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The Power PC Processor...

Melonman64

New member
Okay, so a gamecube runs on a powerpc processor, right? Well, so do powerMacs. Would dolphin run significantly better on a powermac? I'm betting it would run worse, since the emulator is trying to emulate the powerpc processor and thus the powermac would be doing more work than necessary. Maybe there would be a way to take advantage of the similar processor? I'm also betting this is a stupid question, so if it is, scream at me all you want.
 

ShizZy

Emulator Developer
Dolphin would probably run better on a Mac, but it'd have to be designed for one, and it isn't. For it to do so the programmers would have to recode most of it (the CPU anyways). Doubt you're going to see that anytime soon. Try GCube (although the Mac version won't be much faster, it's not optimized to be ran on a PPC), or wait for other emus :)
 

NoeOM

Mankind Member
Just trying to explain.

As you suggested Melonman64, there is a way to take advantage of the similar processor.

If you (the emulator designers and coders) know that the emulator runs on an system that have the same (or similar) processor (I mean, a processor with the same or similar instruction set), the emulation of the processor instructions is easier, since many of them are the same in both processors. Then, emulating some instruction of the emulated CPU needs only one instruction of the host system (because the same instruction is in both instruction sets), being the the fastest it can be emulated.

If the instruction to emulate is not present in the instruction set of the host system, then must be emulated by writing more or less code, being then slower to execute.

As ShizZy said, the designer of the emulator must take that simmilitude into account in order to optimize the code, targeting it to a concrete architecture (like PPC) and making the emulator faster. In the other hand, the emulator will be less portable when you code at lower level, using processor specific assembly code instead of a high level languaje like C, C++ or so.

A good solution should be to write some parts of the core in processor specific assembly languaje and the rest of the emulator (the GUI and so) in a high level languaje that can compile in every machine. There is less code to maintain.

I know my english is horrible. I´m trying to improve it everyday!
 

BlueFalcon7

New member
The reason I want to see a GC emulator run on a Power Mac, is because I want to use a power PC emulator like Pear PC and run the Power PC version of the emulator on windows just to see the speed difference.

Another thing I want to know which never got answered...
The new Intel Macs run on an x86 core, but it can run the old PowerPC apps because it has SSE3. Would utilizing SSE3 make the Power PC emulation more efficient?
 

bohdy

New member
BlueFalcon7 said:
Another thing I want to know which never got answered...
The new Intel Macs run on an x86 core, but it can run the old PowerPC apps because it has SSE3. Would utilizing SSE3 make the Power PC emulation more efficient?

Not in Dolphin's case, I think, as the Gekko has fairly basic vector SIMD compared to more advanced PPC's.
 

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