Emulator Now Runs x86 Apps On All Raspberry Pi Models 82
DeviceGuru writes: Russia-based Eltechs announced its ExaGear Desktop virtual machine last August, enabling Linux/ARMv7 SBCs and mini-PCs to run x86 software. That meant that users of the quad-core, Cortex-A7-based Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, could use it as well, although the software was not yet optimized for it. Now Eltechs has extended extended ExaGear to support earlier ARMv6 versions of the Raspberry Pi. The company also optimized the emulator for the Pi 2 allowing, for example, Pi 2 users to use automatically forwarding startup scripts.
And the news is... (Score:1)
What's the difference between this and, say, Bochs 20 years ago?
Emulating x86 is not hard. It's not efficient either.
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Emphasis added
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Sounds about right... QEMU isn't designed to be fast, it's designed to be accurate and portable. so writing a pipelined JIT x86 emulator specifically for ARM should get around a 4x speedup over QEMU even if it is solely based on QEMU code and a JIT engine, prior to optimization.
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Huh? Last I checked, qemu WAS designed to be fast - or at least compared to Bochs, which isn't saying much, it was intended to be fast. Or are you confusing the two?
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Qemu was fast compared to Bochs when running on the same architecture it was emulating in part because Bochs used full emulation all the time IIRC.
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Emphasis added
Emphasis and extra quote added
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Oops, Slashdot ate my emphasis. Also, I think it was clear that those figures came from Eltechs as the first sentence I quoted states "In August, Eltechs said" ;-).
No, I did that... i just wanted to emphasize even more what you already mentioned... sorry!
Re:And the news is... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think it's a big deal to Russia since they don't have access to Intel/AMD cpu's, so they're basing their homegrown computers on ARM. Anyone using an ARM based computer probably wants to run some x86 software sometimes. I think the design goals for Boch's and ExaGear is different, people using ARM based computers would like access to all the x86 software available. It doesn't seem like Boch's is compiled for ARM/Android yet so that's a huge group that's not being serviced, so it's kind of a big deal.
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I'm having flashbacks (Score:3, Funny)
I'm having flashbacks to Windows NT 4.0 on the alpha running X86 apps. Oh God those were terrible times!
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I could never figure out why DEC even bothered with FX!32, or why MS bothered with Alpha for that matter. I mean, PowerPC OS X Apps didn't run that slow on Intel when using Roesetta.....how did FX!32 get it so wrong?
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FX!32 ran programs at about 66% of their normal speeds. It wasn't that bad. They bothered because there wasn't any native Alpha NT programs at the time.
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"They bothered because there wasn't any native Alpha NT programs at the time"
Yeah that was kinda my point though....DEC had VMS and Tru64, which smoked NT 4.0. I blame Compaq ;-)
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I blame Digital. They had no business selling themselves, whores... Really, they should not have sold their dirty, sexy, selves...
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I mean, PowerPC OS X Apps didn't run that slow on Intel when using Roesetta.....how did FX!32 get it so wrong?
Emulating RISC instructions on an x86 is typically much easier than emulating x86 instructions on RISC. Particularly if you have to emulate the clunky, convoluted PC hardware, too.
1987 called (Score:2)
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No, they do not.
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LOL ... don't speak for 1987, it hates that.
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I forgot that years hate being anthropomorphized..
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It's OK, 1987 is too busy snorting cocaine and being a selfish bastard to notice.
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Your name is probably going to be the compatibility/performance litmus test...
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They want their Sidekick and Lotus 123 back!
No, no, no.. Word Perfect and Borland C.... Unless Windows 3.1 is more your style..
APPS? x86 *APPS* (Score:1, Insightful)
I guess *EVERYTHING* is an 'app' now!
HANG ON, I GOTTA GO THE THE APP (toilet)
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App the apps while apping apps!
What the fuck ever happened to "program", "application", "software", or "code"?
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Apps can also be shorthand for aperitifs or appetizers. As in, "I grabbed the new Google app last night while eating an app at the bistro."
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Agreed - apps are what you get at Chili's.
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What the fuck ever happened to "program", "application", "software", or "code"?
It's never been unusual to call a program an application even in the Unix or PC world, but it's been standard to call programs "apps" in the Mac community since forever, because they have been known as "applications" in the official MacOS system parlance since forever - hence the file type flag of APPL and not PROG, SOFT, or CODE.
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APPL was chosen for a different reason.
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There is no such thing as file type flag in OSX tho, it uses the NeXT concept of bundle directories (which NeXT actually borrowed from RiscOS). The extension that marks applications is .app and "app bundle" is quite common name for it. Pretty sure it's where the "app" shortening for "application" got it's ubiquitousness that then spread with popularity of iOS.
But I distinctively remember even back in the 90s that the term Application was the "proper" term for software installation - as Application can consi
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Memory around here is so short.
