Emulation Software R&D WWW Page

The primary focus of this WWW page is information on implementation and research in "interesting" CPU and OS emulators. By that I mean that there is something I find novel or just intriguing about it, and that is entirely my subjective opinion. Many PC, Some Mac, a few UNIX, and a few other emulators (in progress or completed) are listed specifically, but links are listed which will go either directly or one hop away from most of the emulator information and resources I know of on the net.

The WINE project is a good example of a nearly "pure" OS emulator, in that it runs the executable code natively (using a different mode of operation of the 80[345]86 CPU chip), but needs to translate the API calls from one OS to another, and handles a different executable format.

The Apple PowerMac OS (for the new line of PowerPC Macintosh machines) performs 68K emulation with very little OS emulation, so it could probably be considered a "pure" CPU emulator.

Last updated: Fri 9:00 7/4/1997.

Research/Development/Papers/Info

• comp.emulators.misc FAQ -- FAQ for the comp.emulators.misc USENETnewsgroup. A lot of interesting and useful information here, and probably the major hangout for good software emulator info on the USENET.

• Computer History and Emulation Homepage -- A listing of older machines/game consoles, history about them, and emulators for running their software/games on newer general-purpose computers. Lots of good information here too.

• Retargetable Binary Translation -- Some research going on at the University of Queensland about binary translation and emulation. Another project at the same place (and done by some of the same people) is the DCC Decompiler, which is of interest for machine code analysis if nothing else. Finally, the list of references they have is surprisingly similar, but instead of fully copying it, I'll simply place a link to their page for Work on Binary Translation.

• Details on the Tao Operating System -- Information on the Taos Operating System and how it works.

• NJ Machine-Code Toolkit -- A toolkit for producing assemblers, disassemblers, code generators, debuggers, etc. using generic machine descriptions.

• Executor Internals: How to Efficiently Run Mac Programs on PCs -- ARDI's paper describing their techniques for emulating 680x0 Mac software on Intel x86 CPUs, used for their Executor product.

• Papers/Info from DEC's Alpha Migration Tools group: Technical Introduction to Digital FX!32, Alpha-based emulation (some info on DEC's binary emulation technology for running VAX and MIPS executables on Alpha machines), and Details on Binary Translation with some info on FreePort Express, a posting from Richard Gorton, one of the Alpha Migration Tools guys at DEC.

• The WINE project -- has lots of information for interested parties and would-be developers. All are encouraged to join in, since it is a freeware project.

• TIBBIT Home Page -- The "Timing Insensitive Binary to BInary Translation" project home page.

• Archelon's Retargetable Toolset -- Archelon, Inc. has a retargetable compiler/assembler/linker set which (as far as I can tell) only needs a few description files to build the back end for a new CPU.

• Embra -- A CPU simulator which uses dynamic binary translation to achieve good performance while maintaining detailed simulation accuracy.

• Binary Translation Page -- at CMU, yet another list, part of which is interesting because of the papers listed there.

• David Keppel's (aka "Pardo") "papers" list -- some info related to binary emulation.

Implemented systems

• 68K Macintosh Emulators -- WWW page for 68K Macintosh emulators.

• 80x86 PC Emulators -- WWW page for 80x86 PC emulators.

• Digital's Alpha Migration Tools Web Page -- Digital's generic link page listing their emulator technology products (several are listed). The DECMigrate page lists VAX and MIPS emulator technology for running VAX and MIPS (hardware), VMS and Ultrix (OS and binary format), executables on DEC's Alpha machines. The FreePort Express page lists a binary translator converting SPARC SunOS to Alpha OSF/1 executables. The FX!32 page lists a VERY high performance translator/emulator for running x86 Windows NT executables on Alpha machines running Windows NT (also mentioned on the x86 PC page listed above).

• FlashPort -- A Multiplatform translation/emulation framework. Produced by Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories.

• Tao Systems -- The Tao operating system is designed in a manner which is machine architecture independent for all but the kernel and hardware drivers, and small enough to run in embedded systems. Very interesting stuff.

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