What Kind of FPGA Would It Take For GameCube, PS2 and Xbox? Not MiSTer FPGA

hey everybody welcome back to videoo T and Y might be using these structure and title cards of our Mr fpga series we're doing something a little bit different today we're looking towards the future about fpgas on the horizon and what sort of systems they could possibly run because I keep getting comments asking about when the next generation of fpj chips is going to be here here and when you can play GameCube PlayStation 2 and Xbox on them now I am not here to pour water on the spark which is the excitement of fpj Technology as far as it comes to Retro Gaming I am here to kind of talk about what it would actually entail to have a GameCube PlayStation 2 or Xbox core and whether or not those would actually even be necessary at this point in time because I understand you think new generation of fpga Hardware new generation of consoles beyond the Nintendo 64 PlayStation 1 and Sega Saturn but it's not really like that I mean I get it there's a metric crap ton of amazing games on PlayStation 2 that everyone would probably love to play on an fpga device the same thing goes for the Xbox maybe not the deepest library but these were fondly remembered consoles from back in the day and now the fpga are being used to recreate hardware for the retr gaming space people want their favorite systems to come over to them or something like GameCube obviously a Nintendo hit didn't sell well but people still love it and everyone wants to know when it's going to come over I think this is all down to the the fact that people have been really talking about the Nintendo 64 core and how that seemed to be impossible so now everyone thinks that everything is possible just given the right hardware and the right amount of time because people look at Roberts or fpga Zoom spot's Nintendo 64 court and they say somebody created 99% of a Nintendo 64 on Mr fpj in a year he just finished development as of the recording of This voiceover and it took one calendar year to get that done where you take a look at srg 320 and a Sega Saturn core that's going on year 2 now granted he did live in Ukraine and didn't have the freedom to work at the same Pace that Robert would but it still takes a year to two years to get these cores to the point in time in which they are so you have to think to yourself how much more complex are GameCube PlayStation 2 and Xbox and how much longer would it actually take for somebody to do those things if we take a look at the actual front of the GameCube here obviously it looks very similar to Nintendo 64 but that is where the similarities end these are completely different on the architecture front the only thing the two things have in common is the name Nintendo on the actual console in and of itself now this is going to be running at 486 MHz on a power PC CPU so to say that is more powerful than the CPU in the Nintendo 64 would be understatement this is exponentially beefier and more powerful than anything Nintendo 64 ever had on board now this is a cut down and pivoted version of some of the processors you would see in the Power Max and IMAX on the G3 side of things if you're an apple consumer back in the day like I was you were basically using what amounted to a cut down Apple processor from IBM within the GameCube and you'll see here it adds 50 new instruction sets as well as a modified FPU or floating Point Unit basically this processor is Generations ahead of what was in the Nintendo 64 for an fpj to have enough Logic on it to be able to fit even something like this at this point in time you're talking about a product that is going to cost about the same as a late model used Honda Civic we're not talking about the $230 on the de10 Nano board we're talking about adding digits and getting high up there to the point where you could almost buy a vehicle and we're just talking about the complexity and fit of this within an fpg at this point in time there's a lot more that goes into it than this that and on the graphic side of things we have an ATI flipper that was designed by artx and maybe I'll do a video in the future to tell you why this was supposed to be the 3dio M3 leave me a comment down below and tell me if you're interested but the entire point I'm trying to get at here is that this is a massively complicated system compared to the Nintendo 64 just because of how much time and Technology elapsed between the development of the Nintendo 64 and of the GameCube in and of itself Robert was able to make a Nintendo 64 core in a year as one individual really the issue with this is not just the pricing of the fpgs and waiting for the technology to come down it's the amount of manh hours that would be required to actually do something like this because even though Nintendo 64 can look amazing in motion and some of the later games it is something that one human being can achieve within a year if you talked about an fpga device that was available today that could recreate an entire Nintendo 64 you're probably talking about a team of 5 to 10 people working multiple years in a row to be able to do a core like this who's got the time and more importantly who has the money because the Nintendo 64 took one year of active development from Robert if you kind of extrapolate that with the complexity of the GameCube and talk about how long that would take one person to make you might be into the four to five year mark let's take a look at Sega Saturn obviously again I said that's been 2 years in development so if you think