PlayStation 4 emulators
| |
| Developer | Sony |
|---|---|
| Type | Home video game console |
| Generation | Eighth generation |
| Release date | 2013 |
| Predecessor | PlayStation 3 |
| Emulated | ~ |
The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is an eighth-generation console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment on November 15, 2013 and retailed for $399.99. It has a semi-custom 8-core AMD x86-64 Jaguar CPU at 1.6 GHz, whereas one of the cores is utilised separately only for low-power, background tasks. The CPU is shared on an APU chip with a semi-custom AMD GCN Radeon GPU. They are supported by 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM at 2.75 GHz, while 256 MB of DDR3 RAM is used only for background tasks. Notably, it is the first PlayStation console to use the x86 architecture, making it easier to program for than the PlayStation 3 while also having the same architecture as PCs.
Emulators
| Name | Operating System(s) | Latest Version | Active | Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spine | Linux | Git | ✓ | ✗ |
| Orbital | Windows, Linux | Git | ✓ | ✗ |
Comparisons
- Spine
- First public PS4 emulator to play games (two at the moment)[1]. Spine is a High-Level emulator, it's Linux-only and closed-source for now[2]. It uses a Wine-like approach. It's a dynamic linker for PS4 executables. Or from other perspective it's HLE without CPU emulation[3].
- Orbital
- Low-Level and open-source PS4 emulator. Can't boot any games yet.
Potential Roadblocks
Due to the PS4's x86 architecture and FreeBSD-based operating system, emulators for the device will by and large be very unconventional. Despite the x86's instruction set being huge[4], a trait that would typically lead to years of development time by emulators, it opens the ability for pre-existing hypervisors to do the heavy lifting, eliminating the need for a recompiler. There is also, as of writing this, little to no documentation on the GPU (a modified Radeon 7970M with disabled stream processors) used in the PS4's APU, and it will require a complete re-implementation by emulator developers. End-users may wish to preform a preliminary dump of the required files from their PS4 using the Orbital Dumper
