Opensource PPC emulation for Linux x86

[KennyR]

All the same, I think G5 Mac owners will be safe knowing that no x86 is fast enough to emulate them for some years yet.

[KennyR]

Karlos wrote:
Kenny - Its a JIT, not an interpreter ;-)

Even JIT withers in the face of native speeds. With the best JIT you might get 35% of the host CPU raw speed. Anyone is welcome to correct me, but I remind those reading that standard benchmark results are useless under JIT.

Besides which, PPC has all those registers which it uses a *lot*. x86 has relatively few. Therefore it's only to be expected that PPC emulation is less effective than 68k.

Now, with x86 speeds about 3GHz at present, who wants a < 1GHz PPC chip emulated? In a world of people who want 52x angle-grinder CD-ROMs just because the number is bigger (even though they are slower than 32x in most uses), I guess not many.

[KennyR]

@Hammer and bhogget

Try playing a DVD-quality DivX with Frogger 68k, emulated. My 1.3GHz PC running UAE can't do it, my Pegasos can't do it. Yet the native version can - easily. Try other apps and games that stress the CPU. In no case have I found emulator speed to get close to native speed.

But I run a lot of apps all day using hotspot JIT (allegedly the fastest current variant), and I have a 'feel' for it. Emulating 68k on a G3/600 Pegasos is just that little bit slower than the same native PPC on my BPPC Amiga. In almost all cases the emulated code is about a third as fast as equivalent native code, on Pegasos. UAE is rather slower.

My old LG 52X (max) speed CD-ROM is faster than my ancient Acer 36X (max) speed CD-ROM.

I'm sure it is - if it gets time to spin up. 200 MB+ files on CD are great for this - but not so common, especially on Amiga. Spinning up and down reduces the overall readspeed in these cases (not to mention making an awful noise and vibrating/heating the rest of your components).