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
Also extremely simply put, N64 for example was speaking japanese, your current intel PC is speaking american english, AMD is speaking british english, most android phone chips are speaking scottish, apple chips are speaking a specific dialect of irish, etc.
To run a program that was built for the N64 on an intel PC, you need something (emulator) to interpret from japanese to american english on the fly. It is not very efficient, but it can be done.
Same if you make a phone app that you want to run on a PC. You need something to emulate a phone environment for the app to be able to run.
There are also other factors. For example the N64 was like an old japanese man, speaking slowly, and the games were based on that speed.
New PCs are speaking like super fast on crack english, and they can translate japanese to english very fast, but the game isn’t built to be read and show that fast, so it basically slows things down on the emulator in order to time things as they were on the N64. And with that, it also slows down the translation.
You can in theory translate the game and then show it on the time it needs to, but it makes emulators much harder and difficult to make, so they are rarely being made like that.
Latest Answers