(10-13-2009, 05:13 AM)omegadox Wrote: [ -> ]Since maybe a few people would still have a PPC mac sitting around, and since like no one on the dev team is likely to have such machine, how would it be tested? Since dolphin is targeted at the popular x86 platform, no one is going to spend time making a PPC version of the source code. If you really wanted that, you'd have to do it yourself basically.
Its not at all hard...all you would need to do is compile with GCC; it's a C/C++ environment for PowerPC. Unfortunately, the true problem is that the graphics on the PS3 are locked, so the code would have to be re-written (not a lot) to support the SPE portion of the processor so that the processor alone could do all the graphics work. That, and you do have 7 cores at your disposal, so the processor alone could do the trick.
Alas, I'd be asking too much of you guys. Thanks anyway though.
As ector said:
Quote:It's a lot harder than you'd think. GC/Wii PowerPC code won't run natively on other PowerPCs because it has some extra features that they won't have, and the memory map is different. So you still have to translate code at runtime - sure, between more similar architectures, but it's a lot of work to write such a thing.
It's a lot more complicated than you think, it would require a near full rewrite of the core and isn't as simple as just compiling with GCC. I'm also quite sure the PS3 Cell PowerPC architecture differs quite a bit from traditional PowerPC and GCN/Wii PowePC architecture. The code wouldn't need to be recompiled as extensively it does on the x86 platform, but the code would still need to be rewritten and recompiled dynamically to support the cell architecture.
The Cell SPE isn't an end all to lack of graphics processing capabilities and more limited than most people think, without graphics processing things are going to be damn slow or not work at all.
I tried to explain the best I could with my knowledge, I apologize for any inaccuracies so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
(10-07-2009, 04:51 PM)Solid.Snake.MGS Wrote: [ -> ]I've used your emulator on a gaming laptop (apparently a gaming laptop; it looked more like a really good casual laptop with 6 gigs of ram), and I noticed generally slow performance levels with Super Smash Brothers Melee.
I can tell you from experience that it doesn't take just having 6 GB of ram. The amount of RAM you use will only help so much.
The main problems with JIT compilation (and thus the reason even Java is slow) is the fact that you are compiling in real time while running the game. Meaning that in order to get good performance you need a good CPU.
Add to the fact that Dolphin uses OpenGL or DirectX 9, most likely even Direct3D9, and you also need a beast for graphics card.
Granted, if you have 6GB of RAM in your laptop, you are probably running a beast -for a laptop-... But that's just it, you are doing so on a laptop.
Now I don't have SSBM to test how it runs on my machine, matter of fact I don't have anything but Pikmin for the GC yet, but I've got a desktop with a quad core 940, a GTS250, and only 4GB of RAM, none of which is overclocked, and I can run Pikmin for the GC with great speed, 59/60 fps at all times!