At 06:45 PM 1/4/2002 -0500, Bryan C. Warnock wrote:
>On Friday 04 January 2002 11:20 am, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> > At 11:10 PM 1/3/2002 -0500, Bryan C. Warnock wrote:
> > >The other obvious answer is that we don't, because it's just to
> > > difficult, if not impossible, to do, and do well. So is it worth the
> > > effort to pursue?
> >
> > FWIW, I've heard of at least one product out there that does this, though
> > at the machine code level. (It'll turn your x86 binaries to Alpha ones,
> > for example) It's supposed to do some optimizations as it goes, and there
> > were reports of x86->other->x86 translations ending up with code that was
> > faster than the original.
>
>I don't know if it was a Microsoft product, but it was for software for
>Windows NT on Alpha. Windows allowed the execution of x86 NT software on
>the Alphas, albeit at an even slower crawl than what they normally ran.
FX!32, from Digital. It was really nice near the end, and was ultimately
kinda speedy. There were also the VEST tools for moving from VMS on a VAX
to VMS on Alphas that translated the machine code.
>This largely worked because you were still targetting the same OS, so the
>issues with system calls and data were essentially a noop.
The tool I heard about doesn't do anything with system calls, so it'd still
be a problem. For some programs that's still OK. (Assuming plain text mode
stdio type things) A neat enough thing but of limited utility in many cases.
> > Still, Brian's original point was well taken--there's a lot more to a
> > machine than just its CPU. The hardware and OS are darned important too,
> > and much tougher to emulate. (Not that I'd mind someone whipping up an
> > Atari 800 emulator--I'd have to dig out the old M.U.L.E. and Archon
> > disks....)
>
>Hmm, you don't google much, do you, Dan?
Of course not. (Nor do I spell your name right much, apparently)
Dan
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