The PS3 processor was paired with up to seven Synergistic Processing Units, each a 128-bit SIMD co-processor with its own 256KB of local store memory. It was notoriously hard to get working well in native games – simulating those SPUs has been even more complex and very difficult to make performant.

RPCS3 emulates SPU workloads by recompiling the original Cell instructions into native x86 code. It recently got a huge improvement by some new usage patterns discovered by elad335. He believe these could also speed up normal SIMD and CPU processes as well.

We have achieved a new breakthrough on emulating PS3's Cell CPU!

Elad discovered new SPU usage patterns and coded ways to generate more optimised PC code from them – benefitting all games!

Twisted Metal, one of the most SPU-intensive games, sees a 5-7% Average FPS improvement. pic.twitter.com/x29X4C5JnV

— RPCS3 (@rpcs3) April 3, 2026

the Elad’s contribution identifies new patterns in how PS3 games use SPU instructions and implements more efficient recompilation for them.