6 ms·

Raspberry Pi hardware is way, way too weak.

by my123 5y ago

Reason077 5y ago
The Raspberry Pi 4 is on the order of 10 - 20X more powerful than the Gamecube's 20 year old, single core ~400 Mhz 32-bit CPU. The GPU is a bit more difficult to compare, but I'd guess a well optimised emulator with JIT/code translation ought to run very well on Pi 4 hardware. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor)
- zamadatix 5y ago
  It actually struggles to hit 30 FPS in most GC titles still. Accurate emulation between vastly different platform stacks generally does not care about the raw performance ratio rather how "lucky" some of the hardware functionality can be efficiently mapped.
  - Reason077 5y ago
    Yes, in terms of Dolphin's performance today, I don't doubt it. There are probably many more optimisations that can be made: Dolphin's AArch64 JIT is still pretty incomplete and inefficient compared to the x86-64 JIT, for example. My point is in theory, given enough time and effort, the Pi 4 should have more than enough power to emulate a 20-year old device. I'd argue that it's certainly not "way way too weak" as the reply above suggested.
    - my123 5y ago
      The RPi4 GPU is very weak for the tricks that Dolphin does. Good luck to get Ubershaders running on that for example. The CPU isn't much of an issue. Emulating a platform at such a low level in real-time is very heavy resource-wise, by design.
      - my123 5y ago
        To elaborate a bit more on the GPU peak FP32 perf: > VideoCore VI @ 500MHz: 500 [MHz] x 2 [slice] x 4 [qpu/slice] x 4 [processor] x 2 [op/clock] = 32 Gflop/s which is the RPi4 config. compared to a Snapdragon 800: 147.9Gflops FP32, and that's still a very old part. And about the Wii itself: > With the Wii, Nintendo opted to go with an innovative control scheme, rather than to focus on processing power. It offered 12 gigaflops, which represents a 1.27x improvement over its GameCube predecessor The margins are way too slim when counting emulation overhead.
        Reason077 5y ago
        Ok, sounds like the Pi’s VideoCore VI is a lot less performant than I thought. I’d imagined it’d be closer to other mobile GPUs.
        my123 5y ago
        It was probably a sane technical choice for them. RPi4 is made on the same node as the Snapdragon 800 (28nm), but with a much more recent (and bigger) CPU complex, using the Cortex-A72. As a bunch of RPis are headless anyway...
        0xcde4c3db 5y ago
        My understanding is that the VideoCore architecture was initially designed as more of a "media codec coprocessor", and was incidentally able to grow enough matrix math throughput to be pressed into service as a GPU.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  The differences aren't just raw CPU and GPU power though. The GC, Wii, and Wii U had a couple different high bandwidth and low latency RAM[0] types in the GPU. The low latency and speed likely led to access patterns that are harder to emulate with a Pi's unified and relatively slow DRAM. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1T-SRAM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1T-SRAM
kzrdude 5y ago
There is a 2019 video where there is some "mixed" success with gamecube on Rpi 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4TyYU9Xhcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4TyYU9Xhcs I figured with Rpi improvements (kernel/settings) and dolphin improvements, it was time to ask if it's going better now. Everyone seems negative (without data) here though.

Raspberry Pi hardware is way, way too weak.

by my123 5y ago

Raspberry Pi hardware is way, way too weak.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is on the order of 10 - 20X more powerful than the Gamecube's 20 year old, single core ~400 Mhz 32-bit CPU. The GPU is a bit more difficult to compare, but I'd guess a well optimised emulator with JIT/code translation ought to run very well on Pi 4 hardware. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekko_(microprocessor)

zamadatix 5y ago
It actually struggles to hit 30 FPS in most GC titles still. Accurate emulation between vastly different platform stacks generally does not care about the raw performance ratio rather how "lucky" some of the hardware functionality can be efficiently mapped.
- Reason077 5y ago
  Yes, in terms of Dolphin's performance today, I don't doubt it. There are probably many more optimisations that can be made: Dolphin's AArch64 JIT is still pretty incomplete and inefficient compared to the x86-64 JIT, for example. My point is in theory, given enough time and effort, the Pi 4 should have more than enough power to emulate a 20-year old device. I'd argue that it's certainly not "way way too weak" as the reply above suggested.
  - my123 5y ago
    The RPi4 GPU is very weak for the tricks that Dolphin does. Good luck to get Ubershaders running on that for example. The CPU isn't much of an issue. Emulating a platform at such a low level in real-time is very heavy resource-wise, by design.
    - my123 5y ago
      To elaborate a bit more on the GPU peak FP32 perf: > VideoCore VI @ 500MHz: 500 [MHz] x 2 [slice] x 4 [qpu/slice] x 4 [processor] x 2 [op/clock] = 32 Gflop/s which is the RPi4 config. compared to a Snapdragon 800: 147.9Gflops FP32, and that's still a very old part. And about the Wii itself: > With the Wii, Nintendo opted to go with an innovative control scheme, rather than to focus on processing power. It offered 12 gigaflops, which represents a 1.27x improvement over its GameCube predecessor The margins are way too slim when counting emulation overhead.
      - Reason077 5y ago
        Ok, sounds like the Pi’s VideoCore VI is a lot less performant than I thought. I’d imagined it’d be closer to other mobile GPUs.
        my123 5y ago
        It was probably a sane technical choice for them. RPi4 is made on the same node as the Snapdragon 800 (28nm), but with a much more recent (and bigger) CPU complex, using the Cortex-A72. As a bunch of RPis are headless anyway...
        0xcde4c3db 5y ago
        My understanding is that the VideoCore architecture was initially designed as more of a "media codec coprocessor", and was incidentally able to grow enough matrix math throughput to be pressed into service as a GPU.
giantrobot 5y ago
The differences aren't just raw CPU and GPU power though. The GC, Wii, and Wii U had a couple different high bandwidth and low latency RAM[0] types in the GPU. The low latency and speed likely led to access patterns that are harder to emulate with a Pi's unified and relatively slow DRAM. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1T-SRAM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1T-SRAM

kzrdude 5y ago

There is a 2019 video where there is some "mixed" success with gamecube on Rpi 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4TyYU9Xhcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4TyYU9Xhcs I figured with Rpi improvements (kernel/settings) and dolphin improvements, it was time to ask if it's going better now. Everyone seems negative (without data) here though.