If I uinderstand the situation correctly the PS2 still has a WORD size of 32 bits. Its 128-bit in the way that my diamond stealth was 128 bit like 6 years ago. IE: It has a wide 4 channel bus, but the various CPU's generally process at 32 bits each.

The PS2 architecture would be very difficult to emulate for a more pertinent reason, however. It is more like a collection of different specialized processors (graphics, sound, etc...) with a fairly weak central CPU that acts more like a scheduler to keep all of the other stuff in sync. Instead of having a single big system bus that connects the CPU to basically everything else...the PS2 has a very wide system bus that shuttles information from place to place.
The system leans on this bus because the designers felt like it could handle transferring data across the bus almost every frame. In a way this is neccesary to support the multi-step design of the PS2, and in a way it was a pipe dream. This is precisely why so many games suffer from strange periods of slow-down.. the bus, while wide, is not wide enough to pull in lots of new information.
[
A prime example is many of the EA Sports games. In NCAA 2002, when the play ends, often players will perform some special animation or do something otherwise out of the norm for the game. This requires a ton of information to be shuttled on the bus... which becomes a bottle-neck and leads to slow down. This is because these scenes violate very clearly the principle of locality on which the architecture is based.


Emulating this on the PC would be a frigging disaster. The X86 oeprates in the exact opposite manner. We like to have ultra large chunks of memory close to the processor (RAM) with a relatively slim bus (32 bits). If a game can fit in available RAM it will run very well and the location of assets will always be predictable. Emulating a PS2 program would likely lead to a serious bottleneck as the PC bus can simply not handle the large amounts of data being transferred across it.

You might be able to get away with some cleverness where you cache the assets in main memory and redirect calls to retrieve those assets directly to RAM, but i'm not sure of what exactly that would take as I am not intimately familiar with the hardware itself.

I think a more conforming architecture like the Gamecube (and of course the XBox) are more likely candidates for emulation.

Nick Pleis
"Game Programming for the PalmOS" Available February 2002

Edited by - enjolras on January 11, 2002 10:12:01 AM

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster

Original post by Anonymous Poster

Where did you get this information, though? I''ve read multiple articles that say that sony has never lost money per unit on a console, and neither has nintendo.

What?

Do you really think something like the PS2 or GameCube costs LESS than $300 or, for crying out loud, $200 to make? Honestly.

GameCube loses a lot of money off its system, but breaks even for the most part because everything about it is very small in proportion. That is, only if the games sell well enough. I haven''t seen too much of it to tell. PS2 has lost money as well– a bad launch, an expensive system, few games, complaining developers, systems being smuggled into Iraq, a slumping economy in the States, September 11… Tell me they''ve had it easy.



I''m the same AP you responded to.

I happen to know a bit about what it costs to produce computer hardware. My company (among other things) produces console-ish standalone computers for use in industry. (Everything from one the size of a toaster down to systems that go on an expansion boards.)

Believe me, it is very possible to produce this sort of hardware for $300 or $200 a unit when you factor in economies of scale. If you only knew the kinds of profit margins in this business… It''s true that it takes a while to recoup development and marketing costs, but there''s always a per-unit profit on hardware in the end.

Now, I ask again, does anyone have a real article or figures to support this? I don''t take unthought opinions or proofs by blind assertion as real evidence.

quote:Original post by Enjolras

The PS2 architecture would be very difficult to emulate for a more pertinent reason, however. It is more like a collection of different specialized processors (graphics, sound, etc...) with a fairly weak central CPU that acts more like a scheduler to keep all of the other stuff in sync.

Emulating this on the PC would be a frigging disaster. The X86 oeprates in the exact opposite manner. We like to have ultra large chunks of memory close to the processor (RAM) with a relatively slim bus (32 bits).

I think a more conforming architecture like the Gamecube (and of course the XBox) are more likely candidates for emulation.

I''ve heard this argument before about emulating systems. The system architecture is too radically different from PC system architecture. The processors are different, the console has multiple processors where the PC has one main one. The whole concept of processing data is different. And I believed most of it, until an N64 emulator came out. How can a 64bit cpu be mimiced by a 32bit cpu? It is because an emulator _is_ the bridge between the two systems. The program is written to translate the differences between the two systems. Both systems, in this case, are Turing machines, and therefore can be emulated by the other.

It would not be terribly difficult to write a PS2 emulator on a PC, as emulators go. Far stranger architectures have been emulated. What would be difficult with today''s hardware would be writing a PS2 emulator than can run at the same speed as a hardware PS2. (One that you could reasonably play games on)

Emulating 128 bits at 300Mhz would be pretty difficult on consumer grade intel hardware.

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
It would not be terribly difficult to write a PS2 emulator on a PC, as emulators go. Far stranger architectures have been emulated. What would be difficult with today''s hardware would be writing a PS2 emulator than can run at the same speed as a hardware PS2. (One that you could reasonably play games on)

Emulating 128 bits at 300Mhz would be pretty difficult on consumer grade intel hardware.

The CPU in reality isn''t 128 bits as the CPU bit size is defined by their integer size which is probably 32 bits as no higher classified CPU''s exist. It''s all just a marketing scam to sell more consoles. The 128 bits they''re talking about is the floating point bus which operates at 4 single precision (32 bits) floating point numbers at one time (4x4 matrices, you get the picture).
Since the Pentium 4 has SSE2 which can also process 4 32 bit floating point numbers at any time, this wouldn''t really be the hardest part to emulate. Intel could even market it as a 128 bit CPU like Sony does Anyway I doubt the possibility of a PS2 emulator as described by reasons above, a completely different architecture.

Jasper

quote:Original post by JasperW


The CPU in reality isn''t 128 bits as the CPU bit size is defined by their integer size which is probably 32 bits as no higher classified CPU''s exist.

Or really? What about http://www.intel.com/itanium/

Or http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/index.html

Or even http://www.mips.com

All 64 bit...

I am not arguing that it is not possible to emulate a PS2. I AM arguing that it is especially difficult to imagine that the PS2 could be efficiently emulated on the PC and that is a BIG difference. As my post indicated, a variety of architecture reasons exist to make the PS2 a rather poor choice for emulation.. I did not say it was impossible, as a matter of fact it would not be terribly difficult. However, I do not think that the PC can efficiently emulate the PS2 for simple memory bottleneck issues. The PS2 is designed with a high bandwidth bus and the PC simply isn''t.

I''m sorry if my post was unclear...

quote:Original post by rileyriley
Assume for a second that it IS possible to make an emulator that runs well on the average PC. Then sony could STOP building the $500 machines, and start making $1 CDs carrying the emulating software. If they sold each CD for $50, that''d be a profit of $49, as opposed to a loss of $200.

My main point is just to highlight the fact that it is not immediately obvious that making emulators is a bad idea.

Let''s assume for a moment that they could come up with an emulator that runs fast enough on the average PC. Suddenly, sales of the PS2 would drop (probably not to nothing, but there would be a big decrease). Within a year or two, there would be more people out there running the emulator than those who actually own the console, possibly by a big margin. So, say my company is developing games for the PS2 (which happens to be the case, but that''s irrelevant). I''m no longer really making games for the PS2, I''m making games for people who are running a PS2 emulator on their PC. Why, then, should I bother developing for the PS2 at all? I could just develop for the PC instead. Sure, I''d lose those potential customers that still have just the console, but I''d pick up PC users who don''t have the console or emulator. What''s more, I''d no longer have to pay a licensing fee to Sony to release games for their system. Pretty soon, the number of games coming out for the PS2 would slow to a trickle, as would Sony''s profits.

So, there''s another reason emulators are a bad idea in their eyes.