Virtual Machine Brings X86 Linux Apps To ARMv7 Devices

DeviceGuru writes Eltechs announced a virtual machine that runs 32-bit x86 Linux applications on ARMv7 hardware. The ExaGear VM implements a virtual x86 Linux container on ARMv7 computers and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU, according to Eltechs. The VM is based on binary translation technology and requires ARMv7, which means it should run on mini-PCs and SBCs based on Cortex-A8, A7, A9, and A15 processors — but sadly, it won't run on the ARM11 (ARMv6) SoC found on the Raspberry Pi. It also does not support applications that require kernel modules. It currently requires Ubuntu (v12.04 or higher), but will soon support another, unnamed Linux distro, according to Eltechs, which is now accepting half price pre-orders without payment obligation.

Comments

Re:Why?

[0123456]

Pretty hard if you don't have the source.

Re:Why?

[bloodhawk]

I have plenty where I work where the source code has been lost or has been poorly maintained so that the binary version is significantly different to our only source code copy.

Re:Why?

[wierd_w]

Wine.

This allows wine to run on exotic hardware. (Well, at least ARMv7)

This means that theoretically, tablet-flavor windows applications can be run on linux derived tablet OSes with wine libraries, and other fun things.

You should not be so cynical about something like this. It's a feature that's been missing from the landscape for some time now.

Re:Same people as...?

[Guy Harris]

I wonder if they are some of the same people as these (reading about theiur team it does not sound unlikely): http://www.embedded.com/electronics-news/4397737/X86-emulation-coming-to-ARM-processors

Well, that link speaks of people from Elbrus, and this page from Eltechs' web site says "The MCST Binary Translation Team has 200+ man-year experience in developing binary translators. They implemented a number of x86 to e2k (a Russian CPU)". The "e2k" is probably the Elbrus 2000, for which they implemented an x86-to-native binary translator. The MCST (Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies) referred to by the Elbrus 2000 page is probably the same MCST referred to by the Eltechs page.

So, yes, probably the same people.

Been done already

[DrYak]

qemu-user-mode + wine has been done for some time already. It more or less works for Windows x86 executables on ARM Linux.
(In fact, the first user-mode emulators where designed to help run x86 code back when Apple used PPC).

The novelty of TFA's emulator is its claimed performance.
That's the interesting stuff. Doing translation (like some emulators running on x86 host do) is going to take a lot less CPU than emulating a complete CPU in software (as qemu currently does on ARM host). Which means longer battery life, which is a big advantage in some markets (tablets and smartphone).

Re:still slow

[Lennie]

Maybe it is just me but when I see these things, I sometimes get crazy ideas. And I think:

Might as well translate into LLVM bitcode and recompile the code:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

Hell, maybe it's even faster if you compile the LLVM bitcode with emscripten and use asm.js to run into the browser. :-)