5 ms·
Given that Apple pulled it off twice with the Mac 68K emulator (for the Motorola 680x0 to PowerPC transition) and on OS X with Rosetta (for the PowerPC to x86 t
by huxley 10y ago
Given that Apple pulled it off twice with the Mac 68K emulator (for the Motorola 680x0 to PowerPC transition) and on OS X with Rosetta (for the PowerPC to x86 transition), it's certainly possible and ARM processors have come a long way.
- greglindahl 10y agoNote that in both cases the new processor was faster than the old one. Not so much for x86 on ARM.
- freehunter 10y agoBack then, "faster" really meant faster. These days, there's far less of a gap between processor generations for a consumer use-case. Running Firefox on Windows 10 to check Gmail and Facebook and occasional Word usage probably wouldn't feel much slower if you're on an Apple A10 processor vs a Skylake core i5. We long ago reached the point where an iPad processor was fast enough for consumer usage, and I knew plenty of college students who were happy with their Surface (non-pro, ARM-based). For you and I, we want the fastest machines possible, and right now it's x86. For everyone else, I doubt they've even given it a thought, and I don't think they'd notice.
- gsnedders 10y agoAnd there's plenty of people whose primary devices are phones and tablets nowadays.
- kalleboo 10y agoIt could be difficult for Microsoft, but since Apple have their own line of ARM processors, could Apple theoretically add a couple strategic instructions to their CPUs to help speed up the emulation?