Just wondering about something

[Mad Cow]

Can a GBA (gameboy advance) emulator theoretically run on the Gigabeat's 300mhz cpu? I'm not asking anybody to make one, because I know that will be a lot of work, but is it possible?

[Llorean]

In theory it could run on any of the targets. The question I assume you're asking is whether it could run fast enough to be playable. The only way to *really* be certain would be to try it.

[midgey]

Sure it's possible. gpSP runs fullspeed on the PSP for most games and runs near fullspeed on GP2x and Dreamcast. The PSP version uses dynarec while the GP2x and Dreamcast use a standard interpreter emulation core. The GP2x runs an arm940 at 200 Mhz so its similar to the Gigabeat in terms of raw power.

[Mad Cow]

That's good to know. I didn't think it was possible because I remember running a GBA emulator on my computer (Athlon 2400+) a couple of years ago and it ran only about 2x full speed.

[scorche]

I am going to vote no on the possibility.  Processor speed is not all that comes into effect.  The GBA has many accceleration chips for graphics, which DAPs tend not to have.

I would love for someone to code an emulator to prove me wrong though.  

[Llorean]

In my opinion, if someone's interested enough, they should try making one. It might be playable, it might not, but as the trend seems to be toward more powerful electronics in DAPs, there will likely be one day when there's a Rockbox target that can play it full speed.