Why EXACTLY is GameCube emulation so "unachievable"?

[2bit]

Learn how to port stuff or throw money at developers, who can actually do it http://boards.openpandora.org/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/wink.png

Start a kickstarter .

 

[Exophase]

There's currently an arm-port of dolphin (and a GLeS3-video-plugin) in development. Here's the git-branch. Don't know how far along it is, but with the speed at which ARM-chips are getting faster, I guess we'll be able to play gamecube-games on handhelds/smartphones relatively soon.

The biggest reason mobile SoCs got faster as rapidly as they did is because their peak power budgets went up to a few watts. This was facilitated by two major factors: power management improved a lot so you only needed to burn all that power as necessary and your phone wouldn't constantly run dry in a couple hours, and battery volume went up as typical phone form factor changed. This stuff works for a device like Pandora too, but there isn't a lot of room to grow that budget further without making the device much thicker/heavier in order to handle more serious cooling (like that big heat sink in Shield).

Not that the power management problem is taken care of and form factors are settling expect peak speeds progress to start slowing down. It'll probably be years yet before a mobile SoC can handle Gamecube.

Start a kickstarter .

Kickstarter is not a bounty service.

 

[sswam]

 It'll probably be years yet before a mobile SoC can handle Gamecube.

Yeah? [All this post is my opinion only.]


I think the OMAP4 might just be grunty enough, and I'm pretty sure an OMAP5 could do it.

OMAP5 at 2GHz would I suppose be at least 6 times more powerful than OMAP3 at 1GHz, since it has two A15 cores, double clocked, and at least 150% faster at the same clock speed.


I reckon we will have enough raw power to emulate gamecube and PS2 tolerably well on the next Pandora, if it has >= an OMAP5.

One 1.5GHz+ A9/A15 ARM core for running the recompiled code, one core for the graphics, sound, and other hardware emulation.


But, you're the expert, Exophase!  I know it's not so easy to do it as to talk about it.

It's not going to happen on OMAP3 / Pandora 1, unless someone comes up with a miraculous new approach.

 

[Exophase]

Yeah? I reckon OMAP4 might just be grunty enough, and OMAP5 could certainly do it.


I reckon we will have enough power to emulate gamecube and PS2 on the Pandora 2, if it has at least an OMAP5. But it's not going to happen on OMAP3 / Pandora 1, unless someone comes up with some radically different emulation technology.


One 1.5GHz+ A9/A15 ARM core for running the recompiled code, one core for the graphics, sound, and other hardware.


But, you're the expert Exophase!

You reckon this based on what exactly? Gut feelings? Go try running Dolphin on a dual core Ivy Bridge clock at < 800MHz and get back to us. It's not enough.

 

[2bit]

Start a kickstarter .

Kickstarter is not a bounty service.

 

[Exophase]

I meant to fund a freeware GameCube ( possibly wii but the motion control prob ) emulator . Ok fine I get your point but why not ?

Because that's not what KS is... You can't use it to raise money to try to motivate someone else to do something. You use it to raise money for a project you're doing yourself. You, the KS lead, has to have the means to directly make the thing work with the money.

 

[alucart1984]

Yeah? I reckon OMAP4 might just be grunty enough, and OMAP5 could certainly do it.


I reckon we will have enough power to emulate gamecube and PS2 on the Pandora 2, if it has at least an OMAP5. But it's not going to happen on OMAP3 / Pandora 1, unless someone comes up with some radically different emulation technology.


One 1.5GHz+ A9/A15 ARM core for running the recompiled code, one core for the graphics, sound, and other hardware.


But, you're the expert Exophase!

You reckon this based on what exactly? Gut feelings? Go try running Dolphin on a dual core Ivy Bridge clock at < 800MHz and get back to us. It's not enough.

