PowerPC emulation on x86 possible?

[dammy]

by lempkee on 2003/11/7 12:10:59

when people starts a thread like this , just when things starts to look better, well its just like amithlon in 2001, it made people LEAVE! and they wont come back ..why? because they belive os4 will be emulated asap because of a thread like this, and everyone knows that by emulating a ppc will make the x86 even more popular and especially WINDOWS! .

Dude, your really Windowsphobic.  If you really think that people will chose x86 (I'd say 95% of us already own atleast one x86 already) over PPC , that tells me two things.

1. x86 is that much superior to PPC, people will conceed to this if they use it (like they don't use it already).

2. The software and OS that is available to PPC is that inferior to those on x86.

If either of those two are true,  any PPC platform and those OSs tied to PPC platforms are DOA because they can not compete.

well its just so typical, we have an excuse not to jump ship and then people make uae the same, soon there will be wos and pup support, soon it will have nova, soon it will have morphos...

I'm still trying to figure out who "we" is that your referring to.  Is it the few hundred people that have not bought a x86 already that still like/love the Amiga?  If so, more power to you but your limiting yourself and you should respect other's choices as they do yours.   If people want to try to code  a good PPC JIT for x86, more power to them as more choices are better then a single choice which isn't really a choice.  If you want to buy a Peg or a A1, more power to you.   I don't see the x86 guys jumping up and down about a x86 JIT for PPC, nor would I expect to see them to do so.  

anyway X86 = windows , linux = geek , amiga = emulators , beos died and became an x86 os which is kinda nice but i think that only because it DIED or heh..the ppc plattform around it.

Be died because of management snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  Be management decided to go IABe which they can no clue on how to do a STB OS and alienated the Be Devs.  Sure reciepe for distaster, which happened.  If anything, BeOS exploded in popularity (compared to when it was PPC only) when it went x86 because it allowed so many more devs to pitch in an code without having to buy some exotic (and expensive) BeBox.   Again, Be went with giving people choices, and until their management got stupid, that choice was working.

Dammy

[mdwh2]

lempkee wrote:
when people starts a thread like this , just when things starts to look better, well its just like amithlon in 2001, it made people LEAVE! and they wont come back ..why? because they belive os4 will be emulated asap because of a thread like this, and everyone knows that by emulating a ppc will make the x86 even more popular and especially WINDOWS! .

I'm not sure how being able to emulate AmigaOS would make people leave it. Do you have any evidence to back up these claims?

well its just so typical, we have an excuse not to jump ship and then people make uae the same,

How is being able to use AmigaOS "jumping ship"? How do emulators make people "jump ship"?

xeron wrote:

I never fancy doing anything that involves x86 assembly, even for cash. Besides, i'm somewhat busy organising an OS4 show, doing the websites for a UK AmigaOne dealer and a second hand guitar shop, and after that I'm going to start writing applications for OS4. Thats around my full-time job.

How about the other way around then?  x86-JIT emulator for PPC?  That would be an excellent piece of software.  I'd rather use x86 on PPC than PPC on x86 anyday! :-)

Go on Xeron, you know you want to! ;-)

[Hammer]

when people starts a thread like this , just when things starts to look better, well its just like amithlon in 2001, it made people LEAVE! and they wont come back ..why? because they belive os4 will be emulated asap because of a thread like this, and everyone knows that by emulating a ppc will make the x86 even more popular and especially WINDOWS! .

Note that Linux X86 has leveraged the X86 desktop dominance to fight against the traditional Unix servers.

linux never was a contender and never will be, it will remain as a geek os just like what it was designed to be.

Tied Lindows 4.0?

Red Hat’s recent comment is just a cop out since their distro is just crap for desktop use.

anyone remeber the "UAE can do 3d?" thread that appeard here some time ago? , well did you notice who started it? and did you know that warp3d is out for uae because of it or hehe something?

Note that it didn't throw out Warp3D compatibility since it's just a wrapper for Window's 3D subsystems for WinUAE.

X86 = windows , linux = geek , amiga = emulators , beos died and became an x86 os which is kinda nice but i think that only because it DIED or heh..the ppc plattform around it.

I don’t think PowerPC alone would be an absolute guarantee in keeping out MS Windows since there is already a Windows NT 4.0 PowerPC edition.  Please note the X-BOX 2. The Windows NT foundation for PowerPC is already has been completed. All it needs is a reactivation. We know the X-BOX is powered by a cut down Windows NT5 i.e. an OS built on NT4.  

[Hammer]

MarkTime wrote:
well I think its fairly obvious that people want PPC emulation so that they can a) illegally run Mac OS X, and b) in this community anyway, illegally run OS 4, and c) possibly write an illegal emulator for the Gamecube

Note that Microsoft is now aggressively selling VirtualPC for MacOS PPC market i.e. thus enabling them to sell more Windows products to this particular market.

