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IBM Full-System Simulator Team Speaks Out
Shell writes "The IBM Full-System Simulator for the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE) processor, known inside IBM as codeword Mambo, is a key component of the newly posted offerings on alphaWorks. Meet some of the members of the team that pulled it together, and hear about the simulator in their own words."
Did I ever say that it would be possible soon, or worse, possible on x86 hardware? I never made this claim, I was simply saying that emulation of the PS3 in the future is a possibility and if you are going to be a naysayer and claim it's not possible, remember that pretty much every single game console to this day has been emulated (if not perfectly at least to some extent, even the PS2) Anything is possible :-)
Okay, he never said anything about the "coming years" or about running it on x86. Here, I'll repeat it because it's so easy using copy and paste. He never said anything about the "coming years" or about running it on x86. One more time? Nah, I think two should be enough. Well, three, because he already repated it. And he also said it in the first place. Or didn't say it. See above. Now, please either make a point why we will never be able to emulate the Cell on any other architecture ever or, well, you get the drift. No offense.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Ouch, does that count for innovative these days?
Except.. the PS3 is like no other console seen before. So your argument doesn't stand.
First, there is no "argument." All I am arguing is that anything is possible. Am I saying it's likely to happen soon? Not at all.
Maybe we could emulate the Cell arch on x86, but the fact of the matter is that its not reasonable to even hope that any time in the foreseeable future we'll be able to run a PS3 game in an emulated environment at playable speed.
Why is it not reasonable to hope for that? I never said it would be happening anytime soon, I'm just leaving the possibility open. People said the PS2 could never be emulated, yet there are (somewhat) working emulators for it.
The architectures are so dissimilar that even innovative emulator techniques like dynamic recompilation wouldn't be able to achieve reasonable performance.
Honestly I don't know what you are talking about here... emulators "emulate" the hardware of a specific device, allowing *gasp* native binaries to run on a non-native architecture. x86 and PowerPC aren't very similar, yet we have Bochs and PearPC (and many others.)
Look at the Intel and AMD roadmaps as the grandparent noted; we aren't going to have even comparable native performance in the coming years, much less the level of performance that would be required to emulate the platform at full speed.
Once again, I never said it would happen anytime soon, or that any of the current Intel/AMD processors (or near-future, for that matter) would be able to emulate it. I'm talking a LONG TIME before anything would be possible. C'mon, do you think back when the SNES was released that people thought years later we would be able to play any SNES game on your home computer? But give anything time, and someone will code it.