A PS3 emulator for Mac? And you're talking about finance and strategy?
OMG! Such an emulator is *unfeasible*. I'm gonna explain why :
* 1st case : emulating a PS3 on a plain G5/6 based Mac
Cell is *not* a PPC chip. It comes with a whole new chip architecture, a whole new memory architecture. It will probably come with a part of its instruction set that will be close to a PPC chip, but there is no compatibility at all between a Cell and a PPC.
This means that you'd have to actually emulate the Cell chip! Ouch! Usually, on super optimized emulators, the host CPU must be at least 20 times faster than the emulated machine if you want to achieve real-time emulation. Oops, there's no way a G6 will be 20 times faster than a Cell!
Plus emulating Cell memory accesses would be a real pain in the a** : add some more inefficiency to the emulator...
=> No way!
* 2nd case : emulating a PS3 on an hybrid G5/6 + Cell - based Mac
Some rumor sites are talking about using Cells as coprocessors on Macs... Well why not after all, even if building such an hybrid motherboard would be awful for Apple engineers (same memory architecture issue). In this case, there would be no need to achieve emulation. A compatibility box would be used (OS-level emulation, basically the same kind of thing as Classic : system calls trapping etc...).
But what about the other chips contained in a PS3? There's 1 or several GPUs, one SPU, several controllers and ASICs, maybe additionnal coprocessors if Sony comes out with an "old school game console design" (i.e. SNES-like design). And those chips are usually quite different from what comes with your usual Mac, especially when you deal with Japanese console makers. You would need to emulate these chips. Emulating the GPU of the PS3 will certainly require something way bigger than your "usual" dual [email protected] with your Geforce Ultra 6800!
=> No way... but if you can wait 3 years or so, might be OK!
* 3rd case : put a PS3 in a Mac
Apple could use Cell as a computing coprocessor, a PS3-like GPU as a graphics coprocessor, etc... Well why not. That would let you run PS3 games, okay...
But Apple would have to hire a dozen Nobel prizes to design the mobo full-time, you would pay your Mac $4000+ and there would be no change to the speed unless Mac OS X and most apps get optimized (same issue as SMP, but more challenging)... And you would have to buy a Blu-Ray drive, and maybe hack it, to run PS3 games... Would you buy that?
There's a lot of talk about playing PS3 games on the mac, in my opinion that's a bit too much of a long shot, though almost everyone has overlooked more realistic benefits, and that is more game developers writing code that is optimised for PPC.
So far mac gamers and mac games porting companies have been shafted with x86 optimised games and people wonder why it runs inferior on the mac. If sony can push the PS3 well, game developers will write efficient game code libraries that are optimised for PPC and porting mac versions would hopefully be a much less painless task and we'd get much better performing games and in a more timely manner. I don't know what console developers use as a graphics API - I have a feeling its not OpenGL, but whatever it is it sure won't be DirectX. Maybe Apple can have a hand in the development of optimised OpenGL code on the cell processor to swing the graphics API war in favour of OpenGL, which should help mac games (oh and maybe OpenAL).
Comments
OMG! Such an emulator is *unfeasible*. I'm gonna explain why :
* 1st case : emulating a PS3 on a plain G5/6 based Mac
Cell is *not* a PPC chip. It comes with a whole new chip architecture, a whole new memory architecture. It will probably come with a part of its instruction set that will be close to a PPC chip, but there is no compatibility at all between a Cell and a PPC.
This means that you'd have to actually emulate the Cell chip! Ouch! Usually, on super optimized emulators, the host CPU must be at least 20 times faster than the emulated machine if you want to achieve real-time emulation. Oops, there's no way a G6 will be 20 times faster than a Cell!
Plus emulating Cell memory accesses would be a real pain in the a** : add some more inefficiency to the emulator...
=> No way!
* 2nd case : emulating a PS3 on an hybrid G5/6 + Cell - based Mac
Some rumor sites are talking about using Cells as coprocessors on Macs... Well why not after all, even if building such an hybrid motherboard would be awful for Apple engineers (same memory architecture issue). In this case, there would be no need to achieve emulation. A compatibility box would be used (OS-level emulation, basically the same kind of thing as Classic : system calls trapping etc...).
But what about the other chips contained in a PS3? There's 1 or several GPUs, one SPU, several controllers and ASICs, maybe additionnal coprocessors if Sony comes out with an "old school game console design" (i.e. SNES-like design). And those chips are usually quite different from what comes with your usual Mac, especially when you deal with Japanese console makers. You would need to emulate these chips. Emulating the GPU of the PS3 will certainly require something way bigger than your "usual" dual [email protected] with your Geforce Ultra 6800!
=> No way... but if you can wait 3 years or so, might be OK!
* 3rd case : put a PS3 in a Mac
Apple could use Cell as a computing coprocessor, a PS3-like GPU as a graphics coprocessor, etc... Well why not. That would let you run PS3 games, okay...
But Apple would have to hire a dozen Nobel prizes to design the mobo full-time, you would pay your Mac $4000+ and there would be no change to the speed unless Mac OS X and most apps get optimized (same issue as SMP, but more challenging)... And you would have to buy a Blu-Ray drive, and maybe hack it, to run PS3 games... Would you buy that?
=> No way!
Well, I think that's all... Please send comments!
So far mac gamers and mac games porting companies have been shafted with x86 optimised games and people wonder why it runs inferior on the mac. If sony can push the PS3 well, game developers will write efficient game code libraries that are optimised for PPC and porting mac versions would hopefully be a much less painless task and we'd get much better performing games and in a more timely manner. I don't know what console developers use as a graphics API - I have a feeling its not OpenGL, but whatever it is it sure won't be DirectX. Maybe Apple can have a hand in the development of optimised OpenGL code on the cell processor to swing the graphics API war in favour of OpenGL, which should help mac games (oh and maybe OpenAL).