[minator]

Be died because of management snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  Be management decided to go IABe which they can no clue on how to do a STB OS and alienated the Be Devs.  Sure reciepe for distaster, which happened.  If anything, BeOS exploded in popularity (compared to when it was PPC only) when it went x86 because it allowed so many more devs to pitch in an code without having to buy some exotic (and expensive) BeBox.   Again, Be went with giving people choices, and until their management got stupid, that choice was working.

They didn't have much of a choice, they were held off shipping PCs due to MS licensing so were not going to make anything, they had enough money for a year left so they spent it on BeIA because they thought it might make them something.  It didn't, but had they remained on course they would of most likely had the same fate.

This wasn't obvious at the time, the story only came out much later.

The eVilla might have saved them but it's performance was crippled by the sideways mounted screen and it never took off.

[minator]

bloodline

I'm far more interested in the technical aspects than being right or wrong.

have already given my Critique of the outdated, but  beautiful work of FUD that is the infamous CISC Vs RISC article. I won't rehash it here.

How can you claim to be only interested in the technical aspects then claim my article was "Outdated & FUD" - of which it was neither.

That RISC chips are more efficient than x86 is not exactly new news...

But you don't have to take my word for it read
this.

[Jagabot]

They didn't have much of a choice, they were held off shipping PCs due to MS licensing so were not going to make anything, they had enough money for a year left so they spent it on BeIA because they thought it might make them something. It didn't, but had they remained on course they would of most likely had the same fate.

I might be a little off topic, but I thought I'd toss in my two cents.

Another thing that killed BeOS was Microsoft "marketing". And I don't mean through normal channels... When I was head of IT/IS at AST Computers in Los Angeles we decided to launch two new Pentium-III lines (500MHz was as fast as they went at the time) with some nifty options: we decided to give the buyer the option of choosing which operating system was installed from the factory. Windows 98, Windows NT, Linux RedHat, or BeOS. (We were the first major manufacturer to even think about offering that choice.)

It took 2 weeks for Microsoft to hold a meeting with us and in no uncertain terms say "If you continue to offer those other operating systems with your new PCs, you will find there is a sudden shortage in the supply chain for ANY Microsoft operating systems for you." And, of course, since MS OSes comprised 99% of every PC system we (or Dell, or Quantex, or Gateway, or Micron) sold, we dropped BeOS and Linux as options. MS does the same thing to every manufacturer. You can't argue with them when you're selling 50,000 units at a time and you're told you might not be able to buy 50,000 Windows liscences... (this was before the class action lawsuit against MS by a group of linux users who demanded a refund for being forced to buy new pc's with windows already installed when they were not going to use it anyway)

Bastards. You can do anything when you have that much money.  :-x

[dammy]

by minator on 2003/11/8 18:34:53

They didn't have much of a choice, they were held off shipping PCs due to MS licensing so were not going to make anything, they had enough money for a year left so they spent it on BeIA because they thought it might make them something. It didn't, but had they remained on course they would of most likely had the same fate.

This wasn't obvious at the time, the story only came out much later.

If they had maintained their heading instead of swerving into the the illfated IA, I think they could have survived by entering into the audio market niche.  Yeah, M$ screwed them by putting preasure on the OEM not to dual boot Be with Windbloat.  From what I remember and read on the audio software that was in the pipeline, they could have survived in the audio niche market.

Dammy

[bloodline]

How can you claim to be only interested in the technical aspects then claim my article was "Outdated & FUD" - of which it was neither.

That RISC chips are more efficient than x86 is not exactly new news...

That comment says it all. You use the word efficient like it means something by itself.

I ask you is is more efficient for me to buy a 3Ghz P4 or a 876Mhz G4, for the same price? Efficiency is all relative.

I really don't want to have to go into the pointlessness or your article again, since I've already explained how you totally missed all the good points of the PPC and focused on just trying to make the PP look better (the PPC970 is a great chip why lie to make it look better?).

Yes, your article was horribly outdated. The PPC is no more RISC than the X86. Sure the architectures both started at different ends of the spectrum, but now they are so similar it's a pointless argument. Both chips are aimed at the same market (the desktop, thus both have evolved in a similar way)

If you talk to any CPU designer and use the words RISC and CISC he will probably laugh at you.

If you want to see real RISC chips then look at the Alpha, MIPS and ARM


As for your link?... Give up, look at a real site like:

http://www.arstechnica.com/

[GPT]

Why use any emulation of a processor?

Wouldn't it be better if you just could by aPCI card with the specefic processor in mind and some software and that's that.

Or maybe a dual processor card with both x86 and ppc?

It would be cheaper to do just a pci cardrd or similare instead of a woal motherboard.

