Dolphin...cores

Baltzatu · 03-30-2011, 01:20 AM #1

Will Dolphin ever use more than 2 cores? If no, why?

silveruniverse · 03-30-2011, 02:26 AM #2

(03-26-2011, 02:57 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Current threads that need lots of processing work per second:
-CPU emulator (main thread)
-Video (gpu emulation frontend)
-DSP (audio emulation frontend)

Current threads that I know of that need very little processing work per second (their are more, I assure you):
-Input #1
-Input #2
-Input #3
-Input #4
-GUI
-Audio backend

Normally video/dsp is one thread but with the dsplle on thread option you can put dsp lle audio emulation in it's own thread. That helps in some games depending on whether the main thread is running slower than the audio thread but causes hangs in games which use zelda ucodes (zelda and mario games).

Video and audio threads can not be easily multithreaded in a way that would offer any significant speedup. Having separate threads doing work would result in no speedup if the main thread is bottlenecking the whole system (which is often) and also since in emulation all of the opCodes have to be emulated in the order they are received the threads would simply be waiting for each other to finish their work before continuing. It would effectively accomplish nothing.

The CPU opCode recompiler could be multithreaded but that would be EXTREMELY difficult and unsafe. It would also have to stall/flush a lot, which would probably diminish the speedup attained from multithreading.

We cool?

Baltzatu · 03-30-2011, 02:48 AM #3

Thanks for your reply, I haven't seen that post. Ya, we cool. Big Grin

**NaturalViolence** · 03-30-2011, 04:32 AM #4

Thank god I didn't need to dig up that post. Thank you silveruniverse.

**neobrain** · 03-30-2011, 05:55 AM #5

(03-30-2011, 04:32 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Thank god I didn't need to dig up that post. Thank you silveruniverse.

Meh, gotta put my list of usefull explanations online somewhere... I had already included that answer of yours in that list Tongue

**NaturalViolence** · (This post was last modified: 03-30-2011, 06:33 AM by NaturalViolence.)

Quote:Meh, gotta put my list of usefull explanations online somewhere... I had already included that answer of yours in that list Tongue

We need to do an "Ask me anything" thread and put the good ones on the main site as a Q/A. But I have to be allowed the right to refuse excessively stupid questions Tongue

If I don't know I can always ask you or skid and translate it into non-dev language.

**ExtremeDude2** · 03-30-2011, 09:18 AM #7

(03-30-2011, 01:20 AM)Baltzatu Wrote: Will Dolphin ever use more than 2 cores? If no, why?

Dolphin can use 3 cores

(03-30-2011, 06:32 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote:
Quote:Meh, gotta put my list of usefull explanations online somewhere... I had already included that answer of yours in that list Tongue

We need to do an "Ask me anything" thread and put the good ones on the main site as a Q/A. But I have to be allowed the right to refuse excessively stupid questions

If I don't know I can always ask you or skid and translate it into non-dev language.

ANYTHING?

**NaturalViolence** · (This post was last modified: 03-30-2011, 02:55 PM by NaturalViolence.)

Quote:Dolphin can use 3 cores

Already explained in my long explanation that silveruniverse quoted.

Quote:ANYTHING?

Sure go ahead. I can at least try.

Anything you're curious about or don't understand what it does/how it works?