So someone else can correct me, but the architecture for consoles has gotten less complicated.
The GameCube, Wii & Wii U run on a PowerPC CPU architecture. Switch & Switch 2 run on an ARM architecture.
But the recent PlayStation and Xbox consoles are all x86/x86_64, which is the same as your PC. So these consoles won’t need recompilation.
For the Switch series, while ARM would need recompilation, it’s also hugely popular. I know Valve is doing some ARM magic, although I think that’s to ARM and not from ARM, but it still might be helpful. But importantly recompilation of these should be much easier.
It has become more complicated. You are forgetting to mention that there is now os’ running on consoles that you also need to emulate. And if you dont want to emulate that, youd need to emulate the actual hardware in more detail ( + need data dumps of consoles ) and have to emulate the chips with all its co-processors and securities. Encryption cores/engines, mmu’s, hypervisors, …
Back on the gamecube and wii days you had to emulate… The cpu, nand ( or bios ) and disc drive. All games had all information anf software contained on the disc or channel. Thats it.
And yes, ps4 was , for example, a x86 cpu. But that doesnt mean its instantly compatible with your pc. The architectures and features are completely different.
For example, ps5 has a feature that the gpu can read from the ssd without passing cpu or ram. While some pc’s can now do it too, this was long not the case.
And there are other things too ( no bios, no pch iirc, completely different os design/syscalls, … )
ARM is a RISC ISA, which should make it way easier to emulate/statically compile. The main difficulties wouldn’t be hardware quirks like a lot of past emulators, but system OS quirks. The wine project has dealt with a lot of both (x86 has a ton of instructions and windows has a lot of system shit going on).
I do think you are 100% correct that hardware is much simpler now. The Switch has had several emulators for a while now bc of this.
I wonder if recompiling will be the new emulation, since architecture for consoles has gotten more complicated.
So someone else can correct me, but the architecture for consoles has gotten less complicated.
The GameCube, Wii & Wii U run on a PowerPC CPU architecture. Switch & Switch 2 run on an ARM architecture.
But the recent PlayStation and Xbox consoles are all x86/x86_64, which is the same as your PC. So these consoles won’t need recompilation.
For the Switch series, while ARM would need recompilation, it’s also hugely popular. I know Valve is doing some ARM magic, although I think that’s to ARM and not from ARM, but it still might be helpful. But importantly recompilation of these should be much easier.
It has become more complicated. You are forgetting to mention that there is now os’ running on consoles that you also need to emulate. And if you dont want to emulate that, youd need to emulate the actual hardware in more detail ( + need data dumps of consoles ) and have to emulate the chips with all its co-processors and securities. Encryption cores/engines, mmu’s, hypervisors, …
Back on the gamecube and wii days you had to emulate… The cpu, nand ( or bios ) and disc drive. All games had all information anf software contained on the disc or channel. Thats it.
And yes, ps4 was , for example, a x86 cpu. But that doesnt mean its instantly compatible with your pc. The architectures and features are completely different.
For example, ps5 has a feature that the gpu can read from the ssd without passing cpu or ram. While some pc’s can now do it too, this was long not the case.
And there are other things too ( no bios, no pch iirc, completely different os design/syscalls, … )
ARM is a RISC ISA, which should make it way easier to emulate/statically compile. The main difficulties wouldn’t be hardware quirks like a lot of past emulators, but system OS quirks. The wine project has dealt with a lot of both (x86 has a ton of instructions and windows has a lot of system shit going on).
I do think you are 100% correct that hardware is much simpler now. The Switch has had several emulators for a while now bc of this.