Apple had long called their programs "applications" while Windows used "Programs" and DOS used "executables".
Then came the iPhone with the "App Store" which Apple Trademarked, quickly everybody else started using the same term to ride on high consumer awareness of the term. Apple sued, and Amazon and finally gave up on it. [arstechnica.com]
Since then "Apps" has become a widespread generic term, and Tim Cook cries a little inside every time he sees it used for non-Apple software.
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I guess *EVERYTHING* is an 'app' now!
You make it sound like calling a program/application an 'app' is a new thing...
Take a look at the article from 1992 "Running you apps under OS/2" in PC mag
https://books.google.com/books?id=uummfdS7yF8C&pg=PT28&dq=windows+apps&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SqVoVeS0AdbqoASRsoL4Cg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=windows%20apps&f=false
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History repeats itself... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The first ARM desktop computer, the Acorn Archimedes, got quite early on a PC emulator which, if I recall correctly, emulated a 80186. The ARM 2 processor, running at 8 MHz could emulate this processor at close to 5-6 MHz (again, if I recall correctly).
From: http://chrisacorns.computinghi... [computinghistory.org.uk]
"In use the Archimedes PC Emulator program gives quite acceptable performance if you don't want to go too fast. While the hard disk access is extremely fast, the computing speed is only average and the screen display speed is slow."
And it gives the 'computing index' performance as about 1/10 of an AT PC. That's pretty much my experience of PC emulators; for apps that spend most of the time waiting for user input, it's fine, but anything that requires real computing pow
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Of course I had bought the Acorn Archimedes for its ARM processor; I did program in assembly back in the day, a
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"The processor emulated was a 80188 (not 80186 as I mentioned earlier), which was used in the XT line of PCs."
No, it was not.
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I remember that program - I had it many many many years ago, on an Acorn for which I can't even recall the model*. I also recall that the PC emulator was painfully, unusably slow - even just entering commands you could see the delay between keypress and character.
* You could run Cannon Fodder on it, and that is what it mostly got used for.
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I remember it ran RISC OS. Looking at pictures of Acorn machines, th A3010 looks like the one I remember - I may be wrong, but not by far. The label on top I remember as quite distinctive.
I found it very useful for media convertions: My IBM had a 2.88MB floppy drive, my other PCs had conventional 1.44MB, and my Atati used some weird Atari thing. The Acorn machine was able to read all of them and so, when not being used for Cannon Fodder (Which I never did manage to finish), it served to exchange data betwee
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First thought is Netflix (Score:2)
I imagine it would require connecting too much non-x86 R-Pi plumbing but it would be nice if it could run the PC version of Netflix.
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Chrome is not available for R Pi. Only Chromium
Thats why the GP is talking about running the x86 version of Chrome in an emulator. What did you think this conversation was about?
Chromium and Netflix (Score:2)
Only Chromium
You can google around and find several tutorial explaining how to compile chromium with support for Widevine turned on (That's the DRM module used by Google Chrome to play the HTML5 EME/VIDEO streams of netflix).
Now the question is:
- are there Widevine binaries available for ARM ? (Not sure. I might remember having read somewhere about such)
- or, alternatively, can similar JIT emulator as TFA's one run the x86 plugin at a sufficient speed, while leaving enough processing power to handle the remaining of the
No source, no future (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't bother. Just use QEMU. It's slower but it works.
I don't think proprietary software is worthwile on Linux. No, I'm not an RMS type that would completely boycott proprietary anything on philosphical grounds. It's just that my experience is that if I can't compile it from source on Linux it sucks.
First... you have to be running the same distro as the author or.. no support and maybe a 40% chance it will even work.
Ok, for the Pi everything is probably Raspbian so that might not be a problem.
But.. a year later... it doesn't work if you download any updates because it is dependant on some old library version or the distro has moved some file or something like that.
If you get source code... just recompile and it works. You get about 5 years before Linux has changed too much to use that same source code without modification.
Get a community to maintain the source code... it's more like 25 years.
Now.. proprietary software on Windows.. 10 to 20 years before you can't use it anymore.
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eh?
You know of a version of QEMU that runs on ARM? Last I checked the choices were sparc, ppc and x86
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Not sure where you're checking. ARM has been supported as a target for some time now, and as a host. Of course we aren't talking about the ARM target; we're talking about the x86 target on an ARM host. And it will definitely compile and run on an ARM system. Both full system emulation (a virtual machine) and user-mode emulation, though it's not really that fast yet. The latter mode is closer to the software described in the article. Years ago I used the QEMU x86 user mode system on my PowerPC to run a
Yes, but does it crawl Windows? (Score:2)
Obviously it doesn't run the 32-bit version of Windows 8, but does it at least crawl it?
Software, not "apps" (Score:2)
> apps
No.
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Many of those things are available on ARM via the popular Linux distro, Android.