Win10 running X86 on ARM

[TrashyMG]

Honestly that video doesn't show anything that couldn't have been done with Exagear Desktop and WINE and the same SoC, prob get better performance without the Windows bloat.

 

[ptitSeb]

Don't under-estimate that technology and the appeal it will have on many people.

I'm pretty sure there will be quickly many machine using that (rpi probably at first, but also portable devices, like a gpd win2 using an Arm proc instead of a intel x86 can be possible).

 

[levi]

I wouldn't call that video playback particulary smooth - there's a pause at the beginning, and a slight regular stutter in the framerate to my eyes. I don't think it's this machine's playback of that video, though I may be wrong.

 

[fusion_power]

Rumours say it even runs Win Games fluid, This must be an good emulator then if you can even play games ontop of an emulated OS. Hire these devs for us!

 

[ElPoco]

I'm curious to know the extent of the compatibility and the performance. I agree with ptitSeb, many users will probably be very interested.

 

[PowerGod]

Dual-boot with this this thing could be a possibility ?
I don't know if the UEFI thing is on ARM devices too (on my PC is what gives me troubles)

 

[Letalis Sonus]

I don't know if the UEFI thing is on ARM devices too

Win10 doesn't even support ARM without UEFI.

 

[Kippykip]

Honestly that video doesn't show anything that couldn't have been done with Exagear Desktop and WINE and the same SoC, prob get better performance without the Windows bloat.

If they show Magic Ball 2 running at 60fps then I'm interested...

 

[emcee]

I wouldn't call that video playback particulary smooth - there's a pause at the beginning, and a slight regular stutter in the framerate to my eyes. I don't think it's this machine's playback of that video, though I may be wrong.

I also noticed that. Although I wonder if maybe its a issue caused by the Youtube re-encoding.

 

[MechaBouncer]

I have to admit, when I first heard about this, I thought it would be a game changer and open up a lot of potential. I am still stuck in the Windows world for most of my games and my past experience with WINE left much to be desired. I have stuck with Windows because most of the time my games "Just Work" (TM). They're also now working for more unification with Xbox games and have longed for a centralized place for all of my games for a while. If they can actually bridge the gap between the systems, that would make me very happy.

I also wouldn't count MS's emulation devs out. They managed to emulate a 3-core 3.2GHz PowerPC CPU on an 8-core 1.6GHz AMD x64 CPU and make it playable. That's pretty impressive. If they can do something similar on ARM hardware, then that has my attention.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

They managed to emulate a 3-core 3.2GHz PowerPC CPU on an 8-core 1.6GHz AMD x64 CPU and make it playable.

Instead of implementing a sophisticated emulation for running classic Xbox games on the Xbox360, most games just run with a downloaded ported version - and many still don't run at all. Did that really change with their newest Xbox?

 

[MechaBouncer]

Instead of implementing a sophisticated emulation for running classic Xbox games on the Xbox360, most games just run with a downloaded ported version - and many still don't run at all. Did that really change with their newest Xbox?

Actually I do believe that it did. My understanding is that they made a general purpose emulator that uses different wrappers for specific titles and requires the relicensing of the original games for Xbox One use. This was the most informative article I've read on it, but it sounds much more general purpose than the one on the 360 for original Xbox games:
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Here-How-Xbox-One-Backwards-Compatibility-Works-72606.html

They're emulating the full Xbox 360 as a VM. Also all new titles that they are releasing as free downloads are compatible going forward. So it sounds like it's pretty advanced.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

They're emulating the full Xbox 360 as a VM.

That's a contradiction, you can't virtualize different CPU architectures. Unless they actually included a fully featured Xenon CPU talking about VMs is plain wrong.

 

[MechaBouncer]

From the article:

The approach that we've taken is to actually emulate the full Xbox 360 hardware layer. So the [operating system] for the 360 is actually running when you run the game, [...] If you watch the game's boot you'll see the Xbox 360 boot animation come up. From a performance standpoint it allows [emulation] to work. We're able to get frame by frame performance equivalents.

The 360 games think they're running on the 360 OS, which they are. And the 360 OS thinks its running on the hardware, which it's not, it's running on an emulated VM. On the other side, the Xbox One thinks it's a game. That's why things like streaming, game DVR, and screenshots all work, because it thinks there's just one big game called 360.

You download a kind of manifest of wrapper for the 360 game, so we can say 'hey, this is actually Banjo, or this is Mass Effect. The emulator runs exactly the same for all the games.

I was around when we did the original Xbox [backwards compatibility] for Xbox 360 where we had a shim for every game and it just didn't scale very well. This is actually the same emulator running for all of the games. Different games do different things, as we're rolling them out we'll say 'oh maybe we have to tweak the emulator.' But in the end, the emulator is emulating the 360, so it's for everybody.

 

[TrashyMG]

My guess it's a high level emulation, it's not actually trying to emulate the PPC architecture.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

That still doesn't make the usage of the term VM any more correct. Things like this kind of scream "ported" as well:

If they own the game as a disc, they'll have to download the game to their Xbox One hard drive, and the system will then check for the disc before launching the game.

My guess it's a high level emulation, it's not actually trying to emulate the PPC architecture.

I'd be more concerned about the different GPU architecture, things ought to be a lot more low level than just providing a different D3D driver.

 

[levi]

My guess it's a high level emulation, it's not actually trying to emulate the PPC architecture.

Yep, when they say:

as we're rolling them out we'll say 'oh maybe we have to tweak the emulator.'

That sounds very much to me like HLE. If they were actually emulating all of the chips they'd say 'as we're rolling them out we'll find a bug and fix it'. A tweak is very much less than a fix, and only really applicable if you don't know exactly what you're targetting from the off, in an HLE situation.

 

[Kippykip]

Yep, when they say:



That sounds very much to me like HLE. If they were actually emulating all of the chips they'd say 'as we're rolling them out we'll find a bug and fix it'. A tweak is very much less than a fix, and only really applicable if you don't know exactly what you're targetting from the off, in an HLE situation.

Well if it wasn't HLE, there would probably be some kind of workaround and "could" run every 360 game.
Also I think I recall playing "Simpsons Hit and Run" (XBOX) on my mates 360 and it was widescreen, I don't think the original XBOX's "Simpsons Hit and Run" even had widescreen support. I could be completely wrong as I've never owned any xbox's myself but if it's true then it explains a lot with the tweaking.
I wouldn't have a clue about Xbox 360 and Xbox One's emulation though.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

That guy from the article is the head manager of the Xbox division, it's not his job to actually know these kind of details - and it doesn't look like he has some kind of technical background. I'd say he simply mixed some things up and doesn't really know what he's talking about. Unless someone digs out some detailed comments from someone who was directly involved (or at least some interested hacker who did some reverse-engineering) we'll probably never know what exactly they are doing. But it's probably safe to say that they provided the console OS with a unified compatibility environment (something Wine-like) instead of directly linking every game against some kind of simple compatibility layer (maybe like a lightweight static Winelib?)

 

[pmprog]

That's a contradiction, you can't virtualize different CPU architectures. Unless they actually included a fully featured Xenon CPU talking about VMs is plain wrong.

What? That's nonsense. You can "virtualise" anything. If you're talking about a hypervisor, well, that's different... but a hypervisor is not required for a virtual machine.