Linux Looks To Retire Itanium/IA64 Support

[coder]

(Among other things, the DOSBox wiki specifically says that the CPU, FPU, and I/O emulation aren't calibrated to run at specific speeds relative to each other, so you can't set them all to perfectly match a PC XT simultaneously.)

I don't expect that's an issue for any but the very oldest software (the PC XT reference being key). Since the late 80's games and such have had to rely on the realtime clock, rather than hard-coded timing assumptions, because a big speed difference existed even between the 8088 and the 80286. Once the 386 started becoming mainstream, not to mention the 486, anything hard-coded to run on old 8088's would've already gotten broken.

FPGA cores are gaining popularity because cycle-accurate emulation on CPUs is on the order of "needs 3GHz to emulate a 33MHz CPU". (From my rough memories of what the bsnes/higan SNES emulator requires for cycle-accurate emulation.)

Fair point about console emulation. I do believe such issues should've mostly disappeared by the PS3 era, if not before.

IMO, cycle-accurate simulation of a scalar, non-pipelined core like the NES and I think even SNES had doesn't seem that difficult. You basically know the cost of each instruction, which lets you model the CPU's clock. You can add delays as-needed, to keep that clock running at the correct rate relative to the host's realtime.

[coder]

Dungeon Siege being so boring despite being everything I'd wanted for so long, visually,

I never played that, or pretty much any game since about that time, but the idea sounded very intriguing. In my younger years, I'm sure I'd have played it.

[ssokolow]

I never played that, or pretty much any game since about that time, but the idea sounded very intriguing. In my younger years, I'm sure I'd have played it.

It's a great concept... just underwhelming execution.