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JustBeingReal said:
rolltide101x said:
JustBeingReal said:
Getting PS3 games to run on PS4 isn't impossible, it's just a very complicated process and would require a fair amount of work.

1st of all you have to deal with the core issues that the PPC in PS3 uses RISC assembly language and the SPEs use it's own custom assembly language which is called ISA.
The code that runs on both of those processors in PS3 would need to be re-written or recognized as X86 on PS4.

PS3's SPE code could be offloaded to PS4's GPU in Backwards Compatibility, leaving a substantial amount of overhead CPU available for any tasks that need to deal with PowerPC processes.
PS4's GPU is substantially more powerful than the RSX.

Overall Sony could very likely write an emulation environment, basically a virtual PS3 to run on PS4's SOC.
Emulation handled in this way isn't the only possibility, Sony could re-write each game that users request, place a patch on servers for users to download when they're connected to the internet, though this is likely the more time consuming possibility.
I don't see why The ICE Team or some other development team that is familiar with PS3 and PS4 hardware, OS and APIs in both systems couldn't make a truly virtual PS3 that can run on PS4, it all just depends on whether Sony wants to make this work or provide the resources to make it happen.

Backwards Compatibility doesn't get in the way of PS Now, because the whole idea of PSNow is to be used as a rental service for people that don't own all of the games in the PS3's library or even for people that never owned a PS3 in the first place.

BC could allow Sony to sell more PS3 games, if people want a superior experience then the remasters and remakes will also sell, so really it's all money for Sony.

As for my reaction, I'd be impressed that Sony were willing to put the resources into this, though it's not impossible despite what some claim about this.

The PS4 is not powerful enough to emulate a PS3....... Even the PS4 GPU would severely struggle to emulate the PS3 GPU 1:1 (very possibly not even possible) and you are talking about offloading to the GPU? 

It is (power isn't the issue here, PS3 isn't anywhere near as capable as PS4), RSX is a cut down Nvidia 7800 GTX, it's exponentially weaker than what PS4 has. RSX wasn't exotic at all, it's basically a cut down version of a PC part.

PS4's GPU could emulate multiple RSX chips at once, in the case of PS3 the main issues are that Cell was exotic and that it's PowePC core used a RISC Instruction Set, while SPUs (SPEs) use their own custom one called ISA and a number Floting Point Operations were handled by that area of PS3's hardware, rather than all of them being done on the GPU.

PS4 can handle all of the Floating Point math on it's GPU, which is why I said Cell code could be moved over to PS4's GPU, leaving the available CPU cores to emulate the multi-threaded PowerPC on Jaguar.

 

PS3's PowerPC (not speaking about the SPEs here) is 1/3rd the amount of hardware present in 360's core CPU, yet XB1 doesn't have any issues in emulating this, even though it's using a RISC instruction set. PS4 would only have to worry about 1/3rd the CPU load, with the GPU handling SPE work.

Sony only needs to write a program that recognizes RISC and ISA code as X86, along with offloading SPE code to PS4's GPU.

 

TBH developers could probably write an efficient program that could do this with only a few times the power of PS3.

XB1 does not emulate the 360, it just downloads 360 ports.



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