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Comment by The_rationalist | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand,the yuzu (switch) emulator has excellent performance and correctness. It perfectly emulate a modern ARM cpus at multiple GHz and properly emulate the Tegra Nvidia GPU.

Why would emulating x86 be so much harder, especially since you can actually use the host x86 cpu... via hardware hyoervisors e.g. https://github.com/intel/haxm

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Yuzu uses Unicorn, which uses QEMU code for functional, but not cycle accurate CPU emulation. Most software these days don't depend on the exact behavior of the hardware, even on Nintendo Switch, and the emulator can also use application-specific patches to make up for the difference.

86Box is not entirely cycle accurate, but much more accurate than QEMU, so no patches are required.

gem5 is on the other end of the spectrum, it can emulate hardware very accurately, but very slowly.

Well that makes pcem and x86box very niche then.. What should people actually use for emulating a recent x86 cpu like found on the PS4/PS5/xbox serie x and get good performance? Because this is where the human resources should be allocated, for enabling the support of hundreds of video games including major console exclusives

>Because this is where the human resources should be allocated,

That's unwarranted hubris.

It's not your call to tell developers where to direct their volunteer efforts.

Should does not equal must. Wanting a better world with less suffering and more joy is not the same thing as imposing this world by force. A thought that should have occured to you.

It is still not your place to say what people's ideals should be, or what efforts that they should persue.

You perfectly understood their point

Emulating the CPU of those newer consoles would be quite slow. The practical approach would be a translation layer like Wine with many application-specific patches. The translation layer for the graphics would involve a lot of reverse engineering.

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