Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#1

Post by doener » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM
github.com

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#2

Post by kaetemi » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

What M68k version does this target, and is there a measurable difference in performance in targeting ARM specifically?

Documentation files seem outdated. Repository seems a bit low on information. Are there any unit tests too?

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#3

Post by vidarh » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 11:52 AM UTC

kaetemi wrote: post #2

What M68k version does this target, and is there a measurable difference in performance in targeting ARM specifically? Documentation files seem outdated. Repository seems a bit low on information. Are there any unit tests too?

It appears to be JIT'ing, so presumably a significant performance difference compared to not JIT'ing. If you mean compared to a JIT with multiple backends, presumably not.

EDIT: Here's an article about PJIT that compared it to Emu68 that gives more info: https://www.buffee.ca/Why-PJIT-Why/

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#4

Post by bitwize » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

Sounds like a good match for PiStorm, that madlad project to turbocharge the Amiga by strapping a Raspberry Pi in where the 680x0 CPU used to live. Though personally, I wish they'd put in a socket for the original CPU and a passthrough for it. Sometimes I want to drive the car without a JATO bottle on the roof...

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#5

Post by Kivutar » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

Isn't Cyclone 68000 already doing the same thing? The core used in Picodrive.

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#6

Post by azinman2 » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

Read me is quite thin…

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#7

Post by vidarh » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

Kivutar wrote: post #5

Isn't Cyclone 68000 already doing the same thing? The core used in Picodrive.

Cyclone seems to be written in ARM assembly to emulate it directly, while Emu68 is a JIT.

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#8

Post by siraben » Mon, Aug 09, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

Nixpkgs recently added support for cross-compilation to M68K[0], so if you want to cross-compile programs to run on this emulator such as GNU Hello, for instance, run

   nix-build '' -A pkgsCross.m68k.hello

You may have to update your Nixpkgs channel for this to work. For larger packages it'll handle cross-compilation of dependencies and linking. See [1].

[0] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/131310

[1] https://nix.dev/tutorials/cross-compilation

Re: Emu68: M68K Emulation for ARM

#9

Post by bogantech » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 12:19 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #4

Sounds like a good match for PiStorm, that madlad project to turbocharge the Amiga by strapping a Raspberry Pi in where the 680x0 CPU used to live. Though personally, I wish they'd put in a socket for the original CPU and a passthrough for it. Sometimes I want to drive the car without a JATO bottle on the roof...

Indeed, the author of Emu68k has been working on pairing this with Pistorm already :)