks "nah it's not really for me". Person Y who has only driven an automatic before tries a manual and thinks "wow this is so much better for me". Notice the "for me" in each case.

 

[cb88]

For decent FPGAs look toward the Xilinx spartan6 line .... built in ddr2 and 3 and 6 input LUTS iirc they have some fairly large parts supported in teh free tools as well....

 

[Exophase]

IIRC ARM coprocessor interface is deprecated. I even wonder if any chip had it really exposed.
Anyway I'm not sure FPGA can reach very high frequency, so they'd be more useful to build large blocks.

They can reach over 1GHz. I stand by my claim that only a few hundred MHz would be very useful. I wasn't referring to something that'd be external to the CPU die. The actual interface isn't really that important, but the coprocessor interface is still part of the instruction set as far as I'm aware.

Could a USB FPGA be used? The OP has USB 2.0, I know it would be in the way, its more just a thought out loud..

Would be pretty useless for most of the things I'm thinking about. This needs a really low latency interface with the CPU to really be useful, so that it can feasibly get things back in a few clock cycles.

 

[MDave]

Is there a PS2 emulator that runs decently on the a PC ?
If so, can the Pandora 2 be designed to run a PS2 emulator?
I know how everybody hates to talk about Pandora 2 but there's nothing to do on the forum yet except wait.

Maybe in about 10 years. High end PC's today can barely run PS2 fullspeed for most games. Handhelds seem to be about 10 years behind PC's in terms of power. It was around this time 10 years ago Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament came out, and they needed high end PC's to play at great frame rates and full quality graphics settings.

:blink: I just built my brother a computer for under $1000 that can run any PS2 game that actually work with PCSX2 at >60 fps with max settings and the internal resolution set to 1920x1080. This computer is nowhere near top of the line.

I don't think a handheld emulating the PS2 will be feasible in under 4 years, but I think 10 might be a bit extreme.

Unfortunately, as they say, "An optimist is never pleasantly surprised."

You're kidding me? A PC that can do PS2 emulation no problem is nowhere near highend? I have a quad core 3.0 ghz, 9800GX2 and it struggles. Sure, the graphics card may not be the latest greatest, but it was pretty high end a couple of years ago. Anyway my point still stands, because Quake 3 dosnt run full fps, full graphics settings on handhelds today.

 

[MDave]

ah ok interesting stuff hehe. I just never thought the ps2 was that much more powerfull in comparison to PsP as they have about the same graphics to look at...but I guess the psp is prolly running at ? around half the resolution of the ps2 i think? forget what standard def resolution is. I know ps2 emu is, or at least was slow/buggy last time i looked on computer still. Oh well. I still want a pandora lol

I think you are giving the PSP way too much credit here. It's more like PS1 graphics.

So you never seen Crisis Core, God of War, Tekken 5/6, Gran Turismo or Kurok? DS is more like PS1 mate