"emulation" with the PS720 being X86 based

[FAST6191]

With the PS4 being X86 family based and rumours heavily placing the 720 as being the same there is talk of multiplatform development being easier.

However the counterpoint to that is there is potential for a hypervisor type approach to be taken and emulation to happen on the PC. What is known of the PS4 has it as X86 but still not PC architecture so how this might trouble things? Could I make up it by having a faster machine? If a faster one is called for might that become viable for the common man in the lifetime of the consoles (considering consoles are likely to be the half nice PC late 2012 could offer....)? Might it all be irrelevant if companies take to doing something like the PS3 and Steam buy for one and get the other?
For the sake of argument magic fairy land's one wish granted to us is any crypto or other protection is bypassed.

Now whether this would want to be flanked with a fancy PCIe card of some form (not strictly relevant to this but a nice example of a fancy one using a cell processor- http://www.power.org/press-release/fixstars-provides-gigaaccel-180-with-yellow-dog-linux/ ) is probably where some debate will arise. However when discussions of PS360 emulation come up it is usually seen as the first viable option behind engine transfers (custom unreal on the PS360 is potentially still convertible to heavily modded unreal on the PC) and if things like XNA are used then C# dynamic recompilation might be a thing that is possible (as it stands android being "linux under all that java" has seen some interesting things happen vis a vis architecture). Also some of the people playing in emulation of the original xbox (another somewhat custom X86 machine) are taking a similar approach with hypervisors and whatever else.

The related possibility might be for online games and things that could happen there. Granted they probably still want their own networks and it would have been near trivial to add generic mouse and keyboard support to the PS360 (indeed the PS3 kind of did for some games and some hackers did some stuff with hacked 360s) so business will probably get in the way of technology once more.

Thoughts?

 

[Foxi4]

My thoughts are "It's been years since the original XBox was released, we have fully-functional PS2 and Gamecube emulators and we still don't have a proper XBox one". Just the fact that something is x86 does not mean an emulator will pop up - it merely means that the CPU-side of things can be Interpreted natively rather than Recompiled.

 

[Clydefrosch]

were there many games on xbox that werent on pc too? i'd almost think, that an xbox emulator just wouldnt be worth it

 

[Flame]

i actually talk to one of the Xbox 1 emulators dev's, and i know he is very talented dev. because its 86x doesn't mean it will be any easier.

 

[trumpet-205]

Take a look at original Xbox, despite being on x86 it still doesn't have decent an emulator. From what I have heard this is primarily due to Xbox being poorly documented and lack of interest.

 

[Rydian]

From what I have heard this is primarily due to Xbox being poorly documented and lack of interest.

This here. Emulators often have multiple authors that come and go over the years. The less interest there is, the less an emulator will be worked on in total.

 

[Foxi4]

This here. Emulators often have multiple authors that come and go over the years. The less interest there is, the less an emulator will be worked on in total.

Keep in mind that there's a reason why attempts at emulating the XBox were not all that numerous - what yeilded better results was interpreting the game binaries as they were since the system was running some sort of a crude a'la Windows system and, well, that actually worked. There is the "nobody cares" factor in the equation, yes, but that being said, there are zillions of systems nobody cares about that are emulated.

 

[Rydian]

I'm not talking about caring about the system itself (total popularity), but caring about emulating the system.

 

[Foxi4]

I'm not talking about caring about the system itself (total popularity), but caring about emulating the system.

Most people would do that solely for the exclusive titles and most of the good ones got a delayed PC release, so yeah. That being said, I don't think the PS4/720 will be fully "emulated" in any way, I'd take my chances with interpretation/virtualization attempts, but in that scenario, the custom hardware would still have to be somehow emulated.

 

[Rydian]

Most people would do that solely for the exclusive titles and most of the good ones got a delayed PC release, so yeah.

That, and ease of pirating on the original console can come into it as well. Take the PSP as a slightly-different example, in many cases it's preferable to have a PSP over an emulator because of the ease of hacking, and you can still use extra tools like cheats and save states and junk.

That being said, I don't think the PS4/720 will be fully "emulated" in any way, I'd take my chances with interpretation/virtualization attempts, but in that scenario, the custom hardware would still have to be somehow emulated.

Virtualizing the CPU and using an API translation layer for the GPU calls can net a huge performance increase... if both of those are possible.

 

[nl255]

Most people would do that solely for the exclusive titles and most of the good ones got a delayed PC release, so yeah. That being said, I don't think the PS4/720 will be fully "emulated" in any way, I'd take my chances with interpretation/virtualization attempts, but in that scenario, the custom hardware would still have to be somehow emulated.

Well it took over a decade before it was possible to run a majority of Windows programs without having Windows (see the Wine project for details) and any such "emulator" would probably be the same way. Even "merely" reimplementing/translating API calls isn't easy.

 

[Foxi4]

Virtualizing the CPU and using an API translation layer for the GPU calls can net a huge performance increase... if both of those are possible.

So far all we know is that the CPU itself is in the Jaguar family of chips, the GPU is some kind of a Radeon and that the set was "customized for Sony" when it comes to the PS4, we don't know anything at all about the XBox 720 that can be 100% certain...

...so on one side we have something we do know and can replicate easily, on the other we have some mysterious add-ons... and those add-ons would be the primary concern as they're all situated on the silicone and more than likely protected from shoddy decapping work... I'm smelling X-Ray with these two.

Another problem is the PS4's memory setup - unified 8GB GDDR5 versus the division of memory on PC could cause some grief with latency when emulating unless the user just happens to have an 8GB GDDR5 video card combo which I find highly unlikely.