It seems Intel and AMD are mainly focussing on multiple cores to get more performance rather than higher clock speed.
How do you think this will influence emulators?
My view is rather pessimistic. To emulate 1 core, you will need a much faster core. These much faster cores may not exist anymore in the future. PCs in the future may have MORE cores than the consoles, but not FASTER cores.
The only way to emulate a core in the future is to use multiple PC cpu cores to emulate 1 console cpu core. This is however a very difficult problem. People have tried to build compilers for instance that produce parallel programs without the programmer worrying about multiple threads. This has not yet been very succesful. The emulator problem is equivalent, I believe.
On the other hand I do not know much about emulation. Maybe high level emulation provides some possibilities.
There are some gamecube and xbox emulators around, but they are not yet fast enough (and not compatible enough, but that's another story) to emulate at full speed. I guess they are mainly single threaded. In the past we would simply wait for faster CPUs and within a few years the emulators work fine. With the current multiple core direction Intel and AMD are going, this may not happen. So Dolphin and other may NEVER get cpus that are fast enough to run them.
How do you think this will influence emulators?
My view is rather pessimistic. To emulate 1 core, you will need a much faster core. These much faster cores may not exist anymore in the future. PCs in the future may have MORE cores than the consoles, but not FASTER cores.
The only way to emulate a core in the future is to use multiple PC cpu cores to emulate 1 console cpu core. This is however a very difficult problem. People have tried to build compilers for instance that produce parallel programs without the programmer worrying about multiple threads. This has not yet been very succesful. The emulator problem is equivalent, I believe.
On the other hand I do not know much about emulation. Maybe high level emulation provides some possibilities.
There are some gamecube and xbox emulators around, but they are not yet fast enough (and not compatible enough, but that's another story) to emulate at full speed. I guess they are mainly single threaded. In the past we would simply wait for faster CPUs and within a few years the emulators work fine. With the current multiple core direction Intel and AMD are going, this may not happen. So Dolphin and other may NEVER get cpus that are fast enough to run them.