about how much more complex a GameCube an Xbox or Playstation 2 is you do the math because you think about the Nintendo 64 that's based upon technology available and developed in 1995 and if you think about the 9s in 1990 we were still playing the NES by the end of the decade 1999 you into the Dreamcast lifespan and that is a big difference the GameCube was developed basically in the year 2000 so think of all the technological advancements and think about how complex the system is going to get in the intervening 5 years of Technology moving forward even on the CPU side of things you have the NEC VR 4300 running at 93 MHz and the clock speed of these chips is going to fundamentally matter in an fpj in the future we move back over to the GameCube side of things and now you have that 486 MHz power PC chip it is levels of complex compared to the Nintendo 64 CPU and and it is running incredibly Faster by comparison let's take a look at the PlayStation 2 the weakest of the three systems as far as specs are concerned this was developed basically on Hardware that was available around 1998 and obviously it's still well beyond what the PlayStation one could do on the CPU side of things you are running at 294 MHz so we have basically almost a 200 MHz decrease on the power PC chip that would be on GameCube so this is getting more in the Realms of potentially achievable but even on the graphic synthesizer side you still have a very complex chip this is still again the type of system that if one person sat down and tried to recreate an fpga you're probably talking 3 four years of active development and again people have lives I don't think there's any fpj developer who is making his entire career off doing this things outside of maybe hoto it is a time thing and the other question is is this something that even really needs to be done you can make your decision based upon how you feel but pcsx2 does an incredible job of being a PlayStation 2 and it provides so many visual enhancements you can get something running basically at the native resolution or you can scale it all the way up to 4K those are things that would require an fpga that would probably be closer to the price of a new vehicle these days and having all of these different enhancements the emulation side of things for PlayStation 2 Gamecube and Xbox are so incredibly good that the question really is is that where people want to focus their time developing fpj course for I can't really answer that question you have to answer it for yourself and the core developers would have to answer it as well but if we take a look at something again like GameCube emulation here on Dolphin it is amazing it does so many incredible things and if you want real GameCube Hardware you can pick one up for like $70 at this point in time but let's talk about the elephant in the room the SGA Dreamcast because the Mars fpga team has said they're bringing an fpga core to this now what I want you to realize is the Dreamcast is a very pretty system but it has more inter relation ship to something like Nintendo 64 PlayStation 1 and Sega Saturn than it does GameCube PlayStation 2 or Xbox that's just to say that because this came out in 1998 in Japan it's developed on Hardware that is closer in complexity than something like the Gamecube if we take a look under the hood here as well we're talking about technology that kind of evolved and was developed between 1996 and 1997 and in the 9s even a year made a big difference but this becomes more potentially achiev able on something that would reach the quote unquote consumer level fpga price in complexity Mar's fpga says this is going to be a $700 board we haven't seen Dreamcast running on it yet but if it does that would be nice to see but I go the question is do we really need that a Dreamcast with an optical disc emulator and an HDMI mod out the back is like $350 and let's not even bother talking about something like Xbox this has a CPU a Pentium 3 running in the 700 MHz range the type of fpg that would be required to get an entire Xbox running inside of it is probably going to be the price on a PCI card looking at jassic site right now maybe a used BMW 3 series with some decent miles on it but nothing too crazy the entire point I'm trying to make is everyone keeps asking when GameCube PlayStation 2 and Xbox are going to see fpga cores and if we ever see them we're probably talking about another decade if I'm still doing this channel in 2034 maybe I'll be talking about them then but the GameCube the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox are such a gigantic generational leap over PlayStation 1 Nintendo 64 Sega Saturn and even Dreamcast I want you guys to be aware that this is not something you're going to see in 24 36 months and even if the hardware is there is there anybody that can spend the amount of time to actually make it happen if you have any questions leave them down below but we're done bye-bye

Channel: Video Game Esoterica

Views: 7,719

Keywords: MiSTer, FPGA, FPGA Gaming, FPGA Game, Terasic DE10, Terasic De-10, Terasic DE-10 Nano, Terasic Nano, Mister Setup, Mister Tutorial, Mister How to, Mister Guide, Emulation, Video Game Emulation, MiSTer PS1, MiSter Saturn, MiSTer News, MiSter updates, MiSTer Arcade, PS1 MiSTer, MiSTer FPGA n64, N64 emulation, N64 hidden gems, N64 turbo core, MARS FPGA, GameCube FPGA, PS2 FPGA, Xbox FPGA, mister fpga review, mister fpga guide, mister fpga vs emulation, retro game consoles

Id: 8MUV9uw3Tto

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2024