About Emus and X86-64 (AKA. AMD64)

[neoak]

With the options of 64 bit computing in our houses (Athlon64 3000+ for US$240, Retail, Newegg.com), and the confirmation of an Intel X86-64 processor in development, i wonder:

1. There would be advantages for the N64 emulators, not in terms of speed, but in compability?

2. It would be very difficult to compile an N64 emu for an X86-64 enviroment?

3. Anyone interested in doing it?

 

[Reznor007]

It won't really make much difference. It will be a bit faster than an equivalent 32bit CPU as there are more registers, but it won't suddenly be full speed.

You can already compile MAME for 64bit support in Linux though.

 

[Lillymon]

From the evidence I've seen (the sheer amount of games working in the new 1964's 32-bit core) it seems most Nintendo 64 games would be quite happy with 'only' a 32-bit CPU...

 

[Tagrineth]

1. There would be advantages for the N64 emulators, not in terms of speed, but in compability?

Why would compatibility improve?

If anything, the only tangible benefits WOULD be in speed, considering that the emulators probably have to make sure they truncate any 64-bit values before execution. Not to mention the fact that x86-64 processors have TWICE as many registers as the standard IA-32 we've been using for so long.

2. It would be very difficult to compile an N64 emu for an X86-64 enviroment?

Actually, it probably wouldn't be THAT hard if the emu was written entirely in C. But any inline assembly would have to be hand-modified to address the new registers etc.

 

[Zuzma]

So do any games heavly use 64bit instructions? Why didn't they just use a 32bit processor for the system??

 

[tygra]

Why recompile ..
compiler & CPU (64bit) will have IA32 combability.

 

[Tagrineth]

So do any games heavly use 64bit instructions? Why didn't they just use a 32bit processor for the system??

They used a 64-bit processor to sound impressive, more than anything else.

64-bit doesn't really make a whole lot of difference for fixed-function 3D.

 

[Zuzma]

They used a 64-bit processor to sound impressive, more than anything else.

64-bit doesn't really make a whole lot of difference for fixed-function 3D.

Haha I kinda figured that much but it's nice to hear it from some one else.