Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
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Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#2How far do I gotta read before this article will expand the "GS" acronym? Interesting stuff but I'm being left behind here.
Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#3How far do I gotta read before this article will expand the "GS" acronym? Interesting stuff but I'm being left behind here.
It stands for “Graphics Synthesizer” - Sony’s name for the “GPU” in the PS2.
Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#4Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
It stands for “Graphics Synthesizer” - Sony’s name for the “GPU” in the PS2.
That helps immensely. Surprised the author assumed this was implicit.
Among the intended audience, it likely is. I think this article is here to equally amuse and traumatize folks familiar with the system.
The Emotion Engine (CPU) to GS (GPU) link was what made the PS2 so impressive for the time, but it also made it somewhat hard to code for and immensely hard to emulate. If I recall correctly, the N64 has something like 4x the memory bandwidth (shared) of the PS1, and the PS2 had roughly 6x (3GB/s) the system bandwidth of the N64. However, the PS2's GS RAM clocked in at 48GB/s, more than the external memory bandwidth of the Cell (~25GB/s), which meant that PS3 emulation of PS2 games was actually done with embedded PS2 hardware.
It was a bonkers machine. I don't think workstation GPU bandwidth created 50GB/s for another 5-6 years. That said, it was an ultra simple pipeline with 4MB of RAM and insane DMA requirements, which actually got crazier with the Cell in the PS3. I was at Sony (in another division) in that era. It was a wild time for hardware tinkering and low level software.
Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
It stands for “Graphics Synthesizer” - Sony’s name for the “GPU” in the PS2.
That helps immensely. Surprised the author assumed this was implicit.
It’s fairly well known in the specific domain space the author is dealing with, so I think it’s fair to treat it as implicit.
But for more reading https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps2/Graphics_Synthesizer
The author has a bunch of other things in their post they don’t expand upon either which are significantly more esoteric as well though, so I think this is very much geared for a particular audience.
A few link outs would have helped for sure.
Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
That helps immensely. Surprised the author assumed this was implicit.
Among the intended audience, it likely is. I think this article is here to equally amuse and traumatize folks familiar with the system. The Emotion Engine (CPU) to GS (GPU) link was what made the PS2 so impressive for the time, but it also made it somewhat hard to code for and immensely hard to emulate. If I recall correctly, the N64 has something like 4x the memory bandwidth (shared) of the PS1, and the PS2 had roug…
Thanks for sharing!
Back then the appeal of console games to me were that beyond a convenient factor, they were also very specialised hardware for one task - running games.
I remember playing FF12 (IZJS) on a laptop in 2012 and it ran very stable granted that was 6 years post release but by then had the emulator issues been fully solved?
Re. Wild time for low level programming I remember hearing that Crash Bandicoot had to duck down into MIPS to eke out every extra bit of performance in the PS1.
Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Among the intended audience, it likely is. I think this article is here to equally amuse and traumatize folks familiar with the system. The Emotion Engine (CPU) to GS (GPU) link was what made the PS2 so impressive for the time, but it also made it somewhat hard to code for and immensely hard to emulate. If I recall correctly, the N64 has something like 4x the memory bandwidth (shared) of the PS1, and the PS2 had roug…
Thanks for sharing! Back then the appeal of console games to me were that beyond a convenient factor, they were also very specialised hardware for one task - running games. I remember playing FF12 (IZJS) on a laptop in 2012 and it ran very stable granted that was 6 years post release but by then had the emulator issues been fully solved? Re. Wild time for low level programming I remember hearing that Crash Bandicoot…
Pretty sure all 3D PS1 games tapped into assembly for performance.
The most “famous” thing about Crash programming is probably that it’s all in lisp, with inline assembly.
Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Among the intended audience, it likely is. I think this article is here to equally amuse and traumatize folks familiar with the system. The Emotion Engine (CPU) to GS (GPU) link was what made the PS2 so impressive for the time, but it also made it somewhat hard to code for and immensely hard to emulate. If I recall correctly, the N64 has something like 4x the memory bandwidth (shared) of the PS1, and the PS2 had roug…
Thanks for sharing! Back then the appeal of console games to me were that beyond a convenient factor, they were also very specialised hardware for one task - running games. I remember playing FF12 (IZJS) on a laptop in 2012 and it ran very stable granted that was 6 years post release but by then had the emulator issues been fully solved? Re. Wild time for low level programming I remember hearing that Crash Bandicoot…
I heard something similar with Jak and Daxter, where they took advantage of the embedded PS1 hardware on the PS2 to scrape together some extra performance.
I very much enjoyed this video that Ars Technica did with Andy Gavin on the development of Crash Bandicoot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o
Re: Playstation 2 GS emulation – the final frontier of Vulkan compute emulation
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
That helps immensely. Surprised the author assumed this was implicit.
Among the intended audience, it likely is. I think this article is here to equally amuse and traumatize folks familiar with the system. The Emotion Engine (CPU) to GS (GPU) link was what made the PS2 so impressive for the time, but it also made it somewhat hard to code for and immensely hard to emulate. If I recall correctly, the N64 has something like 4x the memory bandwidth (shared) of the PS1, and the PS2 had roug…
It’s hard to compare memory bandwidth of these systems because of the various differences (e.g. different RAM types). I know that the theoretical RAM bandwidth for the N64 is way higher than what you can practically achieve under typical conditions.