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mupen64plus / mupen64plus-user-issues

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Missing architecture support #196

Closed richard42 closed 9 years ago

richard42 commented 9 years ago

Originally reported on Google Code with ID 196

Describe your system:
-not applicable

Describe the problem:
Mupen64Plus only supports x86 and x86-64 systems. 
Users of other architectures are left without a working Nintendo64 emulator.
To correct this, dynamic recompilers for other architectures like ARM or
PowerPC need to be created.

Please provide any additional information below.
For example the Pandora Handheld (see: openpandora.org) is an ARM based
gaming-system with enough potential power to run a N64 emulator but due to
a lack of support for ARM this is not possible as of yet. But for a port to
this system a OpenGL-ES plugin is also needed besides the port over to ARM.

Reported by steveway1 on 2009-01-07 18:37:27

richard42 commented 9 years ago 
Mupen should support any architecture when the interpreter is used, not just x86 and
x86-64

Reported by jezter82 on 2009-01-09 05:01:08

richard42 commented 9 years ago 
>>Mupen should support any architecture when the interpreter is used, not just x86 and
>>x86-64
While that is true, there is still the problem that the interpreter is almost
unbearable slow compared to a dynarec.
There aren't many 3GHZ ARM, MIPS or whatever non-X86 CPUs avaiable to buy.

Reported by steveway1 on 2009-01-09 14:10:05

richard42 commented 9 years ago 
There are several important reasons why this won't happen any time soon:
1. We don't have any developers, testers, or maintainers for ARM, MIPS, or PPC
architectures
2. You can't just 'port' the Dynarec to a new CPU, you must write an entirely new
one, which requires a massive effort by a skilled assembly language programmer.
3. There are bugs (may be in the core or in the video plugins) which prevent
operation even with the interpreter on big-endian CPUs.
4. Most or all of the video plugins require SSE capability

If someone wants to step up and do all of the work to support a new CPU architecture
we will welcome the contribution but none of our current developers will take this
on.

Reported by richard42g on 2009-01-09 23:20:23