Mac Theory

[FireFly]

Hello, I'm new to this forum, but I had a theory about Gamecube emulators.

I thought it would be a very good idea to try developing Dolphin for a Mac. The Gamecubes CPU, the IBM Gekko, is based on the IBM G3, a processor used in fairly old Macs (I'm not sure, but around 5-6 years old seems about right?).

Given the most recent G5 will probably use similar architecture and some of the same instruction sets, I thought it would be a nice idea to try running a Gamecube emulator on a Mac using an ATi graphics card. This would make instruction translation (for both graphics and program processing) a lot less resource hungry, a lot more efficient, and a damn sight easier.

Of course, this is just a theory, but I thought it would be worth a try.

Any other ideas are welcome, and I'd like to know what people think of my theory.

 

[JinXD]

rtfm

 

[FireFly]

I'm sure there's somebody out there with a mac and the ability to convert a program for it. I'm also sure someone could donate an old mac for writing the program, and then someone out there would have a recent Mac to test it on.

 

[Falcon4ever]

rofl nice reply JinxD

 

[FiRES]

it would be nice to write a dynarec for a mac because you prolly could convert a lot of instructions directly and the speed would prolly be nice (at least core-wise) too but that it is all.
the whole architecture of the GC is not comparable with a mac and the gfx chip has been developed by ArtX (ATI has acquired ArtX some monthes before big N has released the GC). The GC isnt a small version of an apple computer.

cheers F|RES

 

[Durandle]

I'm not debating the issue really - but would like to know, in your programmers opinion, would the speed gains possible in using a Mac be worth the trouble of making it work? I my self could mess with the code when the source is available...

 

[FireFly]

Well, if like you say, current generation graphics cards are perfectly capable of Gamecube graphics, and it's the CPU holding it back, surely the speed gains from using a Mac (with the G5) would be enough to get decent performance out of the emulator?

 

[ector]

The GC graphics capabilities are somewhere between the GF4 generation and FX/R9500. However the graphics commands still have to be translated from the GC format to OpenGL or DirectX in realtime which takes a lot of CPU power. The Gamecube CPU also has a special SIMD instruction set that is different from Altivec and the memory map is different, so you still need to translate code although the job would be much simpler and get better results than on x86.

So a G5 could, with some work, definitely run a ported version of Dolphin quite a bit faster than an x86, no question about that. Full speed? Don't know.

 

[FireFly]

Is it quite possible that the next generation of PowerPC CPUs (G6, I'm guessing) would have more chance running a GC emulator at full speed than the next generation of x86 CPUs?

 

[ector]

Absolutely.

 

[Federelli]

What about full speed on an x86 system, do you see that in the near future?

Pentium 5 perhaps? Nehalem?

 

[Super Noodle]

While we are talking bout cpus how bout A64? Same architecture as pentium 4s? I have a 939 3000+ 6800gt =/ <_<.

 

[DOGG]

I reckon we need CPUs 3x as powerful, with the emualtor highly optomised to be able to run at full speed.

 

[Durandle]

Well, it looks like the gains may well be worth it. Although I am not the best programmer for such a job I may give it a go. More than likely I'll get lost comletely, but ya never know ^^