could you say more about the ps2's ps1 emulator? ps2's cpu always been compatible with ps1.
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Sony Patents possible PS5 Backward Compatibility method invented by Mark Cerny
- Thread starter Shin
- Start date
could you say more about the ps2's ps1 emulator? ps2's cpu always been compatible with ps1.
FranXico
Member
The patent is not claiming the invention of emulation, but merely a method of CPU spoofing in the case of the PS5.
The "invented by Cerny" part is hyperbole from whoever is reporting it.
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Shin
Banned
I hope not as that would suck nor should we settle for just a dirty copy/paste if it comes to that.
His name is on the application as the inventor because he came up with this method along with someone else so it's correct and not hyperbole.
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DeltaPolarBear
Member
The issue with Console games is that most are not designed to deal with variable hardware. Until third party developers change this, 1st party console designers are stuck choosing between "BC that works automatically but with no improvements" or "BC that only works if the developer come back and upgraded the game, so many games don't run at all."
Look at all the horrible PC ports of Console games; games that run worse on PC when the developer didn't care enough to make the changes that suit the new architecture. Japanese third party developers are especially infamous for really, really bad PC ports.
Getting BC to work at all is likely Sony's priority above all else. Any studio that care to release upgrade patches can do so if they want, but Sony isn't going to scarifice BC functionality just to make a few games run faster.
Hudo
Member
I'm not getting anything noteworthy here. Is it because it is applied to a line of products? Hardware emulation of CPUs based on CPU spoofing and then applied to either a dedicated subset of the actual CPU or to some FPGA-based mechanism is not a new thing. Neither is software emulation based on CPU spoofing (for example via a JIT instruction set interpreter or something). Not trying to stir shit up, I'm genuinely curious why he's hailed as a genius?
But it is good that Sony finally seem to do something about backwards compatibility. Should've been standard this gen already. I hope that Sony are getting the build quality of the next Playstation (and the next Dualshock) up to par again... (The PS2 was really good in that regard, IMHO).
But it is good that Sony finally seem to do something about backwards compatibility. Should've been standard this gen already. I hope that Sony are getting the build quality of the next Playstation (and the next Dualshock) up to par again... (The PS2 was really good in that regard, IMHO).
DeltaPolarBear
Member
What do you mean, "finally"? You really believe Sony never did BC before?
Hudo
Member
Of course they did (Fat PS3, for example, PS2 could also play PS1 games). But I am talking about the timeframe from when they decided to drop it until (hopefully) PS5 (which, for me, warrants the usage of "finally"). There were reasonable technical reasons as to why they dropped it, though. They wanted to make the PS3 cheaper (it was hilariously overpriced at the beginning) and part of the reasons was that the "fat PS3" had an Emotion Engine chip inside it, if I remember it correctly.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
It had EE, GS, and 32 MB of DRDRAM all on the board. First they dropped the EE, doing a very good job of emulating it on the CELL CPU and then the GS.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
He is not called a genius for this, but for tons of years deep in the trenches before the general public knew who he was. He made the EE sing on PS2, he was one of the first people getting hands on time with the PS3 and especially the CELL processors to see how fast it could all go and how quickly you could spin a rendering engine on amongst the many things he did all throughout his career.
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Bernkastel
Ask me about my fanboy energy!
One patent and people are already calling it a miracle. I remember those ;Cell' threads in Neogaf before Xbox 360 release where people believed Sony will win because of "Power of Cell".
Hudo
Member
Okay, but going by past achievements, Ken Kutaragi should be credited as "genius" then.
stranno
Member
OG Playstation 2 use an overcloked Playstation's CPU (MIPS R3000A) as the IO processor, so it serves as the main processor in Playstation's mode. Playstation's GTE runs in a combination of Emotion Engine + Graphics Synthesizer.
Slim Playstation 2, on the other hand, replaced the MIPS R3000A for a PowerPC-based processor (IBM PPC 405GP) codenamed Deckard, that still serves as an emulated IO processor. Of course this PPC is not compatible with Playstation so there should be emulation involved.
