Some forum members had shown quite an interest in the history of the emulator, so i thought, why not? I'll write a history of the emulator to the best of my knowledge for everybody to look at! Hopefully those who have been here longer (like bositman) can fill you in a bit more on what happened. My apologies for any inaccuracies, I didn't join the team until version 0.8.0 (January 2005)! So, here goes.....
I finally got around updating the now (huge) configuration guide for the new beta version of PCSX2 v0.9.7! You can read it here.
As most people probably know, PCSX2 is primarily a dual-thread application. The two main threads are described as such:
Over the past two years I have become dearly intimate with Microsoft's Visual C++ 2008 compiler, and the methods it uses for optimizing code. Now generally speaking MSVC 2008 does well -- very well -- especially for everyday "not-so-clever" code. Its global optimization feature (aka Linktime Code Generation, or LTCG) is also a tremendous advantage over GCC -- though GCC is in the process of (finally!) adding LTCG to their own C/C++ compiler. MSVC does have a few very annoying failings as an optimizer, though. The most glaring of which has to do with templated code and inlined functions .
For those who don't know, DMA stands for Direct Memory Access , and it refers to logic circuits in a computer that allow for the automated transfer of system memory to and from peripherals . DMAs are beneficial because they are simple circuits that do work in parallel to the CPU -- while a DMA transfers data, the CPU is free to do other work.that requires more complex computations and logic. The end result is better utilization of the computer's maximum memory transfer bandwidth and computational/logical ability.
Being an emulator of a fairly robust system (the PS2), PCSX2 typically consumes a lot of system RAM. It needs multitudes of caches and buffers for various things. Just to give an idea, I'll list some of the larger stuff and their current defaults:
Yes, there is a way to simulate Microsoft's VirtualAlloc behavior on Linux. Much searching of the internet did not reveal a satisfactory answer; only hints that when combined with some applied tests of my own yielded the following result:
After its absence for many moons, the Commandline functionality will finally be restored to PCSX2. Third-party frontend and config-manager authors rejoice! ... and hopefully stop hating my guts, too.
The SPU2 is the Sound Processing Unit for the Playstation 2, and works a lot like the sound card in your own PC; albeit still quite unique in its approach to mixing sounds/voices and the programmable interface it provides for that. But the SPU2 is more than just sound. It's one of the more reliable timing mechanisms on the PS2 and games tend to use it as such. Without at least basic SPU2 emulation, no games will boot at all. This isn't too surprising if you understand how console hardware typically works, but what might be surprising is realizing how many games won't boot even with what appears to be fairly competent SPU2 emulation.
Hey people. While we're still working on the new PCSX2 version, we've also been constantly adding to the all important plugins. Every now and then we release a beta plugin pack, so you can test them out and benefit from the new features a bit earlier 😊
