FEX 2303 Released For Improving Linux x86_64 Gaming On ARM64

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FEX 2303 Released For Improving Linux x86_64 Gaming On ARM64

FEX-Emu 2303 was published today as the newest version of this open-source software for enjoying x86 64-bit Linux software to run gracefully on 64-bit ARM (ARM64 / AArch64) including the likes of Linux games and Valve's Steam client with Steam Play (Proton)...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FEX-Emu-2303-Released

[schmidtbag]

very impressive progress. I've been burnt a few too many times to want to try an ARM based laptop again but if projects like this get enough traction then I might reconsider by rhe the time I upgrade again.

[Termy]

Very cool. Hopefully that work can also be used for a future risc-v compatibility layer when hopefully some day powerful and open risc-v systems are available ^^

[darkbasic]

How does it compare to box64? Which one is faster?

[Draget]

QEMU has always been about being very exact. New, custom-purpose emulators have shown vastly better performance by cutting some corners.
I have been very impressed by ExaGear how it would archive so relatively good compatibility and performance at the same time compared to QEMU.

I would be very curious how FEX compares to ExaGear.

[hotaru]

I've been using QEMU to run some software that requires AVX2 on a Sandy Bridge server. it'll be interesting to see if FEX is faster for this use case if it eventually supports AVX2 on x86-64.

[hwertz]

I've been using QEMU to run some software that requires AVX2 on a Sandy Bridge server. it'll be interesting to see if FEX is faster for this use case if it eventually supports AVX2 on x86-64.

Check this out:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/tool/software-development-emulator.html

I think this is intended for testing code developed using new instructions, so you can test run a program on your existing processor and verify those new instructions are doing what you expect them to. But I've read about people using this to run games on old systems (I think it emulates all the way down to SSE2). Don't recall which game, it required newer instructions after a patch, and people said running it under SDE it ran the same as the previous (non-SDE-requiring) version for them (i.e. people with newer chips probably got a speedup that they missed out on; but SDE must not have very high overhead.) I suppose it probably traps illegal instructions and emulates them.

I note the line on the description:

Licenseing
Intel SDE is provided and supported by Intel, free of charge for any type of use, under the terms of the Intel Simplified Software License (Version August 2021).