[dammy]

by GPT on 2003/11/9 13:00:51

Why use any emulation of a processor?

Because it's MUCH cheaper to do so?

Dammy

[Hammer]

That RISC chips are more efficient than x86 is not exactly new news...

One of the aspects of RISC concepts are the fix length instructions. Ever since AMD's K6 processor, it translates variable length CISC X86 instructions into fix length instructions “RISC86” (using AMD's words).

But you don't have to take my word for it read

Arstechnica's articles
RISC vs. CISC: The Post-RISC Era
G4 vs. K7: an architectural comparison
AMD's 64-bit alternative: x86-64

Chip Architect's
http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2003_09_21_Detailed_Architecture_of_AMDs_64bit_Core.html

The links provided addresses most of Paul DeMone’s points.

[bloodline]

One of the aspects of RISC concepts are the fix length instructions. Ever since AMD's K6 processor, it translates variable length CISC X86 instructions into fix length instructions “RISC86” (using AMD's words).

Modern achitectures are now investigating instruction compression. So that traditional "RISC" (ie fix length instruction) CPU's can enjoy the code density of "CISC" (variable instruction length) CPU's.

This makes those "RISC" chips work exactly the same way as the modern x86.... with Variable length instruction in memory decoded into fixed length instruction in the core.

Spooky how cool technology is when you bother to keep up to date.

[minator]

That comment says it all. You use the word efficient like it means something by itself.

I ask you is is more efficient for me to buy a 3Ghz P4 or a 876Mhz G4, for the same price? Efficiency is all relative.

You're the one who said you one wants to look at things from a technical perspective, make up you mind, do you or don't you?

In terms of your laptop, efficiency is a big deal.  If the CPU is effieient it'll give you longer battery life.  Do you think a 50W difference is worth it for perhaps 2X the speed?  The G4 uses 20W and thats an old version, the modern low voltage G4s go down to 7.5 Watts at 1GHz, Compared to the P4 which uses 70 Watts.

And for your application the fact the G4 has Altivec will make quite a difference, on Altivec code the G4 it's quite probably to outgun the P4 even at 3GHz - because the design is less efficient.

I really don't want to have to go into the pointlessness or your article again, since I've already explained how you totally missed all the good points of the PPC and focused on just trying to make the PP look better (the PPC970 is a great chip why lie to make it look better?).

Would you care to explain that accusation?
I did not lie about the 970.

Yes, your article was horribly outdated. The PPC is no more RISC than the X86. Sure the architectures both started at different ends of the spectrum, but now they are so similar it's a pointless argument. Both chips are aimed at the same market (the desktop, thus both have evolved in a similar way)

Did you even read the article?  It was not from 1990!

The techniques and thus high level architectures have pretty much converged.  I know that, I even explained it.
Underneath at the micro architecture level the impementation is very different and this difference is due to the ISA.  Decoding the instructions into simpler blocks (which itself requires a stage) does not solve everything, you have the smaller number of registers to deal with.  If the CPU has Out of Order execution the smaller number of registers is going to have a big impact on the design of that stage making it considerably more complex.

The P4 and Athlon are both very fast CPUs, but in order to get that speed they have to do a lot of work and consume a lot of power.  If IBM put the effort into design they could produce a faster processor in the same silicon technology.  I don't kow if the 970 reaches that goal (at least with current compilers) but I expect the next gen (due next summer) may do so.

If you talk to any CPU designer and use the words RISC and CISC he will probably laugh at you.

As for your link?... Give up, look at a real site like:

http://www.arstechnica.com/

Hate to tell you this but the site I linked to is frequented by er, CPU engineers...

If you want to see real RISC chips then look at the Alpha, MIPS and ARM

Alpha gave up being "pure" RISC in 1998.  MIPs pioneered the long pipelines in use now in the early 90s.

ARM is "pure" RISC but they are desiged for low power, not speed.  That said even they plan to go superscalar in their next revision.

[bloodline]

@minator

I assure you that running a PPC at the same Clock speed as a Modern x86, will result in a very similar performance.

The chips are simply not that different!!

With out of order execution, then use Register Renaming, which allows for many more registers than architeurally avaiable. I would like to note that many "RISC" designs use Register windowing to limit the numer of Registers that the Programmer can see at any one time...

What you fail to understand is that All CPU designers use the same tricks to achieve speedups...

Oh, and if you want to say that the Alpha stoped being "RISC" at some point, then I would note that the PPC is far less "RISC", than just about any other RISC chip on the planet.

-Edit- "Altivec will out gun a P4" - you really have no clue what you are talking about... ok we get technical... look up instructions per cycle for the Altivec and then look at the instructions per cycle for SEE2 (etc...), then look at how many cycles per second the G4 (~1Ghz, since the) and the P4 (~3Ghz) run at...  please don't be stupid.