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PowerPC Architecture Emulator Unleashed

Posted by timothy on from the keep-handy-the-shredded-newspaper dept.

Sebastian Biallas writes "We have finally released version 0.1 of our PowerPC architecture emulator: PearPC. The emulator itself is (prepared to be) architecture independent but only tested on x86s (here you go porters...). It also features a must faster just-in-time compilation unit for x86 hosts. This means that you can now run your favourite PowerPC-OS on x86: Mandrake Linux (9.1), Darwin (6 + 7) and Mac OS X (10.3)! And the best things is: it's GPL'd. But be warned: it's experimental.."

5 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Why not use it natively? by GregChant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This means that you can now run your favourite PowerPC-OS on x86: Mandrake Linux (9.1),

    Why not just run it natively on the x86 architecture?

  2. Re:Panther on x86? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They won't have to. It's going to be dog slow, to the point of uselessness, especially if you actually try to run OSX on it.

    The x86 is just really poorly suited to emulate PPC, the PPC has more registers and they're all general purpose, as opposed to x86's small groups of purpose specific registers. You can try to minimize the drawbacks from this with a JITC, but it's still going to crawl compared to the real thing.

  3. Re:Work with OS X? by DiSKiLLeR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, it does not gaurantee a working OSX installation.

    But the fact that the darwin kernel boots, and Aqua can start up (no quartz extreme in the installer i am guessing) and the installer runs, he's doing _very_ well.

    Infact, if he concentrates on just getting darwin working reliably (he said theres a few quirks) you can bet that OSX will run just as reliably. Its just the Aqua GUI (and carbon, cocao, apps, and all that other crap) running on Darwin. Darwin is the OS though, and as long as Darwin runs, and runs well, OSX should be a no brainer.

    Getting some good hardware support in OSX for video, sound, and what not might be another story tho.

    Some speed would also be nice. OSX isn't gonna run if it takes 3 weeks to install on a 10mhz emulated PowerPC chip ;)

    D.

    --
    You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
  4. Why not run Darwin native and emulate apps by tigersha · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A modern computer spends most of its time in system calls (Ok, depends on the program, but generally this is true). So Darwin runs on x86.

    Would it be possible to get this thing to run on Darwin in such a way that the system calls run natively but the apps run in the emulator?

    So only the non-kernel pats of a program are emulated? That might bring down that 500x a bit.

    It would involve having some translation at the boundary between the apps and the kernel but is this not the way Apple emulated old 68000 programs when they did their transition to PowerPC?

    --
    The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  5. Neat and all, but useful? by nine-times · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm seeing a lot of people saying "Great, now I can run OSX on my cheap x86 processor!" Yeah? Any idea how fast your x86 processor would need to be to actually have OSX be remotely usable? To build that little supercomputer won't be "cheap". But further, why bother? If you want a Mac, buy it. They're good. They're worth it. You'll be happy. But if you're looking for the hard way of doing things, you don't really want OSX anyway.