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Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.0 |
Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.4 |
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Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare. |
Copyright (C) 2003-2007 Anders Gavare. |
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GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several |
GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several |
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hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating |
hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating |
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systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine. |
systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine. |
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The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can |
Processors (ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SuperH) are emulated using dynamic |
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be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best supported guest operating |
translation. Unlike some other dynamically translating emulators, GXemul |
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systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats. |
does not need to generate native code, only a "runnable intermediate |
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representation", and will thus run on any host architecture. |
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The most important change between release 0.3.8 and 0.4.0 is: |
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o) The emulation of MIPS processors has been completely rewritten; |
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it now uses the same portable dynamic translation system as the |
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ARM and PowerPC emulation modes. |
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On Alpha and i386 hosts (and AMD64 hosts running in 32-bit mode), |
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GXemul previously used translation into native code. This release |
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will perform worse than 0.3.8 on those host architectures. |
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On all other hosts (including AMD64 running in native 64-bit mode), |
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0.4.0 is likely to be faster than 0.3.8, when emulating MIPS, at |
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least for R3000 emulation. |
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I think that in the long term, moving towards full portability like |
The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can |
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this is a good idea. |
be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best working guest operating |
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systems are probably NetBSD/pmax and NetBSD/cats. |
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(Since the MIPS emulation mode has been rewritten from scratch, and I have |
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not really had much time over for debugging, there are most likely new |
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bugs in 0.4.0 that were not present in 0.3.8. However, I feel that it is |
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better to make a quick release now than to wait even longer.) |
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There have also been many other changes, including, but not limited to: |
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o) The "test machine" functionality is more well-defined than before, |
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and some tutorial-like demos have been added. These could be useful |
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e.g. in operating system construction courses. |
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o) NetBSD/sgimips 3.0 works now. This is most likely due to the rewrite |
Changes between release 0.4.3 and 0.4.4 include, among other things: |
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of the MIPS emulation mode. Previous releases of GXemul only worked |
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with NetBSD/sgimips 2.1. |
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o) I have begun implementing rudimentary support for GDB remote serial |
o) The interrupt subsystem has been redesigned. This means two things: |
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protocol connections. This means that you can run e.g. the Data |
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Display Debugger, and connect it to a GXemul instance. |
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No advanced GDB functionality is working yet, but starting and |
x) Internal code cleanup, which makes the whole emulator more |
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stopping the emulated machine and single-stepping should work. |
maintainable. Instead of using magically encoded integers |
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for interrupts, strings are now used. These strings are in |
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the form of "paths", so that devices and busses can more |
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easily be connected to other busses, devices, or CPUs. |
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x) Some machine types which happened to work in release 0.4.3, |
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but were not listed in the documentation as working, may |
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have stopped working now. As always, the documentation should |
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indicate the combinations of machine modes and guest OSes that |
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are supposed to work. |
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o) SuperH (SH4) emulation is now somewhat more stable, enough to let a |
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NetBSD/dreamcast Live CD be usable. |
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o) PowerPC "G4" emulation is now stable enough to let NetBSD/macppc |
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run from a disk image. (Installing actually worked before, but the |
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NetBSD/macppc GENERIC kernel uses AltiVec instructions which were |
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not implemented correctly.) |
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o) The PICA-61 (arc) and i80321 (evbarm) emulation modes now have their |
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timers fixed at 100 Hz. A hardcoded speed like this is very ugly, but |
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it is at least better than before (when the timer wasn't really |
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running at any specific speed at all). |
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Please read the HISTORY files for more details. |
Please read the HISTORY files for more details. |
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Files included in this release are: |
Files included in this release are: |
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BUGS List of known bugs for this release. |
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HISTORY Detailed revision history / changelog. |
HISTORY Detailed revision history / changelog. |
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LICENSE Copyright message / license. |
LICENSE Copyright message / license. |
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README Quick start instructions, for the impatient. |
README Quick start instructions, for the impatient. |
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This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA. |
This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA. |
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This product includes software developed by Marcus Comstedt. |
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Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires the following: |
Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires the following: |
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Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 Carnegie-Mellon University. |
Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 Carnegie-Mellon University. |
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or reuse code. |
or reuse code. |
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Thanks to (in no specific order) Joachim Buss, Olivier Houchard, Juli Mallett, |
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Juan Romero Pardines, Alec Voropay, Göran Weinholt, Alexander Yurchenko, and |
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everyone else who has provided me with feedback. |
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Special thanks to Alec Voropay for testing this release with Linux |
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kernels, and on Cygwin, and also thanks to Ondrej Palkovsky for testing |
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with HelenOS. |
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If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments |
If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments |
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or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se. |
or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se. |
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