Exophase is telling it how it is.  As much as everyone would love to have Gamecube emulation it just isn't going to happen anytime soon on a mobile device.  The Gamecube was quite a beast when it was released. Even a decent PC has some trouble emulating GC.  Of course if you have a beast graphics card and CPU then you emulate it and even make it look better in most cases, but no mobile device even comes close to a mid range PC even. Even the fastest laptop out there with Crossfire/SLi top of the line GPU with a Quad-Core i7 with Hyper threading isn't even as fast as a PC that cost half the price.


EDIT: For got to add this->  The main reasons mobile devices and laptops can't match the performance of a PC is form factor and watt vs performance.  Mobile devices and laptops always are crippled compared to their PC counterparts.  Example of this is like the GTX 660M Laptop GPU is about half as good as a GTX 660 GPU because in a PC the card is double maybe even more than that the size of the laptop GPU.  The laptop GPU can't use 100+ watts for it's self either because if it did then the laptop would either need a HUGE battery or stay on for 5 min or less.  In a desktop the GPU is give 75Watt just through the PCIE connector and a 660 GPU used two 6pin connectors or a 6pin and 8 pin in the case of one like the Galaxy GTX 660 TI 3GB Edition (the GPU I am using currently) so i would say my GPU at full clocks is using close to 300watt for just the GPU (my guess not entirely sure)  The most watts I have heard a Laptop drawing is 125Watt for the total system at running at max.

 

[sswam]

could always plug some mini gamecube hardware into like a SD card slot form factor or whatever

 

[mcobit]

Yes, of course...

Miniaturisation of Gamecubehardware, so that it would fit into an SDcardslot won't be possible for the next years.

 

[_wb_]

Maybe an SD card "dongle" that sticks out quite a bit

 

[EssoAir]

Why are people still discussing this?

 

[sswam]

Yes, of course...

Miniaturisation of Gamecubehardware, so that it would fit into an SDcardslot won't be possible for the next years.

There's more to it than an ARM SoC?

 

[Exophase]

There's more to it than an ARM SoC?

How much current do you think an SD host interface will really provide?

 

[T.T.]

Also, I'm not sure how you would even get a gamecube that small in the first place. That board is very packed in. This gives you an idea of how hard it would be. http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=6476

Exophase is right. Even if you did shrink it down to the right size, there is no way you're getting the current draw down low enough.

@Dredd: It's not just a soc, the gamecube has separate chips for the GPU, CPU and RAM.

 

[Exophase]

If we're talking real shrunken Gamecube Nintendo would have to have it designed. If you heavily integrate an SoC design on a much smaller process and stack all the necessary memory on top you may be able to make it fit. It'd probably still use a couple W which is still too much for this form factor.

If we're talking SoC that can actually emulate it, nothing's going to fit in this tiny area. No ARM SoC available now has enough power to emulate a real assortment of typical Gamecube games at proper speed. And even if you could supply the power the cooling in an SD enclosure would be grossly sub-par.

 

[mcobit]

I think he thinks that the Gamecube runs on an arm processor. But it is a powerpc core with an ati graphicschip.


I think those would be hard to shrink down to sdcardsize with all their peripherals, ram etc.

 

[hedwards]

I think he thinks that the Gamecube runs on an arm processor. But it is a powerpc core with an ati graphicschip.


I think those would be hard to shrink down to sdcardsize with all their peripherals, ram etc.

I'm not sure that really matters. It's not like there's just one ARM chip out there. And anything which isn't shared between the two is likely either wasted or has to be emulated. As much as I'd love to see this happen, I can't imagine it happening anytime soon.

 

[sswam]

There's more to it than an ARM SoC?

How much current do you think an SD host interface will really provide?

I said SD form factor, i.e. something of that size.  I did not say it should be an actual SD interface.  Just about anything can fit on a chip.  Anyway this is a pointless argument about fluff!  (at least my side of it is)

 

[EssoAir]

Can people please stop replying to this worthless topic?

 

[TrashyMG]

Well I find it entertaining..