Ask HN: Why are JavaScript x86/ARM/etc emulators interesting to you?

There have been a bunch of submissions lately for various JavaScript hardware emulators. Personally I've taken quite a shine to the jor1k submission [1], as I really like the OpenCores initiative. However there have also been plenty of x86 variants, and I think I've even seen an ARM or two.

I know why I find these interesting and novel, but why do you? Is anyone using these for practical purposes? If you are, or if you were to, what are you doing/would you do with it? Aside from speed, graphics and networking support, what features are lacking? Do you care about conformance with a particular hardware platform/architecture? If so, how strict? If there was an easy-to-use gcc-based toolchain out there (thinking OpenEmbedded/Yocto) which let you build your own images with relative ease, would you still care about the CPU architecture?

To answer my own question, in order of time required to solve, I see the three biggest issues being network support, graphics, and execution speed. Presently I'm investing personal time to solve the network problem, starting with the OpenCores ethmac device in smacke's jor1k. I figure it's a great portfolio project, and my inner early/mid 90's war-dialer self loves the idea of running a sandboxed wild-west demo where there's basically no security. In the future I'd also like to build support for more commonplace network adaptors, and I'd really love to dive into emulated graphics devices which utilize WebGL. Finally, regarding the speed issue, I think it would be really, really fun to start a project under OpenCores where the project emphasis is on pure JavaScript emulation rather than VHDL/Verilog.

Anyway, expect a network-friendly jor1k demo, hopefully very soon. Please do bug me to finish as obnoxiously as you desire via Skype and/or e-mail (see profile). ;-)

1: http://simulationcorner.net/index.php?page=jor1k