Fixing the device loss by ending the render pass before vkCmdCopyQueryPoolResults introduced a hang in its place. A query that begins inside a render pass instance has to end inside that same instance; ending the pass underneath an open one leaves it permanently unavailable, so get_query_result spins on poke_query with no way out and the RSX thread stops. Nothing reported it. The submit-time ensure() only checks that the query was closed, and end_occlusion_query closes it a moment later, so the assert passes while the result never arrives. The stall detector runs from do_local_task in the FIFO loop, which the spin has already left, so the profiler charged the wait to FIFO decode and the frame read as CPU-bound -- 93% in a bucket that was really the thread sitting in sched_yield. Web of Shadows locked up this way after reaching gameplay, audio and vblank still running. Both sites that end a pass from the query path now close an open query first, which keeps begin and end within one pass. The query is cut short, as it is anywhere do_query_cleanup is used. The wait itself is now bounded as well. It warns at one second and abandons at three, using whatever the query holds: wrong culling for a frame is a better failure than a thread that never returns, and the log names the cause.
ARMSX3
Proof of concept Android port of RPCS3.
Uses the latest RPCS3 upstream code (the recent ARM64 improvements included).
Status
From my testing, I only tried Skate 3. It boots, loads and reaches gameplay at roughly 20 to 30 fps on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Rendering, audio, touch controls and physical controllers work. Almost nothing else has been tested. So the main stop gap at the moment is performance/speed.
Differences from upstream RPCS3
Some of the fixes here are not in upstream and affect any ARM64 build, not only Android:
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Shaders declared runtime sized arrays inside uniform blocks, which requires VK_EXT_shader_uniform_buffer_unsized_array. Adreno does not support that extension, so every game pipeline failed to compile and nothing rendered. Concrete array bounds are emitted when the extension is missing.
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The ARM64 SPU block verification checksum folded two thirds of every block through an absolute difference. That collides on the near identical job binaries an SPU job manager streams through the same local store address, so a cached block could end up running against another job's code. It sums now.
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Thread affinity was compiled out on Android, and the core had no ARM big.LITTLE topology, so SPU and RSX threads were never placed on the fast cores.
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The LLVM JIT target was pinned to cortex-a34, an in order core from 2016. It detects the host now.
Building
Only arm64-v8a is supported. You need the Android SDK with NDK r27 or newer, CMake 3.30 or newer, and a JDK 17. Android Studio ships all of these.
Clone with submodules, then fetch the two third party checkouts that are not submodules:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ARMSX2/ARMSX3.git
cd ARMSX3
git clone https://github.com/SnowflakePowered/librashader 3rdparty/librashader
git clone https://github.com/bylaws/libadrenotools android/armsx3-ui/app/src/main/cpp/libadrenotools
Build the core. This is the long part and produces an unstripped library of around 1.3 GB:
export ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk
cmake -B build-android -G Ninja \
-DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$ANDROID_HOME/ndk/<version>/build/cmake/android.toolchain.cmake \
-DANDROID_ABI=arm64-v8a -DANDROID_PLATFORM=android-31 \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build build-android --target rpcsx-android -j8
Strip it and put it where the app expects it:
llvm-strip --strip-unneeded build-android/android/libarmsx3-core.so
cp build-android/android/libarmsx3-core.so \
android/armsx3-ui/app/src/main/jniLibs/arm64-v8a/
Then build the app:
cd android/armsx3-ui
export JAVA_HOME="/Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jbr/Contents/Home"
./gradlew :app:assembleRelease
The apk lands in app/build/outputs/apk/release/.
Note that the core library has to be rebuilt and copied again whenever anything under rpcs3/ or android/src/ changes. Gradle does not build it for you.
The Discord Social SDK is proprietary and is not redistributed here. Get it from Discord's developer portal and drop it in app/libs/ and app/src/main/cpp/discord_sdk/ if you want that feature. The build skips it otherwise.
Running it needs PS3 firmware, which is not included. License
GPL-2.0-only, the same as RPCS3. See LICENSE. Some files may be licensed differently, check the file headers.
Based on RPCS3, https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3