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===Cycle accurate===
Cycle accurate emulation is basically trying to perfectly emulate timings right down to per-cycle accesses. So each individual component is emulated at exactly the right time, and in perfect sync etc., which takes a performance hit. The size of the performance hit depends on the way cycle accuracy is implemented and the skill of the coder.
The accuracy of these emulators are close to perfection, but at a steep CPU cost. However, some people believe that the notion of 100% cycle-based accuracy being slow is a misconception, one that people believe because most attempts at a cycle emulator aren't as well-optimized as they could be. MarathonMan, developer of [[CEN64]], is one of the people who believes this. Whether or not this is the case remains to be seen.
===Chip accurate/Circuit accurate===
Chip accurate emulation works by simulating each logic chip on the board individually. Not only does this take a tremendous amount of power to run (as in, even emulating something from the late 70's on a chip accurate level requires a pretty high-end system to run at full speed.), but they also require a incredible amount of effort and money to codemake. This accuracy method is pretty much useless. Although it is technically the only way to achieve true 100% accuracyhardware simulation, cycle accurate emulation can already achieve accuracy which is already near-perfect, to the point where any inaccuracies present in cycle accuracy are pretty much invisible to virtually indistinguishable from the end user (e.g. there are no known discrepancies between BSNES/Higan and a real SNES)hardware. Not only that, but cycle-accurate emulators have much lower system requirements and programming difficulty. There are currently no publicly-released chip accurate video game emulators in existence, and there will most likely never be one. Circuit accuracy is similar to chip accuracy, although it's made for systems that lack any type of CPU (e.g. the cabinets for Pong and other arcade cabinets released around that time.) The system requirements for this are also very high. There is only one circuit emulator: [http://sourceforge.net/projects/dice/ DICE.] This emulator was made for playing very old some of the first arcade games, such as the aforementioned Pongever made. Yet despite being well-optimized, you need a very high-end computer to run them it at full speed. This has some use, since it is the only way to emulate games like that accurately (due to there being no CPU cycles to make cycle emulation possible.)
==Controversy==
