Project 64 on Sony PSP Feasibility (technical)

[theBishop]

Hi,

I'm fairly well versed in C++ and i have some expirience in ASM. I don't know if developers follow these boards, but i have some technical questions. Most of these questions are related to the feasibility of porting 1964 or Project 64 to the Sony PSP.

#1: If an emulator is written in C(++), how are the native CPU instructions brought into C for interpretation? Also, where in the 1964 source code does this happen?

#2: If an emulator for MIPs (n64) is written in C(++), and compiled for a MIPs architechure, is the speed of the emulator dramatically increased since its MIPs to MIPs instead of MIPs to x86. Or would the emulation have to be rewritten?

#3: Since the PSP and N64 are both MIPs architechure, is it possible to have more of a "virtual machine" implementation rather than CPU emulation? How much work would this take? And how much code from P64 or 1964 could be recycled?

#4: Do you think the PSP is powerful enough to emulate the N64 playably? Specifications can be found here:

http://www.mypsp.co.uk/specs.htm

Thanks,
theBishop

 

[knowitman]

I am not sure of most of this, but I would say with some High Level Emulation you could get a few games to run. That is how UltraHLE and Corn ran on PCs of around the same specs of the PSP.

 

[theBishop]

Well that's not terribly clear. Also, for HLE, they used Glide as their high level API, who knows what the native API is for PSP. Probably openGL, but who knows? I'm not sure "high level" is really enough info to determine feasibility.

 

[Poobah]

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I thought that Sony use their own API?

 

[knowitman]

That is true I think. I know the PS3 is going to have an OpenGL type API, but I'm not sure of the PSP. I think it used NURBS for 3D graphics though.

 

[theBishop]

Nurbs is not an API. Its a drawing technique that the PSP supports in hardware.

Aren't there any developers on this forum?

 

[LazerTag]

Maybe try the Programming forum here instead?

 

[WildNinji]

PSP CPU Core
MIPS R4000 32-bit core
1-333MHz (1.2V)
FPU, VFPU (2.6 billion flops)
3D graphics extended instructions

PSP Media Engine
MIPS R4000 32-bit core
1-333MHz (1.2V)
2MB eDRAM submemory

PSP Graphics Core
166MHz (1.2V)
2MB eDRAM (VRAM)

It could be done, dynarec would become a passthrough recompiler on the 1st CPU with special handles for memory locations. With HLE one can think to develop a GFX/Audio plugin that runs on the 2nd processor...

Yeah, it could be done, but I fear not with pj64, more likely with mupen64 (it is to tied to win as pj64 is). And it would require quite a big effort, and a better understandment of the PSP hw. It is not for now

 

[Trotterwatch]

I believe there was a thread only about a week ago that was about the feasibility of programming an N64 emulator on the PS2. I would imagine that would be somewhat applicable to what you are looking for.

http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?t=25356&highlight=MIPS

 

[theBishop]

If you think this thread would get more technically savvy responses in the "programming" forum, could a mod please move it there?

Thanks.

 

[Trotterwatch]

Did you check the link I posted? It should be fairly relevant.