• Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    It’s emulation. The CPU architecture is only one piece of the puzzle. The PS5 runs a custom operating system with custom graphics APIs and unified memory.

    • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
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      5 hours ago

      It’s a mix - some functions are emulated but the CPU functions can be largely just passed through

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Yes. But Proton has the advantage of working with well documented APIs on both sides. All the PS5 stuff is proprietary and has to be reverse engineered, that’s why it doesn’t work so well.

    • Clusterfck@lemmy.sdf.org
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      10 hours ago

      It’s a Zen 2 APU. It could run any other x86_64 OS in theory. There’s no need to emulate the whole system if you’re running it on an x86_64 machine. It shouldn’t be wholly impossible to just run it as a VM and save the overheard of translating instructions to the same instructions.

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        My reply to your comment would be the same one you replied to. That’s not how it works. The translation layer is required. Having the same clue architecture is not good enough to just run the games natively. If it were, Proton wouldn’t exist and Linux and Mac gaming would have been solved a decade ago.

        You already don’t need to emulate the entire hardware system like you would with a PS3, but you still require a complex translation layer.

        • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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          6 hours ago

          You already don’t need to emulate the entire hardware system like you would with a PS3, but you still require a complex translation layer.

          I think this is their point, just worded better. Wine and Proton are not “emulators”, but translation layers like you are describing.

          Although I have no idea what they are talking about in regards to virtualization - being able to install Linux on a PS5 doesn’t get me any closer to running PS5 games on Linux, and I can’t even imagine the virtualization headaches to get the PS5 OS running in a VM with enough access to the hardware to not blow chunks (and honestly sounds a lot closer to true hardware emulation than not).

          • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            My problem with their point isn’t really the semantics as much as that they seem to be under the impression that it should “just work” when we can clearly see by the above article, it doesn’t.

        • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.today
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          6 hours ago

          Translation layers and emulators are two very different things though, emulators take foreign machine code and interpret it on/recompile it for the native architecture while translation layers replicate OS and driver layer functionality on a foreign OS/driver environment. Proton is a translation layer, not an emulator. The PS5 can literally run Linix and Steam, it’s essentially stock PC hardware, so the environment that needs to be replicated is the PS5 system software, not the hardware layer.