Can The Pandora Run A Virtual Machine?

[transmition]

I know the pandora is rather weak in terms of processing power. However, would it be possible to run a virtual machine to emulate other linux systems? I do not think it could, but it is a possibility, isn't it?

I suppose we would also need a virtual machine that is made for the ARM architecture. A quick google shows that these exist.
Would this be a worthwhile project to encourage?

 

[lulzfish]

Yes, I think Qemu is one of the virtual machines that can run entirely in software, as opposed to most virtualizers which use hardware-level acceleration.

So it will be possible to virtualize x86 Linux, VERY slowly. Probably too slowly for X to be of any use, but you will certainly be able to try at least.

 

[christo930]

I know the pandora is rather weak in terms of processing power. However, would it be possible to run a virtual machine to emulate other linux systems? I do not think it could, but it is a possibility, isn't it?

I suppose we would also need a virtual machine that is made for the ARM architecture. A quick google shows that these exist.
Would this be a worthwhile project to encourage?

You can emulate the most powerful computer in the world, as long as speed isn't an issue. You could probably emulate "deep blue" with the Pandora, but don't expect it to run very quickly.

Chris

 

[elwing]

I know the pandora is rather weak in terms of processing power. However, would it be possible to run a virtual machine to emulate other linux systems? I do not think it could, but it is a possibility, isn't it?

I suppose we would also need a virtual machine that is made for the ARM architecture. A quick google shows that these exist.
Would this be a worthwhile project to encourage?

You can emulate the most powerful computer in the world, as long as speed isn't an issue. You could probably emulate "deep blue" with the Pandora, but don't expect it to run very quickly.

Chris

I really wonder how you'll emulate the multiple Gigabyte of ram alone... be realiste please, speed isn't obviously a blocking matter if you don't count on the usability, memory on the otherside...

 

[fischju2000]

See this thread: http://forum.openhandhelds.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1088

Exophase said in that thread QUOTE
If you can emulate a 200MHz Pentium then there will start being some OpenGL, Direct3D, and Glide games that can meet that spec. This is at the higher end of the feasibility spectrum but I wouldn't write it off unconditionally.


So this may or may not be possible eventually, but why would you want to emulate 'other linux systems'? For what purpose? Besides of course trying older x86 Windows games in WINE.

 

[lulzfish]

*wonders if he can play Rock Raiders in a Windows 95 or Windows XP / nLite-stripped virtual machine*

System Requirements:
"Windows 95/98, Pentium 200 MHz MMX or faster cpu, 200 MB hard drive space, 32 MB RAM, Game resolution 800x600 high color 16 bit, Quad-speed or faster CD-ROM, 4MB PCI or AGP DirectX 6.0 compatible 3D accelerator card, DirectX 6.0 (included on disc), DirectSound compatible soundcard."

Poorly programmed screen resolution controls! My arch-nemesis!!
Emulating x86 Linux is a bit of unnecessary extra step, as WINE only works really well for a few games.

 

[valhalla]

You can emulate the most powerful computer in the world, as long as speed isn't an issue. You could probably emulate "deep blue" with the Pandora, but don't expect it to run very quickly.

I really wonder how you'll emulate the multiple Gigabyte of ram alone... be realiste please, speed isn't obviously a blocking matter if you don't count on the usability, memory on the otherside...

swap on USB hd? yes, it is going to be slow, but that's the point, isn't it?

 

[elwing]

You can emulate the most powerful computer in the world, as long as speed isn't an issue. You could probably emulate "deep blue" with the Pandora, but don't expect it to run very quickly.

I really wonder how you'll emulate the multiple Gigabyte of ram alone... be realiste please, speed isn't obviously a blocking matter if you don't count on the usability, memory on the otherside...

swap on USB hd? yes, it is going to be slow, but that's the point, isn't it?

yep, but if you start adding lot of external hardware it's not really a single pandora anymore... and the 64Gb of SD you can put in the pandora will prove to be not enough to simulate supercomuter with several Gb of ram for each of their processors

 

[Creature XL]

You can emulate the most powerful computer in the world, as long as speed isn't an issue. You could probably emulate "deep blue" with the Pandora, but don't expect it to run very quickly.

