Successor to the CD32 in the console market

[som99]

Have you seen how weak the CPU found in PS4/XboxOne is ? And it's fast enough to emulate correctly a 3-core Xenon from the Xbox 360...

No no and no. They are re-compiling binaries in-house, hence why you are required to download the game after inserting a disc (if all would be emulated why would you have to download the game after inserting disc instead of just copying from disc?) and it's why they release new titles over time and not large amounts instant since they gotta compile and optimize the binaries for another architecture one game at a time.

The x86-64 Jaguar can NOT emulate the 3 core PPC in the 360.

Why so many people belive the Xbone binary translates the 360 CPU is beyond me, it's not doing that, some parts of the 360 hardware is emulated but not the CPU.

The Jaguar in the xbone is way to weak to do that.

"It is essentially the exact same code," Rayner replied. "The Xbox team converts the 360 game and 360 flash PPC executables into native x64 executables, packages those up with the 360 game assets, 360 flash and emulator as a regular Xbox One game, and publishes it."

Also you underestimate the need of raw CPU power in todays games. Using the CPU in PS4/Xbox one in a PC setup with high-end graphics cards and the CPU would be a bottleneck and hold the GPU back.

Here is an example taken from Sweclockers benchmarks. The Jaguar performs somewhat like the FX8150 if the 8150 was underclocked a lot (the Jaguar is running 1.75GHz in the Xbox one and 1.6GHz in the PS4 and the 8150 in this test runs 3.6GHz, IPC is basically the same). So you will quickly see that the Jaguar would hold the GPU back a lot if high settings and a high-end GPU was used.


Edit:
Even when looking at a 5 year old game like Skyrim you will see that the Fx8150 performs really bad at about half the framerate of a top end CPU using the same graphics card. Then think how horrid it would perform when clocked at the same speeds as the consoles.

[som99]

Why do you think you're getting 33% frame drops depending on games if apps are recompiled ?

Because lack of propper optimazation when compiling for another architecture.
You do not need to search far to find out that many console ports released on PC are badly optimized and eats resourcesn (same case with this).

Of course it does... The PPC found inside the 360 is more than 12 years old (if you consider R&D).

Good then we can emulate multicore 3GHz PPC CPU's on sub 100USD x86 CPU's and outperform most NG Amiga PPC's then, no need for PPC chips anymore... (sarcastic)

You know you need a i5/i7 @ 4GHz+ to emulate the WII PPC CPU, sure the binary translation could be better but that should be a good reference for you to know how demaning the erchitecture emulation is.

The CPU is the only thing that can be emulated: everything else can be wrapped to host chips.

I have not dwelled enough in the 360 hardware to know what needs to be emulated/wrapped/virtulized, but the Jaguar is not powerfull enough to emulate the 360's CPU. Just doing some numbercrunching on both CPU's and you will see that it is not possible and it's not like the binary translation is 1:1 ratio. Emulating the entire PPC RISC architecture on x86 is not feasable.

And you surestimate the power needed in most games.
Oh, and not to mention that most GPU packed with current ARM SoC are designed to perform correctly with current ARM, or do you mean most ARM GPUs need a faster CPU than they currently got ?

You said that any CPU is fast enough today for gaming not just ARM. So you are saying the ARM CPU's is fast enough and only the GPU needs to be more powerful? But then the CPU will be a bottleneck. The ARM CPU's are far from the desktop CPU's performance.


We can go way deeper in the subject about emulation of other architectures but it's not worth the time in this case.
You want to belive that the 360 CPU is binary translated on the xbone CPU? Sure belive that be my guest.

[som99]

Why do you think you're getting 33% frame drops depending on games if apps are recompiled ?

Because lack of propper optimazation when compiling for another architecture.
You do not need to search far to find out that many console ports released on PC are badly optimized and eats resourcesn (same case with this).

Of course it does... The PPC found inside the 360 is more than 12 years old (if you consider R&D).

Good then we can emulate multicore 3GHz PPC CPU's on sub 100USD x86 CPU's and outperform most NG Amiga PPC's then, no need for PPC chips anymore... (sarcastic)

Any modern ARM CPU like Apple 9x is already a lot faster than Xenon's CPU, even though it needs a lot more power and runs without a fan... No wonder modern x86 CPU may emulate it with proper JIT.

On what kind of workload?

The CPU is the only thing that can be emulated: everything else can be wrapped to host chips.

I have not looked in the rest of the 360 hardware to know what needs to be emulated and what can be wrapped/virtulized, but the Jaguar is not powerfull enough to emulate the 360's CPU. Just doing some numbercrunching on both CPU's and you will see that it is not possible and it's not like the binary translation is 1:1 ratio.

And you surestimate the power needed in most games.
Oh, and not to mention that most GPU packed with current ARM SoC are designed to perform correctly with current ARM, or do you mean most ARM GPUs need a faster CPU than they currently got ?

You said that any CPU is fast enough today for gaming not just ARM. So you are saying the ARM CPU's is fast enough and only the GPU needs to be more powerful? But then the CPU will be a bottleneck. The ARM CPU's are far from the desktop CPU's performance.