AMD emulators??

[xDDunce]

are there any emulators out there that emulate the AMD processor? i am currently planning some MAJOR expansions and an AMD emulator would be a great place to start.(or indeed, any emulator other than an x86 emulator to be honest)

i am currently hunting down old computers that people have replaced over christmas (and january sales ), but currently cannot find any for a reasonable price. and seeing as most of my testing happens in bochs anyway, a wider variety of emulators would be a good way to go right?

i have searched for some time now but all i ever seem to find is console emulators.

im sure this could be a valuable source for many people in the future (if there are any emulators out there )

[Combuster]

You can compile Bochs with 3DNow support and all

[xyzzy]

You do know that AMD processors use the x86 instruction set, don't you?

But anyway, AMD do have their own simulator: http://developer.amd.com/cpu/simnow/Pages/default.aspx

[xDDunce]

sorry, i only used AMD as an example. it was the first thing to come to mind, and i guess i just didnt think before posting... but are there any emulators out there that emulate a non-x86 based CPU? or has x86 become all powerful?

[xyzzy]

QEMU supports many targets - Sparc, PPC, MIPS and ARM to name a few. There's also PearPC and GXemul

[Brendan]

Hi,

sorry, i only used AMD as an example. it was the first thing to come to mind, and i guess i just didnt think before posting... but are there any emulators out there that emulate a non-x86 based CPU? or has x86 become all powerful?

I'm not sure what sort of CPU you're after, but maybe the list of computer system emulators on Wikipedia might help...


Cheers,

Brendan

[Troy Martin]

or has x86 become all powerful?

I don't know, some people like the 6502 more than the x86 if it's in the C64 or something similar. I prefer x86 but the C64 is fun to program. I just need a cross-assembler and I'm good to go.

[bewing]

... or has x86 become all powerful?

In all honesty, yes, it is close and will be there soon. During the 1980's computer geeks were talking about the "chip wars". That is, whether the Motorola 68K line of chips, or the Intel chips, or some other competitor would become dominant over time (or whether a stalemate was possible). The answer is now known. Intel won. Intel is more profitable than all other CPU chip makers combined. Intel has more money to invest in R&D. All the other CPU makers have been relegated to niche markets, and are utterly vulnerable to technology shifts and economic downturns. Intel is also invading every one of the niche markets. This is all a little sad because Intel started with a much worse instruction set and overall design, and all of that trash is still being carried forward with the backward-compatibility of the x86 design.

But, as said above -- if you want to go the "architecture independent" route, the first thing to do is get QEMU running (which likely means playing games with your GCC version).

[Troy Martin]

bewing: you forgot to add that Mac went Intel as well, boosting the x86 to the max and leaving the PPC in the dust. Do they even make Mac OS X for the PPC anymore? If they do, they'll probably stop by 10.6 or 10.7.

[Combuster]

What emulator do you want? I have Z80, 6502, 68k, SH4, SH2, PowerPC, ARM, and probably a few more that didn't spring to mind within the first 10 seconds

Just pick a game console, add the keyword "emulator", and google

And if I had more time I'd spend it with a SD card, Twilight Princess and a crosscompiler

[Troy Martin]

Combuster: Know of any goood 68k emulators other than that damn ugly EASY68k? It's too easy to write code for, with all the simple I/O routines done for you in "ROM". And there's no cross-compilers for it.

[Combuster]

For 68000 alone, I know about StarScream, but I haven't tried it. If you want some known set of attached hardware, try a genesis emulator (gens/kega are good)

And I have a cygwin-built crosscompiler for 68k. (worked out of the box - just follow the crosscompiler tutorial with m68k-elf as target)

[Owen]

In all honesty, yes, it is close and will be there soon.

Really? There are more microcontrollers sold every year than Intel has ever sold x86 processors. Hundreds of thousands of ARMs go into all manner of devices. Your router probably runs a MIPS. Your TV could run anything - new Toshibas have the POWER based Cell. All three of the current game consoles have PowerPC based processors (all manufactured by IBM also). The average car has 10 PowerPCs controlling it.

There are markets that Intel has totally withdrawn from: Smart phones, PDAs, anything which needs a small 8-bit CPU. And in some markets - particularly the car market - existing manufacturers are highly entrenched for a variety of reasons (not the least that they know the market and can offer it exactly what it wants an needs).

And Intel aren't more profitable than all the other CPU makers combined. Samsung and Toshiba - 2nd and 3rd place in the worldwide semiconductor ranking - have a combined revenue from semiconductors alone that is higher than Intel's. Both of them make CPUs that you may never have heard of. Toshiba make some very fast MIPS CPUs that are often found in digital TV decoders. Samsung's chips are often found in mobile phones. TI - in 4th place - have a very big share of the DSP market, and have some SoCs which are beginning to find their way into a variety of PDAs, and have staggering performance - 1GHz ARM Cortex CPU, 1GHz TMS DSP, PowerVR SGX - in which the main CPU outperforms or comes close to a 1.6GHz Atom - which costs just as much, needs additionally an external northbridge, consumes 8 times as much power (alone), and takes up more board.

ARM and MIPS CPUs still outperform Intels in instructions per cycle and per watt.

[quok]

bewing: you forgot to add that Mac went Intel as well, boosting the x86 to the max and leaving the PPC in the dust. Do they even make Mac OS X for the PPC anymore? If they do, they'll probably stop by 10.6 or 10.7.

I don't have the link right now but I remember reading that Apple is dropping PowerPC support with OS X 10.6.

[quok]

And if I had more time I'd spend it with a SD card, Twilight Princess and a crosscompiler

When you find the time, let me know.. I've got SD cards out the wazoo and Twilight Princess... and my Wii just sits there unused for the most part. No time for gaming these days. Not even for Wii Fit, heh.