Recompilers for Emotion Engine (EE), Vector Unit 0 (VU0) and Vector Unit 1 (VU1).

Mac OS X is not officially supported but you can still run PCSX2 under it.

While the increase of number of useful cores may happen in the future it still remains unknown when this will happen because the division of the general emulation thread into two or more is a very hard and complex task - the original PS2 hardware has multiple CPUs and the correct timing between emulated CPUs is complicated enough without further dividing every CPU into more than one thread. As of late 2010 the program runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows OSes and uses no more than 2 cores on multicore CPUs (1 core is used for the main emulation purposes and the second is for plugins' purposes like rendering graphics, output sounds or PAD works). Although the plugins are numbered and unlikely to increase their quantity in the near future the plugin approach is still solid - it's possible to change to new updated versions of the plugins without changing the version of the main program and vice versa.

The emulator uses plugin architecture making it possible to expand its capabilities by installing additional plugins. Though not yet perfect the program can successfully emulate most commercial PS2 games at playable speeds and good visuals (often better than the original PS2). The emulator achieved playable speeds only by mid-2007 and subsequent versions have improved speed and compatibility making it both the ultimate solution for PS2 emulation and the instrument to keep and preserve the PS2 legacy in the modern world.

It was started by the team behind PCSX (an emulator for the original PlayStation) back in 2002, and as of late 2013 development is still active. PCSX2 is a Playstation 2 emulator for Windows and Linux.

Pcsx2 emulator