eli5: What does people mean when they say that a computer system runs on different architecture from another computer? Like when somebody says that an emulator can run N64 games faster theoretically but because of different architecture in practicality it cant?

Question

eli5: What does people mean when they say that a computer system runs on different architecture from another computer? Like when somebody says that an emulator can run N64 games faster theoretically but because of different architecture in practicality it cant?

In: Technology

Answer 1

A lot of good responses on what people mean by architecture on a general level.

But a more specific level, why N64 emulation is so hard is down to simple hardware. The N64 had a special GPU, the “[Reality Coprocessor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_technical_specifications#Reality_coprocessor)” which was like a dual core processor for graphics. No one makes a dual core GPU, it’s not necessary for anything other than the N64 specific architecture. It being basically a two core meant that it could do 2 tasks at once and send the results of both at the same time for the console to display it in game, whereas a single core GPU like in a Retropie or your PC can only do one task at a time, sure it can do each task 10 times faster, but it still can not spit out the two tasks simultaneously, which means there’s a delay in the result. That’s why emulated N64 games come out all choppy.