PSP News - Public Discussion - Emulation

[wraggster]

The PSP and what can be emulated on it is a topic of discussion thats always being debated around the PSP Homebrew Community.

Last weeks release of a DS Emulator for the PSP brought out a lot of strong comments from people on all sides, some that say a DS Emulator will never be at a decent speed and unplayable etc etc.

I myself agree that a DS Emulator will most likely never be playable but then i thought lets look at specs and in particular specs for the Nintendo 64 which is being emulated on the PSP

Firstly heres the N64 Specs:

Co-Processor:
Custom 64-bit MIPS RISC "Reality Immersion" RCP (62.5 MHz)
Built-in Audio/Video Vector Processor (RSP)
RCP Benchmarks
Over half a billion (500,000,000) operations/sec

Memory:
4 Megabytes (36 megabits) total RAM
Rambus DRAM subsystem
Transfers up to 562.5 MBytes/sec
Custom 9-bit Rambus Bus (to the DRAM)
Runs at 500 MHz max
Internal data bus to the RCP is 128-bit

Now heres the Nintendo DS Specs:

Main CPU: ARM 9, 67 MHz
Secondary CPU: ARM 7, 33 MHz

Memory: 4 MB main RAM, 656 kB VRAM

Sound: ARM 7, 33 MHz
16 simultaneous channels
stereo sound

Graphical prestations/effects:
ARM 9
dual 256x192 screen resolution
solid 60fps
120,000 polygons per second with all hardware effects @ 60 fps (expect game benchmarks to be a little less.)
262,144 colors
4 million vertices/second
30 million pixels/second fillrate
Cel-shading
Hardware fog
no bilinear filtering This really sucks...

When you look at the systems there doesnt seem to be a mass of difference between them, now with N64 Emulation on PSP at a playable or nearly playable state then will we see DS games at a much more playable condition than the 4FPS releases at the moment, of course any such emulator needs to be written for that console.

So is a decent DS Emulator a possibility or not, my answer would be no but in the world of emulation we are always amazed by the breakthroughs that happen. Im sure the coders who know the N64 and DS Hardware will be able to dissect the difference in specs in a way i cant but its nice to dream eh ?

[DPyro]

The problem lies in the CPU. Both N64 and PSP are MIPS based, while the DS is using two ARM processors which is totally different.

[Sterist]

yup, what he ^ said

as either zx-81 or exophase (forgot which) stated before in their GBA emulators , the ARM cpu is quite difficult to emulate

edit: and one ARM alone is a big deal

[hounddog]

if it proofs that DS emulator will never be full speed at least we got to see what its like

[Buddy4point0]

my opinion is, if u can make a ds emulator, great. BUT i will never use it because most ds games are crappy remakes of n64 games with weird controls.

[kiariki]

My opinion on this is that its silly to make an emulator for a system that can be bought in just about any store that sells hardware. I understand a computer emulating a current system in order to play-test the homebrew (or commercial project, since I bet commercial devs like Nintendo use their own version of a test emulator to try their games out... I'm not sure, but I'd bet on it!)

My 2 cents.

my opinion is, if u can make a ds emulator, great. BUT i will never use it because most ds games are crappy remakes of n64 games with weird controls.

Do you really feel that way? The only remakes I know of are Super Mario 64 DS and Diddy Kong Racing DS. The rest of the DS games are in no way remakes of any N64 games.

Phoenix Wright 1 & 2 are remakes of GBA Phoenix Wright games... I can't think of any more remakes on the DS...

I've enjoyed many of the DS's games, mainly Mario Kart DS (not a remake by any means!), Castlevania DoS, and Rocket Slime... But I will not argue your dislike for the DS... Whether you like it or not is up to you, I'm only arguing that the games aren't terrible (Except Pokemon Dash and Yoshi Touch n' Go...)- you just don't like them! ?

[Broadus]

DS emulators hardly even run on the PC. N64 emulators, however, run super-full-speed.

[kiariki]

DS emulators hardly even run on the PC. N64 emulators, however, run super-full-speed.

There's been +-10 full years of N64 emulation and only around 2 of DS emulation. It'll take a while. Personally, I think it'd be a good idea if they aren't made usable to play on until the DS itself dies out and something else replaces it... : (

[On The Rise]

my opinion is, if u can make a ds emulator, great. BUT i will never use it because most ds games are crappy remakes of n64 games with weird controls.

Shows how little you know about the ds.

[`The0n3]

2 processors = no