A ppc 405 emulating a R3000A at full speed? i don't believe that.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Glad we agree on that
. Once people go beyond the quick puns they can see a lot of the ideas he had actually were not too bad at all (including the importance and cost efficiency he was seeing in investing in semiconductors when he did, and consolidating and divesting later on, and how it was planning to create synergy across divisions).Without the mandated Blu-Ray and all that cost and planning diverted into making it possible and best in class, the GPU side of things may have been salvaged earlier on or the nVIDIA solution better handled. PS1 and PS2 were actually very smart designs and the PS3 design could have been more pragmatic but it was not shitty (beside bugs in RSX and them getting a pre unified shaders design from nVIDIA)... especially CELL and the SPU’s.
Still geniuses can make mistakes...
Not sure with PS4, PS4 Pro, and even PS Vita HW, SDK, and OS that Cerny has shown to have gone crazy or something... quite the opposite
actually.
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Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Believe
After doing some research, that guy claims to have found a MIPS cpu embedded into the PPC cpu.
http://psx-scene.com/forums/f19/deckard-ppc-iop-discussion-157416/index2.html#post1216607
Yeah. Wtf. How is this for real?
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Interesting, it would have been a later revision of the PPC core too, but while he isnposting interesting speculation it is still into the could be rather than it is. How would you differentiate it from a custom core with HW accelerated compatibility? What does that mean?
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Tricky, but not impossible considering that many titles are boost mode friendly and others may have been already made with an SDK that baked in code to help with this transition.
Tripolygon
Banned
Yes, Ken is an engineering genius.
Your name being on a patent application literally means you invented something or are a co-inventor of something. It is not hyperbole to state a fact that Mark Cerny invented a means of emulation of older hardware by whatever method that is stated in the patent application.
Hudo
Member
Yeah. Geniuses can also make mistakes. Difference is how much they learn from those. And Kutaragi's design of the PS3 was actually pretty forward thinking, with its focus on parallel computing. I'm not trying to discredit what Cerny has done but (personally) I wouldn't hail him as a genius. He is a good engineer (and that is not a trivial feat!). And from a pure hardware point of view, the PS4 is exactly what Sony needed at that time. Now, the OS on the other hand, I really dislike. But I don't know how much influence Cerny had on the OS.Glad we agree on that
Without the mandated Blu-Ray and all that cost and planning diverted into making it possible and best in class, the GPU side of things may have been salvaged earlier on or the nVIDIA solution better handled. PS1 and PS2 were actually very smart designs and the PS3 design could have been more pragmatic but it was not shitty (beside bugs in RSX and them getting a pre unified shaders design from nVIDIA)... especially CELL and the SPU’s.
Still geniuses can make mistakes...
Not sure with PS4, PS4 Pro, and even PS Vita HW, SDK, and OS that Cerny has shown to have gone crazy or something... quite the opposite
And I also want to acknowledge all the people who were part of the teams that developed the Playstations. Neither Cerny nor Kutaragi could've done "their" respective Playstations alone.
I'd only argue (strongly) that whoever was responsible for the build quality of the PS4 did either a very bad job or had unbelievably tight budget constraints... Luckily, the hardware design is solid enough to offset that. However, the DS4 is miles ahead from the travesty that was the DS3...
Vita was actually both good in its hardware design (I mean, an RISC CPU (ARM Cortex A9) and a PowerVR SGX GPU with Tile-based rendering are both good choices for a mobile device that has to look out for energy usage) and build quality but was very badly managed (I also believe that the decision to utilise proprietary memory card formats was a business driven one.)
I also really liked the the backside touch pad. That was actually a neat idea and could've been utilised more, IMHO.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I look at Cerny as an architect of PS Vita and PS4/PS4 Pro, I see him as a programming / optimisation expert (he was the first western developer called in to see how one would even push CELL for games and did amazing work for ND on J&D and Uncharted I believe), I look at him as a designer (Crash Bandicoot 2 for example and Marble Madness at a quite young age), I see him as a business leader (Universal Studios, his involvement in getting Sonic 2 out), his insights as a manager/businessman (look for his Cerny method presentation on YouTube), etc...
An architect does not do all the work, but helps set the pace and focus and main objectives (ensuring technology fulfills the business strategy now and in the future)... you would notice when that is done badly
.
