Hacking Does homebrew take advantage of 3DS's extra power?

[MisterSouji]

I'm not sure if this is discussed yet, so I'll throw it out. I have a Acekard 2i for my DSi. I originally got it so I could run emulators on the go, and be able to play my favorite oldschool games on my lunch breaks at work. However, certain emulators, namely Genesis and SNES, had issues running games at full speed, and had some bugs. I'm sure you are all familiar with this. One notable issue was that due to dropped inputs in the emulator, Street Fighter II was rendered almost unplayable.
Now I have a 3DS as well, and the card was updated to run on it. However, now games run significantly faster, and Street Fighter II is fully playable. I'm assuming that while the cart can't take advantage of the extra hardware add-ons of the 3DS (3d screen, SD Card, cameras), the card can take advantage of the increased processing power. With this in mind, shouldn't it be possible to write emulators to better take advantage of this? Namely a GBA emulator (I know there are two out there for DSi, but one requires a special card, and the other is very basic). I don't think that Nintendo will focus as much on blocking a DS flash cart on the 3ds, seeing as the Acekart 2i is tricking the system into thinking that it's a legit game, and it can't run 3DS games. This could be an easy way to run legit homebrew on the 3ds.

 

[Zarxrax]

No, you cant take advantage of the extra power of the 3ds unless its running in 3ds mode. Flashcarts only support DS mode.

 

[Schlupi]

Unless somebody cracks DSi mode and or 3DS mode (which there has been no official release of anything besides Sudokuhax and iEvo for DSi) we will not get any homebrew running on them yet.

The 3DS mode portion of things will either be cracked via to softmodding, or through a flashcart most likely. There is no way for us to know when or what will happen, however, the team who dumped the first 3DS roms (EUR Super Monkey Ball and Splinter Cell) CLAIMS to have cracked it, tested it and it's working on their hardware. They are a reliable group, and well... if you wanna see what the future holds, just stick around.

NOTE: current flashcarts (besides iEvo) run in DS mode ONLY. Only DS capabilities are unlocked, thus 3DS features are not available.

 

[doyama]

The bandwidth available via Slot1 is known to be fairly poor on the DS/DSi which really limited how much you could really do with it even on the SCDS2. It's unlikely any flashcart in DS mode has access to 'extra' cpu. More likely possiblity is that the extra bandwidth available in Slot1 on the 3DS might make the emulation a bit more efficient.

 

[Pippin666]

Noobs can't search and read.

Pip'

 

[Gullwing]

Umm is it just me, or does everyone wish that a comet would land on noobs so that they can't create topics with misleading titles?

 

[MisterSouji]

Right, I know that the flash carts can't take advantage of the extra features and such, and are limited to DS mode. But everything still runs a lot faster and smoother on the 3ds. Someone run a SNES emulator on a standard DS(i), and then run one on the 3ds. I'm not sure if it's extra ram or what, but there's a HUGE difference. If I get my DSi back, I'll make a comparison video.

 

[totalnoob617]

@schlupi what do you mean by "the team who first dumped the roms claim to have cracked it and are working on their hardware"?

i though that it was a tam that made other ds dumps that dumped them ,and not a team that makes flashcarts? or do they have something to do with commercial flashcart development?
what exactly do you mean by they are working on hardware? what kind of hardware ? a commercially released flashcard? or some proof of concept rigged up hardware that they will sell to a major flashcart maker? or a mod chip? or something else like a conoluted hardware tig that is not really practical for portability?
i heard they had the roms running too but only 3rd hane i never saw the 2st hand article,so it have or do you any more info as to the detail of this hardware,like what frrm it will take or anything really?

 

[doyama]

@schlupi what do you mean by "the team who first dumped the roms claim to have cracked it and are working on their hardware"?

i though that it was a tam that made other ds dumps that dumped them ,and not a team that makes flashcarts? or do they have something to do with commercial flashcart development?
what exactly do you mean by they are working on hardware? what kind of hardware ? a commercially released flashcard? or some proof of concept rigged up hardware that they will sell to a major flashcart maker? or a mod chip? or something else like a conoluted hardware tig that is not really practical for portability?
i heard they had the roms running too but only 3rd hane i never saw the 2st hand article,so it have or do you any more info as to the detail of this hardware,like what frrm it will take or anything really?

