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machspeed2200
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tokka wrote:

Probably becouse people are hoping this thread will die...

You will never be able to run x86 code on a current cell at a speed that is useful for anything. Period. End of story. You would be able to buy a junk PII machine and out perform it so nobody will ever bother.

The Cell has the potential to do amazing things - x86 emulation isn't one of them.


Dude, wtf? a P2 out performing a Cell in x86 emulation? What drugs are you on man? We're talking about an 8 core 8x3.2GHz processor! we're talking about something that is 4 times more powerful than any commercially available computer system (well, maybe twice the xbox 360) but still, the PS3 should cope with x86 emulation with no worries! Man, I have worked with P2s for years, and there is no way one could outperform the PS3!

Of course, the only way that your statement can hold true is that if Sony lock out the other cores and only allow for one to be used. I hope that isn't the case... :?
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tokka
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

machspeed2200 wrote:

Of course, the only way that your statement can hold true is that if Sony lock out the other cores and only allow for one to be used. I hope that isn't the case... :?


Or another option is that you don't know anything about the Cell architecture and why it is so unsuitable for emulation, or ever written emulation code.

I know a little about running linux on Cell, and emulation. And I can tell you that there will never be an x86 emulator that you can play a game on a PS3 that you can't on a PII machine.

The question was can the PS3 be used to run x86 games, and the answer is no. You might not like the answer, and you might not want to read it, but that doesn't change the answer.
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machspeed2200
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

tokka wrote:
Or another option is that you don't know anything about the Cell architecture and why it is so unsuitable for emulation, or ever written emulation code.

I know a little about running linux on Cell, and emulation. And I can tell you that there will never be an x86 emulator that you can play a game on a PS3 that you can't on a PII machine.

The question was can the PS3 be used to run x86 games, and the answer is no. You might not like the answer, and you might not want to read it, but that doesn't change the answer.


Hrmm, you're right, I didn't want to read that, and no, I am somewhat familiar with the Cell's arch (no expert of course). However, you encouraged me to try and find some benchmarks.

Ok, so I couldn't find any PS3 vs Intel P2 benchmarks... all I could find was PS3 vs G5...
http://www.geekpatrol.ca/2006/11/playstation-3-performance/

Don't go telling me that the G5 is slower than a P2, cause I know it isn't!

And, sadly, this also proves that Sony does not allow linux to utilise all of it's cores...
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gtbX
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 4:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

(why am I even replying to this...)

First off, the Cell is _not_ an 8 core processor.
It has 8 SPE's (synergistic processing elements), which are effectively large vector processors. Completely useless for emulation, but very nice for other kinds of multimedia (ai, signal processing, graphics)

It has a (mostly) regular PowerPC core, which is why it can run (mostly) unmodified PPC linux binaries. I believe the core is multithreaded (hyperthreading to intel-ites).
The benchmark listed above compared only the Cell's PPC core against a G5, where the Cell excelled only the multithreaded and memory access tests. If some of those benchmarks were rewritten to use the SPE's, it could blow the G5 out of the water. (but the SPE's are still useless for x86 emulation!)

Even if you did something like Microsoft did with the 360 (x86 emulation for Xbox games running on the PPC-based 360), you still wouldn't have access to the GPU, so no 3D acceleration.

Of course, go to the source for tech specs:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-cellperf/
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machspeed2200
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2007 5:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

gtbX wrote:
(why am I even replying to this...)


It was well worth you replying to this. So that's why the x86 emulation is so pathetic! At last a definitive answer!

Thanks gtbX
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sirtalon42
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 12:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

machspeed2200 wrote:
And, sadly, this also proves that Sony does not allow linux to utilise all of it's cores...


Actually the Cell works perfectly fine in Linux on the PS3 (6 SPEs are allowed for use in Linux, the number 8 is inaccurate, since 6 are allowed for use in games/linux, 1 is reserved for the XMB at all times, and the '8'th one is dead to increase yields). The reason for the poor performance is virtually nothing is optimized for it at all currently.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 2:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

sirtalon42 wrote:
Actually the Cell works perfectly fine in Linux on the PS3 (6 SPEs are allowed for use in Linux, the number 8 is inaccurate, since 6 are allowed for use in games/linux, 1 is reserved for the XMB at all times, and the '8'th one is dead to increase yields). The reason for the poor performance is virtually nothing is optimized for it at all currently.


Thanks for the news, however we were discussing x86/wine emulation on the PS3. Which we've concluded to be quite poor, and not preferable. But thanks anyway.
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