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RE: CHRP and PREP systens



>>>>> "Bill" == Bill Miller <wjm@wwa.com> writes:

    Bill> They would also need to write a PPC emulator though, which
    Bill> theoretically, could come from Connectix Speed Doubler.
    Bill> Instead of Recompiling 040 into PPC, recompile it into x86,
    Bill> and do the same with PPC apps.

Heh.  I don't know about Apple, but when we do PPC emulation we most
certainly *won't* be using SpeedDoubler.  In my copious spare time
I've been doing a fair amount of work on a next generation CPU
emulator.  It should thoroughly crush every 68k emulator ever written,
including SpeedDoubler and our own Syn68k.  It's also retargetable so
I can stick different "front ends" on as well.  That should let us
emulate PowerPC apps someday.  This new emulator also has a clean
"back end" interface, which makes it reasonably easy to port the
emulator to other processors (Alpha, Sparc, MIPS, PA-RISC, etc.)

One possibility would be for us to have one emulator that can emulate
both 68k and PPC code.  It could emulate a virtual machine with 48 (32
+ 16) registers and 37 (32 + 5) condition code bits.  PPC instructions
would only affect part of the regs/cc bits, and 68k instructions would
only affect the rest.  In this way translated PPC and 68k code could
gateway back and forth seamlessly.

Unfortunately, even if I dropped all other ARDI stuff (which I can't
do) and just worked on this emulator, it would take me months (working
alone) to get it finished.

-Mat


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