PS3 H/W emulator?

[freeps]

Hi Guys,

I have been sitting for a long time, waiting for PS3 to open up. If its taking time, I believe there are very good reasons for that. but I just want to see for myself how hard it really is.

I am gonna ask lot of questions here and i hope somebody here can help me with the answers. so let me start with my first question:

1. is it not possible to create an emulator for PS3 H/W and run PS3 bootloader/firmware code on it ? It might take a long time to develop such an emulator but is it possible ? at least theoretically ?

Thanks

[CJPC]

Well, its sort of been done (very sort of).

IBM has software that can somewhat emulate the cell, however as for doing it for the PS3, it is sadly quite a ways off. Forgetting the fact that enough information about the PS3 is still unknown, since its such an "odd" piece of hardware, it may prove hard to emulate.

But, assuming we find enough information out about the system, it is theoretically possible yes, but I would not expect to see it for ages, if ever!

[gtxboyracer]

CJPC: i have a question or two for you:

Can't you extract one firmware and compare it to another, to see what files have changed? Wouldn't this give you some sort of indication of what has been patched/fixed? Are you able to reverse engineer any of the executables (SELF/ELF files) to view any source? These might allow you to see what has changed etc.

Sorry if they have been answered before, or are stupid questions - just some thoughts i had the other day.

Also, i remember reading on SKFU's about SELF/ELF files being related to a MAC in some way or another.. (PowerPC architecture?) Would this environment help with emulation and execution of these files?

Please tell me your thoughts..

[CJPC]

Well, we can extract them to a point, or view the resulting dumped files on the flash - the issue is, they are all encrypted, and others are encrypted files inside an encrypted file system, which makes it (so far) impossible to get at.

At the moment, we are unable to reverse most of the above mentioned files, we can not dump the memory of "system" executables.

The environment is of course important, but not really. It is PPC based (just like old MACs), that is about all it has in common , so far!

[gtxboyracer]

If only we could use something like Virtual Box or VMWare to emulate a Cell Environment.. we could possibly re-create a PS3 like environment to test firmwares etc. one can hope..

[AvidFFXIer]

it may be possible one day, but since it is such an advanced system, I doubt even a Core i7 extreme with 12GB and a 1GB Geforce 280GTX in SLI would run it stable.

[setTopbox]

it may be possible one day, but since it is such an advanced system, I doubt even a Core i7 extreme with 12GB and a 1GB Geforce 280GTX in SLI would run it stable.

Probably not. Perhaps there's a way to use the PS3's distributed computing capabilities to emulate the ps3 itself? Then you'd be running it on a native CPU and have several machines working on the emulation. I guess the flaw in that plan is that Vmware etc could never be run in that fashion.