I really wonder how you'll emulate the multiple Gigabyte of ram alone... be realiste please, speed isn't obviously a blocking matter if you don't count on the usability, memory on the otherside...

swap on USB hd? yes, it is going to be slow, but that's the point, isn't it?

yep, but if you start adding lot of external hardware it's not really a single Pandora anymore... and the 64Gb of SD you can put in the Pandora will prove to be not enough to simulate supercomputer with several Gb of ram for each of their processors

According to the German Wikipedia (the english doesn't have that information) it has 1Gb of RAM for each node, and the biggest system had 30 nodes.
And putting a 32Gb SD-Card in one slot is not adding external HW. I use this "trick" on the gp2x to try out soem games

So, in THEORY! (and just there) it is possible

 

[elwing]

You can emulate the most powerful computer in the world, as long as speed isn't an issue. You could probably emulate "deep blue" with the Pandora, but don't expect it to run very quickly.

I really wonder how you'll emulate the multiple Gigabyte of ram alone... be realiste please, speed isn't obviously a blocking matter if you don't count on the usability, memory on the otherside...

swap on USB hd? yes, it is going to be slow, but that's the point, isn't it?

yep, but if you start adding lot of external hardware it's not really a single Pandora anymore... and the 64Gb of SD you can put in the Pandora will prove to be not enough to simulate supercomputer with several Gb of ram for each of their processors

According to the German Wikipedia (the english doesn't have that information) it has 1Gb of RAM for each node, and the biggest system had 30 nodes.
And putting a 32Gb SD-Card in one slot is not adding external HW. I use this "trick" on the gp2x to try out soem games

So, in THEORY! (and just there) it is possible :"] [/quote]yep, but had the 4Gb of storage for each node...

 

[torpor]

I'm going to try to use QEMU *on the Pandora* to run the compiler for the DSP ..

 

[lulzfish]

Emulating anything more powerful than the Pandora would be impractical, and hard to do even with incredibly detailed hardware specs.

I want to emulate my wristwatch... Should be pretty fast, maybe I can use GLSL to tighten up the graphics a little.

 

[skeezix]

WAAAIt..

So the idea above was to run Qemu containing Linux, to try older Windows games via WINE.

Strikes me the better way would be to run them via Windows in Qemu wtf

(It is an interesting question of whethor wine+linux is better than old windows, depends on wine and how well the version of Windows runs in Qeme on the Panda, but I would assume running Windows in the VM direct woudl be a superior experience. *shrug* I've not used Wine much, I admit.)

Windows 3.1 should be doable in DosBox fine, and I'd imagine fine in Qemu as well.

I'm curious about Windows 95/98 myself in Qemu; they should be runnable fine but the requirements of the game are in question. For myself, I want to run:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry_8

Which is win95, 64MB of RAM ... woowoo

jeff

 

[efegea]

I think there is not need to run a full distro on an emulator just to run wine, as far as I remember qemu has support for emulating just one linux app without emulating the whole operating system. Don't know if this feauture is only for x86 hosts or will work also on ARM.

 

[jlepley]

yep, but had the 4Gb of storage for each node...

USB Hub with a bunch of external hard drives.

 

[urjaman]

I think there is not need to run a full distro on an emulator just to run wine, as far as I remember qemu has support for emulating just one linux app without emulating the whole operating system. Don't know if this feauture is only for x86 hosts or will work also on ARM.

It has linux userspace emulation eg. it can run a non-native linux userspace application -- using that will need Wine + all the x86 libs wine uses from x86 -- the but here is that the userspace emulation of x86 on ARM didnt work when i tested it - hoping for a better future

 

[elwing]

I think there is not need to run a full distro on an emulator just to run wine, as far as I remember qemu has support for emulating just one linux app without emulating the whole operating system. Don't know if this feauture is only for x86 hosts or will work also on ARM.

It has linux userspace emulation eg. it can run a non-native linux userspace application -- using that will need Wine + all the x86 libs wine uses from x86 -- the but here is that the userspace emulation of x86 on ARM didnt work when i tested it - hoping for a better future :"] [/quote]and using wine you'll get one more possibly problematic layer...
pandora => qemu => linux => wine => your game
vs
pandora => qemu => w95 => your game

now if you are really familiar with linux & wine... but from what i gathered the game will run on w95 without problem (it was developed with that exact purpose) while running your game using wine is still a little bit more tricky...

 

[Grench]

At some point in this silliness, it would probably be more efficient to simply find a hot spot and take over the desktop of a machine at home running the desired software.

 

[efegea]

And what if the game uses opengl? which part of the chain should be ported to OGLES?

pandora -> qemu user emulation -> wine x86 -> game

 

[Kimundi]

Well, THEORETICAL you could port Wine to ARM and then meld it with QEMU in such a way that only the x86 app runs with QEMU, while wine and all its libaries are running in native arm code.
Or, in other words: Let's run everything we have a sourcecode for directly on the ARM.