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Re: Mame life cycle
01/26/18 03:01 AM
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> It's arcades turning to using powerful PC hardware around the year 2000+ more and > more that seems to have quickly nailed things shut both in emulation performance and > mamedev interest. Maybe I'll be proven wrong but it seems boot hacking is the reality > for the games of the last 15 years, for the next 15 years. Or 50.
I don't think boot hacking will be the thing as it would be against MAME's philosophy of documenting and emulating absolutely everything, most likely there would be a higher level way to speed up x86 code translation (e.g. DRC) to get these machines running at more than 1 frame per minute, although the GPU would still be the killer in this case (never mind trying to emulate anything by Nvidia).
Of course, it's only a matter of time when 64-bit processors drop support for legacy stuff (32-bit) entirely or Intel et.al. drops x86 completely for a new architecture, so even then the x86 will have to live on as an emulated machine. Modern ARM devices are slowly getting bigger and faster, transitioning from phones to tablets, most likely with proper laptops and full size ARM-based PCs finally taking the place of x86. I only hope that these new PCs remain open to upgrades like traditional PCs rather than a closed system designed to be thrown away after three years like a phone.
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