Shin
Banned
In other news investors want more money than Sony just made them - https://www.wsj.com/articles/sony-may-need-a-new-playstation-soon-11549022877
Can't find an archived version for the full story
Can't find an archived version for the full story
dispensergoinup
Gold Member
I don't quite follow. If it's working for me personally as a method for oh I dunno, since I've been gaming, then why would I suddenly change up? It's obviously not for everyone, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't apply to most.
Once a gen is over, I've pretty much played most of the bigger games on that console and look forward to the new releases. So at that point, while BC is a nice thing to have, it doesn't mean it's a deal-breaker for me. If you have an issue with that, then I don't know what to tell you.
Rayderism
Member
Realistically, I figure this patent is primarily for giving PS5 the ability to play PS4 games, not PS1/2/3. While it would be great to have a "Playstation Generations" type of console that could play everything ever produced for Sony consoles, I wouldn't count on it. Especially in the case of the PS3, even the PS5 would likely not be able to emulate it easily. I mean, I don't see how they could possibly go "SPOOF! You're a Cell CPU. Run that PS3 game." PS1/2 should be easier to emulate, but will they actually bother? PS4 had a built-in PS2 emulator, but they locked it into digital downloads only.....
Embedding a different architecture into another is not unusual, the Wii had that. AMD is also doing that to have a secure core in their pro x86 cpu.
Sony may did that for performance issues but also for licensing issues; IBM implementing a MIPS front-end would have been a violation of the intellectual property of MIPS Technologies.
The instruction-per-second of the **IBM PPC 405GP (375 millions at best) seems too low to emulate a R3000a (~33 millions). I would say that an interpreter based emulator requires at least ten native instructions for one emulated instruction because of the fetch-decode-dispatch stage.
**i couldn't find a reliable source confirming that the ps2slim's ppc is a 405gp.
LordOfChaos
Member
Psajdak
Banned
PS1 games look as good as ever on PS2, but IMO, all the later consoles display both PS1, and PS2 games just badly.
Especially upscale.
Putting aside bugs that need to be solved, emulators for PC, like ePSXe, and PCSX2 can upscale resolutions for those old games perfectly to the current standards, if emulators don't have any paticular issues with given games.
So, rather than a console with half baked BC, I would rather have PS2 Classic, with lot more horse power, that can upscale games as well as PC emulators.
For PS3, I still believe, buying the console is the best option to play its games, and I'm not sure if it would be possible to make new stronger version of it, that can make games perform better, such as having a higher resolution, and FPS...
I do however think the best would be to just release as much of HD remasters as possible for both current consoles, and PC.
Especially upscale.
Putting aside bugs that need to be solved, emulators for PC, like ePSXe, and PCSX2 can upscale resolutions for those old games perfectly to the current standards, if emulators don't have any paticular issues with given games.
So, rather than a console with half baked BC, I would rather have PS2 Classic, with lot more horse power, that can upscale games as well as PC emulators.
For PS3, I still believe, buying the console is the best option to play its games, and I'm not sure if it would be possible to make new stronger version of it, that can make games perform better, such as having a higher resolution, and FPS...
I do however think the best would be to just release as much of HD remasters as possible for both current consoles, and PC.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fair, but it is likely that Sony wanted to stop licensing the MIPS core and added some mi or customisations to the PPC core used and placed restrictions on developers / offered guidelines to make sure emulation would work best.
BC makes sense now more than ever, we are well and truly in the era of the "platform" and PSN is generating a shit-ton of cash... why wouldn't they want to keep selling all those digital PS4 games?
Never mind that PS4 has a huge lead, which Sony will want to maintain so BC makes PS5 a natural move for PS4 owners. If customers had to 'start again from scratch', maybe another console could be more appealing. This could be a stranglehold for Sony and they'd be massively stupid not to realise that - backwards compatibility for PS5 is a lock.
Never mind that PS4 has a huge lead, which Sony will want to maintain so BC makes PS5 a natural move for PS4 owners. If customers had to 'start again from scratch', maybe another console could be more appealing. This could be a stranglehold for Sony and they'd be massively stupid not to realise that - backwards compatibility for PS5 is a lock.
