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Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

arstechnica.com

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Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#21

Post by jordanroher »

T-R wrote: post #18
joelhaus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think that the OEM's are leaving a fair amount of money on the table by not offering a true software emulator. Have you heard of anyone from Nintendo getting involved (in a positive or negative way) with Byuu's project (or maybe they already offer one via the Wii--not sure)?

Nintendo offers the "Virtual Console" on the Wii and 3DS. Unless my knowledge is out of date, Nintendo's business model revolves around licensing for publishing software for their hardware, so it's in Nintendo's best interest to sell hardware, and not to support emulation on other hardware. On a related note, when Sony sued 'Bleem!', it argued that running the software on other hardware destroyed Sony's control over…

I believe Nintendo intends to profit via software licensing and hardware sales. The Wii was profitable at launch[1].

But I wonder how the Virtual Console works on the Wii. Does Nintendo have an SNES hardware-to-software conversion guide? Do their VC releases turn out perfect? I've bought a few, and while they're certainly faithful, I'm not enough of a connoisseur to spot the flaws.

[1] http://www.next-gen.biz/news/fils-aime-wii-hardware-profitab...

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#22

Post by daeken »

YooLi wrote: post #16

"One of the fun aspects of a cartridge-based system is that you are literally plugging a PCB directly into your system. Thus, you can put extra coprocessors, often digital signal processors, right inside of the cartridge. This gives you an extra edge against your competitors' titles. The most popular SNES coprocessors were the SuperFX for polygon rendering and sprite rotation (used in Starfox and Super Mario World 2)…

This is why the NES had the insanely long life it did. Every game was able to provide custom hardware (called 'mappers') to offload computation. I've said for a while now that the next generation of consoles will go one of two routes: completely downloadable titles, or PCI-e-based cartridges. I'm inclined to think the latter, despite the evidence to the contrary. It's just such a huge benefit, and they love shipping physical items. This would also largely eliminate piracy.

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#23

Post by guan »

AretNCarlsen wrote: post #4
guan wrote: post #2

This might be a lot easier on an FPGA.

Replicate each component of the original SNES hardware? That has been somewhat done: you can buy hardware clones of the SNES in many stores.

Yes, or replicate all of the original SNES hardware in one FPGA chip (and perhaps a few external passive components).

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#24

Post by icefox »

lscharen wrote: post #7

I've been follow Byuu's progress on BSNES for a couple of years, and I would like to state for the record that the amount of effort he had put into this project far exceeds the majority of "hobby" projects. Just in the past few months, several SNES co-process chips that remained un-emulated for years, have been deciphered and fully emulated in BSNES. Without Byuu leading the charge into the last bastions of SNES emul…

For anyone who is looking for some code to read with I would recommended BSNES. It isn't a huge code base and worth the trip. Read through most of it last year after finding it and found it most enjoyable.

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#25

Post by elliottcarlson »

AretNCarlsen wrote: post #4
guan wrote: post #2

This might be a lot easier on an FPGA.

Replicate each component of the original SNES hardware? That has been somewhat done: you can buy hardware clones of the SNES in many stores.

The majority of the clones are using "NES On a Chip" or "SNES On a Chip" - they have the same issues as the original minimal requirements based emulators and are generally quite quirky.

Though it looks like at least one person is attempting to create a better one using FPGA: http://cegt201.bradley.edu/projgrad/proj2006/fpganes/

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#26

Post by exit »

gwern wrote: post #10
exit wrote: post #3

this makes me think of full brain emulation. how far are we from an in silico silicon virtualization suite?

The best estimates I know of is Sandberg and Bostrom's 2008 Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap: http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/3... And yes, this is pretty relevant - it demonstrates that perfect emulation is extremely expensive (in line with the critics of the idea of AI or brain emulation), but it also demonstrates how this doesn't matter in practice. (eg. I'd be happy to be a nigh-immortal u…

thanks for that link - very interesting.

i think the question in my post has been misunderstood. i'm wondering, when will it be possible to simulate a SILICON device - such as the super nintendo.

instead of emulating the functional profile of the snes, we could run a physics simulator (at some level of abstraction) that contains all of the silicon circuitry and so forth which actually produces the functional profile.

that seems like a milestone towards simulating neural "devices" like the human brain.

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#27

Post by matthew-wegner »

AretNCarlsen wrote: post #4
guan wrote: post #2

This might be a lot easier on an FPGA.

Replicate each component of the original SNES hardware? That has been somewhat done: you can buy hardware clones of the SNES in many stores.

As mentioned in other comments, some SNES cartridges themselves contain coprocessors and other hardware. A clone console doesn't need to do deal with this since you're still playing physical cartridges (versus pure software ROMs).

But clone systems do have issues with many games anyway...

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#29

Post by T-R »

jordanroher wrote: post #21
T-R wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo offers the "Virtual Console" on the Wii and 3DS. Unless my knowledge is out of date, Nintendo's business model revolves around licensing for publishing software for their hardware, so it's in Nintendo's best interest to sell hardware, and not to support emulation on other hardware. On a related note, when Sony sued 'Bleem!', it argued that running the software on other hardware destroyed Sony's control over…

I believe Nintendo intends to profit via software licensing and hardware sales. The Wii was profitable at launch[1]. But I wonder how the Virtual Console works on the Wii. Does Nintendo have an SNES hardware-to-software conversion guide? Do their VC releases turn out perfect? I've bought a few, and while they're certainly faithful, I'm not enough of a connoisseur to spot the flaws. [1] http://www.next-gen.biz/news/fi…

I'm under the impression that each Virtual Console download includes an instance of an emulator. If that's the case, they may tweak the emulator for compatibility with each game (or hack the game itself). If you want to look into it some more, the guys who do 'Virtual Console WAD injection' might have an idea. ROM Hacking and (NES/SNES) console development sites/forums might have some information, too.

I vaguely remember hearing of instances where games weren't emulated accurately (or even as well as on other emulators), particularly with regard to slowdown on PAL consoles.

Re: Accuracy takes power: one man's 3GHz quest to build a perfect SNES emulator

#30

Post by RainFlutter »

daeken wrote: post #22
YooLi wrote: post #16

"One of the fun aspects of a cartridge-based system is that you are literally plugging a PCB directly into your system. Thus, you can put extra coprocessors, often digital signal processors, right inside of the cartridge. This gives you an extra edge against your competitors' titles. The most popular SNES coprocessors were the SuperFX for polygon rendering and sprite rotation (used in Starfox and Super Mario World 2)…

This is why the NES had the insanely long life it did. Every game was able to provide custom hardware (called 'mappers') to offload computation. I've said for a while now that the next generation of consoles will go one of two routes: completely downloadable titles, or PCI-e-based cartridges. I'm inclined to think the latter, despite the evidence to the contrary. It's just such a huge benefit, and they love shipping…

A general system expansion slot would make a lot more sense. Think the RAM expansion on the N64. It'd be silly for each new game to have to provide its own extra processors or RAM in its own (expensive) cartridge, and console piracy is close enough to dead already.
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