MAME port for Cray?

[Tailgunner]

Ran across this on eBay, pretty sure it'd run any arcade game at full speed.

[IntruderAlert]

I tried it on mine but it still stutters on Cruisin' Usa

[elvis]

Ran across this on eBay, pretty sure it'd run any arcade game at full speed.

Not even close.

1) 600MHz Alpha processors are good, but MAME is still MHz bound.  You're looking at Pentium3 1GHz performance levels at absolute best, depending on the game.  To put it into perspective, Alpha processors give roughly the same performance as POWER processors (both are 64bit RISC CPUs with tonnes of cache), which are the big brother of PowerPC CPUs found in Apple Macs.  How well does a 600MHz Mac perform in MAME?

2) MAME does not benefit from parallelisation.  The only MAME port that I know if that is multithreaded is AdvanceMAME, and even it only sees 1-2% boosts via things like screen rendering and sound calc offloads rather than actual emulation speedups.

Sorry to burst the bubble there.  Cray computers are VERY task specific.  That machine you linked to would even run Microsoft Word slower than your desktop PC would, simply because it's designed for a very different task.

[Lilwolf]

But think of the potential for large scale porn!

SupercomputerPorn!   

[Tailgunner]

Sorry to burst the bubble there.  Cray computers are VERY task specific.  That machine you linked to would even run Microsoft Word slower than your desktop PC would, simply because it's designed for a very different task.

Mom, Elvis keeps bursting my bubbles. 

Okay, Crusin USA is out. But could your 3 GHz PC run 112 games of Ms. Pacman simultaneously?

[IntruderAlert]

no, but my new 90Ghz P9 runs Cruzin' Really smoothly
You should see it
It's AMAZING!

[elvis]

Okay, Crusin USA is out. But could your 3 GHz PC run 112 games of Ms. Pacman simultaneously?

That smells like a challenge!   

I'm off to do some testing...

[paigeoliver]

Yes, it probably could.

Here is a screenshot of me running 15 copies of Ms. Pac-Man using Mame .92 Note I hit F11 to show framerate on the middle one (which I was playing).

That is using the SLOW Mame .92. Using a Ms. Pac optomized emulator and Linux (which can run a gazillion copys of the same APP and only load it into memory once), it SHOULD be possible to run 112 copies at once.

[IntruderAlert]

now you just need a way to connect 112 joysticks and you're in business

[Tailgunner]

Hmmm, thinking beyond MAME.

Crays are typically are used running simulations, for instance weather simulations, structural stress simulations, ect. How about a component level arcade PCB simulation? With a library of simulated components, you could recreate game board circuits virtually and spread the load across the supercomputer's processor elements. This would overcome the speed limitations of the individual processors, as they only have to handle a part of the overall simulation.

Not sure if this would give us a smooth running Cruzin USA simulation, but it should make recreating all those discrete logic games possible. 

[Lilwolf]

You shouldn't need a cray for that.  There are parts of mames descrete sound emulation which is very similar to this. 

I've been talking about this for a long time.  I just don't know enought to be able to do it.  I keep hoping that an emulator author would get excited about it.

I think it would be REALLY cool to have an emulator which you basically drop in the schematics and then the roms and your done.  If you don't have a rom chip (or have a bad one) it will act just like the original board.

[youki]

I think it would be REALLY cool to have an emulator which you basically drop in the schematics and then the roms and your done.

I started to do that few year ago. It was a PCB simulator , i coded that in turbo pascal.  That's worked to simulate simple PCB.  With simple processor , ram, logical port .  I wanted to make something to allow to build emulator based directly on Shematics.  But when i stated that project in 1992-93 , PC was not enough fast to do something playable.   
The other problem would be to emulate anologique part.

I still have in my head to do something like that. But i quickly realize that 's not a project you can do alone and you need lot of time!... If i was still student may be i would start again.

[Lilwolf]

I say this often "If I was still a student"...

next is "The time I had before I had kids"

But I remember in school drinking a lot...  When I should have been into emulation!  Where was my priorities!  (ok, and MAME didn't exist at that point   yeah I'm old)

[Tailgunner]

But I remember in school drinking a lot...  When I should have been into emulation!  Where was my priorities!  (ok, and MAME didn't exist at that point   yeah I'm old)

Heh, when I was in school, personal computers were running the same processors that powered the arcade games. Emulation was pointless, as you could go and play the games in arcades like they were ment to be played.

[Frosty]

Man, I am so all over Modules 2.2.2 SN#4605 CD#110528 CF77_M6.6.6 SCC_M4.0.5 CF90_M0.1.3 CrayLibs_M 2.0.0 CrayTools 2.0.0 SN#6223 T3D.