The group that did the dump basically hooked up a bunch of circuits to both the internal guts of the 3DS as well as the guts of the cart. It gives us insight into some of the system calls that the 3DS makes to the cart and the order of how that happens. Thus while the dump is a useful proof of concept, it does not correlate with any kind of 'flash cart' possibilities in any way. It does not reveal any exploits that would allow arbitrary code execution.

Thus from your perspective the rom dumps and how they were done are basically 'useless' for all intents and purposes.

 

[ccfreak2k]

But everything still runs a lot faster and smoother on the 3ds.
Placebo effect.

QUOTE(MisterSouji @ Jun 16 2011, 06:21 PM) I'm not sure if it's extra ram or what,

You can be sure it's not because that would break backwards compatibility. Think MIOS for the Wii.

 

[Rankio]

Supercard DSTWO, video player:

DS Lite - video is choppy
3DS - same video plays smooth

Not my imagination.

 

[machomuu]

Supercard DSTWO, video player:

DS Lite - video is choppy
3DS - same video plays smooth

Not my imagination.

Proof, please.

 

[Arm73]

LOL at all the n00bs yelling "n00b" without even understanding what MisterSouji is saying !
I know what is saying, and what Rankio is saying as well.
I got the same experience when I put Ikureader on the AK2i. When I run it on the DSL, and scroll the screen with the D pad, it moves considerably slower and less smooth then on the DSi, and that is on a plain AK2i supposedly running in DS mode on the DSiXL.
I always suspected that homebrew running simple code straight from the main processor, somehow somehow runs slightly faster because of the faster processor or extra ram available, who knows.
But I totally get what MisterSouji is saying, and I'd like to see some test running simple code in DS mode on the DS, DSi and 3DS, we might learn something.

 

[machomuu]

LOL at all the n00bs yelling "n00b" without even understanding what MisterSouji is saying !
I know what is saying, and what Rankio is saying as well.
I got the same experience when I put Ikureader on the AK2i. When I run it on the DSL, and scroll the screen with the D pad, it moves considerably slower and less smooth then on the DSi, and that is on a plain AK2i supposedly running in DS mode on the DSiXL.
I always suspected that homebrew running simple code straight from the main processor, somehow somehow runs slightly faster because of the faster processor or extra ram available, who knows.
But I totally get what MisterSouji is saying, and I'd like to see some test running simple code in DS mode on the DS, DSi and 3DS, we might learn something.

The thing is the video player doesn't have access to the 3DS' extra memory, so how would it affect the video player? It has no idea that it's being run on a 3DS so how would the fact that a better processor being there benefit anything?

 

[WiiUBricker]

Supercard DSTWO, video player:

DS Lite - video is choppy
3DS - same video plays smooth

Not my imagination.

That's interesting and might well be true. In that case perhaps the built-in DS mode in the 3DS is kinda superior to the default DS mode in DS lite and DSi.

 

[Arm73]

Maybe the DSi and the 3DS have crc checks built in so that when running plain DS games ( official ones ) set the clock speed to a certain limit for accuracy purposes, but when running homebrew those checks can't be performed, thus the homebrew runs faster ?
After all they use the main processor.

 

[damedus]

to me runs just the same on both I have no choppy video on DS and the Snes and GBA emus were running fine for me on both. Id say its placebo effect.

 

[s4mid4re]

to me runs just the same on both I have no choppy video on DS and the Snes and GBA emus were running fine for me on both. Id say its placebo effect.

You only seem to have tested videos/games that runs well on DS... or that's what I get from 'were running fine for me on both.'
Have you tried running videos/games that runs poorly on DS on a DSi or 3DS?

Unfortunately, I don't have a DSi or 3DS to test this.

 

[Deleted User]

3ds= Extra Power
Homebrew=DS/i Mode only

Can homebrew utilise 3DS's extra power? No.

 

[Zarxrax]

Well this is easy enough to test. Fire up an emulator or something that displays the fps its running at. If it has trouble running on the normal ds, the fps will be lower than 60 or whatever. If the 3ds runs it at full 60fps, or at least faster than the ds, then theres some solid proof.