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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.."

2 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.