Found this:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006080...cnews/article/CA6350202.html?industryid=21365
The very last question is interesting:
The pstwo actually had a ppc 440, not a 405gp. ppc 440 instruction-per-second is 781 millions when running at 200mhz, 1 562 millions when running at 400mhz. That makes software emulation much more believable.
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synchronicity
Member
As unlikely as it is to happen, if they released a box with full legacy compatibility, it would be huge as far as I'm concerned. I still play games from all of Sony's old machines, and even though I have all my old consoles, it would be fantastic to be able to play everything on one device.
thelastword
Banned
Thanks Ad, I know you are always looking out, but I'm fine..... Be careful how you interpret things online.....
Ha, Hey! I guess why not. Soon people will need the PS5 to cook them dinner, arrange their daily schedules and tuck their children in at night. I guess Sony will have to step up big time.....
And he is....... As a pure engineer, Ken is a certified genius.... No one has inspired me in this Industry like Ken has. He is probably the most important person the console space has ever seen. His PS designs were like none other, all built in house, pushing the latest and most cutting edge technology in each design. I guess it's just something people have to laud about, a part of history, instrumental in establishing and shaping this industry.
My only regret is that Ken Kutaragi didn't finish his PS3 vision how he wanted it, double cell system and who knows, perhaps more memory, as they would not need to budget or make provisions for a weak and overpriced Nvidia GPU......
Negotiator
Member
Do you think they could add SPU customizations to the Ryzen FPU for easier PS3 BC?
Alebrije
Member
Does this finally mean Knack backward compatible ?!
Behold the Knack lecagy.
Freedom Gate Co.
Banned
Ken made the ps2 and PS3 poorly optimized on purpose to get devs to stay on the systems.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
I think you could try something based on pure speed. With the right click rate and per core lockable cache... one would hope
.Performance metrics I've seen for that replacement CPU are consistent with some sort of dynamic-translation rather than direct interpreting - some things run close to native (and considerably faster than original hardware did), some are actually slower. This also resulted in some minor compatibility issues with ~30 titles or so, and the guidelines Panajev mentioned above.
Also not entirely unlike how emulated EE behaved in early PS3s.
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TLZ
Banned
I do wonder (and hope) if any of the next gen consoles can do what's in the video here:
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
bitbydeath
Gold Member
The reason PS4 can’t run PS3 BC games is simply because PS4’s Jaguar CPU is weaker than PS3’s Cell CPU.
PS5 will have a CPU stronger than Cell making BC possible.
MaKTaiL
Member
That's what I'm afraid. It's the laziest form of BC.
Negotiator
Member
Weaker in what exactly? Floating point or integer performance?
Cell isn't even a CPU to begin with...
Shin
Banned
This patent is the hottest PS5 news going around ATM, most site think it will emulate all generation of PlayStation on a future device.
Here's IGN's take on it: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/0...as-fans-hoping-for-ps5-backward-compatibility
Here's IGN's take on it: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/0...as-fans-hoping-for-ps5-backward-compatibility
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Where is there take? I only see them referencing other people's takes.
Not that I look at IGN as any type of technical prowess for opinion.
Fake
Member
Indeed. Its easy to get hype. Previous playstation games was a bless. If I read right they're trying to figure out how to BC since PS4 launch due to the hard problems with PS3 CPU, but looks like they had found some other way. Hope this can turn true.
They earn clicks of course. Even if this not became true.
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bitbydeath
Gold Member
What do you mean Cell isn’t a CPU? Of course it is. The below article highlights the differences found.
http://www.redgamingtech.com/ubisoft-gdc-presentation-of-ps4-x1-gpu-cpu-performance/
TLZ
Banned
Good to see this. So MS are working on this. Does this mean this is strictly their tech? So I’m hoping this is implemented in their next Xbox (and also hoping Sony have something similar for their PS5).
I wonder how demanding this is on the gpu.
Shin
Banned
It's a broadband engine and even stamped as such on the PS3 chip, Cell isn't used solely as a CPU and can be found in electronics from other vendors beside Sony.
I think that's what he meant.