/[gxemul]/upstream/0.4.4.1/README
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Contents of /upstream/0.4.4.1/README

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Revision 37 - (show annotations)
Mon Oct 8 16:21:43 2007 UTC (16 years, 5 months ago) by dpavlin
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0.4.4.1
1 Gavare's eXperimental Emulator -- GXemul 0.4.4.1
2 ====================================================
3
4 Copyright (C) 2003-2007 Anders Gavare.
5
6
7 Overview -- What is GXemul?
8 -----------------------------
9
10 GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
11 emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
12 hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
13 systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine.
14
15 Processors (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SuperH) are emulated using dynamic
16 translation. Unlike some other dynamically translating emulators, GXemul
17 does not need to generate native code, only a "runnable intermediate
18 representation", and will thus run on any host architecture.
19
20 The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can
21 be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best working guest operating
22 systems are probably NetBSD/pmax and NetBSD/cats.
23
24 Possible uses of the emulator include:
25
26 o) educational purposes, e.g. to learn how to write code for MIPS
27
28 o) hobby operating system development; the emulator can be used as a
29 complement to testing your code on real hardware
30
31 o) running guest operating systems in a "sandboxed" environment
32
33 o) compiling your source code inside a guest operating system which you
34 otherwise would not have access to (e.g. various exotic ports of
35 NetBSD), to make sure that your source code is portable to those
36 platforms
37
38 o) simulating (ethernet) networks of computers running various
39 operating systems, to study their interaction with each other
40
41 o) debugging code in general
42
43 Use your imagination :-)
44
45
46 GXemul's limitations
47 --------------------
48
49 o) GXemul is not (in general) a cycle-accurate simulator, because it does
50 not simulate things smaller than an instruction. Pipe-line stalls,
51 instruction latency effects etc. are more or less completely ignored.
52
53 o) Hardware devices have been implemented in an ad-hoc and as-needed
54 manner, usually only enough to fool certain guest operating systems
55 (e.g. NetBSD) that the hardware devices exist and function well
56 enough for those guest operating systems to use them.
57
58 A consequence of this is that a machine mode may be implemented well
59 enough to run NetBSD for that machine mode, but other guest operating
60 systems may not run at all, or behave strangely.
61
62
63 Quick start
64 -----------
65
66 To compile, type './configure' and then 'make'. This should work on most
67 Unix-like systems. If it does not, then please mail me a bug report.
68
69 You might want to experiment with various CC and CFLAGS environment
70 variable settings, to get optimum performance.
71
72 If you are impatient, and want to try out running a guest operating system
73 inside GXemul, read this: doc/guestoses.html#netbsdcatsinstall
74
75 If you want to use GXemul for experimenting with code of your own,
76 then I suggest you compile a Hello World program according to the tips
77 listed here: doc/experiments.html#hello
78
79 Please read the rest of the documentation in the doc/ sub-directory for
80 more detailed information on how to use the emulator.
81
82
83 Feedback
84 --------
85
86 If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me
87 comments or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se.
88

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