FEX-Emu 2301 Working More On AVX Emulation Atop Arm, New AArch64 Code Emitter

FEX as the open-source project working on allowing x86_64 software to run atop Linux AArch64 (64-bit Arm) systems -- including games and the likes of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) -- is out with its newest monthly feature release.

FEX is one of several projects pursuing x86_64 binary software compatibility for Linux atop AArch64 hardware for mobile devices, the increasing number of Qualcomm/Arm powered laptops, etc. FEX over the past year has been making much progress in not only running Linux games on ARM64 but also Windows games running by way of Valve's Steam Play.

Last year FEX-Emu even showed off the game God of War running on Arm hardware via this robust emulator.

In recent months the FEX project has been working on emulating AVX(2) atop Arm and that was a focus again with this month's 2301 release. Around 185 new AVX instructions have now been implemented in FEX-Emu's back-end over the past month. Another 60 or so instructions are still needed before it can be advertised, plus the AVX emulation in turn depending upon Arm SVE/AVE2 hardware support with 256-bit register width. Thus for now FEX's Advanced Vector Extensions emulation is of limited scope for now until next-generation Arm SoCs come with the necessary support.

FEX-Emu 2301 has also been working on implementing a new AArch64 code emitter that is high performance and with lower overhead. The 2301 release also has initial 32-bit thunk support for eventually running 32-bit x86 software in the 64-bit process space, JIT optimizations, and various fixes.

More details on the FEX 2301 release via fex-emu.com. This latest open-source emulator release can be downloaded at GitHub.