5 ms·

Box86, an x86 app player for ARM with native rendering performance

113 points by jdonald 7y ago

vxxzy 7y ago
Does this mean we can finally use 32bit wine on android??
- mappu 7y ago
  Hangover kind-of works: https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover/releases https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover/releases
ekianjo 7y ago
See this for a lot more details: https://www.giantpockets.com/box86-run-x86-code-and-games-on-arm/ https://www.giantpockets.com/box86-run-x86-code-and-games-on...
- jdonald 7y ago
  Thanks for linking that as well as your earlier HN posts about Box86: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19389120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19389120 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19400920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19400920 I think there are a couple factors that have limited the awareness of Box86. One is having the word "Box" in its title which reminds too much of existing solutions DOSBox or Bochs that already do their job. The second is occasionally headlining Box86 as an "emulator", taking into account that most of the audience does not get very far into the article. Even if Box86 does use x86 emulation it's important to highlight that libraries like OpenGL and SDL run natively. Compare that framing to WINE, which is so forthcoming on not being an emulator that it's in the name.
jbverschoor 7y ago
How does this compare to the ish.app Linux emu for iOS? I’d love tinker with using my iPhone as my workstation. Airplay or av-cable, usb keyboard
- jdonald 7y ago
  Good question. iSH appears to be a true emulator with syscall translation much like qemu-user, so it's versatile but wouldn't run a game library like SDL natively.
drudru11 7y ago
Where does he get these games? Are they freeware?
- voltagex_ 7y ago
  https://www.gog.com/game/airline_tycoon_deluxe https://www.gog.com/game/airline_tycoon_deluxe https://www.gog.com/game/world_of_goo https://www.gog.com/game/world_of_goo (was also free on Epic Game Store a while ago, plus in a million different bundles) for example. The games used as tests seem to be lower end indie titles that can be found DRM-free (because you don't also want to have to work around that)
  - drudru11 7y ago
    Nice - thanks
snvzz 7y ago
Nice progress towards making x86 redundant. Too bad it targets ARM and not rv64gc, but it's a start. I'm curious why it isn't based on qemu-user.
- pjc50 7y ago
  It targets a widely deployed architecture rather than one you can't buy at consumer level?
- sharpneli 7y ago
  In addition of Risc-V not being generally available for consumers the currently available dev boards are hilariously slow compared to ARM. It’s bit like arm and x86 15 years ago. There is not even a contest between them. Only in the later years with the new 64bit arm cores it’s getting there, heck the latest Apple chips actually beat Intel ones in IPC. EDIT: The emulator doesn’t have anything arm specific. It will work on anything 32bit and little-endian.
- daneel_w 7y ago
  I understand your perspective, but I think it's GREAT that it targets Arm. If anything finally can and finally should replace x86/64, to usher in a new era of power-efficient computing, it should be Arm.
  - dTal 7y ago
    Just curious why you think that? ARM cores can sip power when idle, but the story for performance-per-watt under load appears less clear.
    - jdonald 7y ago
      > the story for performance-per-watt under load appears less clear. Is this referring specifically to their in-order cores (Cortex-A53, A35), out-of-order cores (Cortex-A72, A73), or big.LITTLE configurations in general? * Thinking more broadly, the next era of power-efficient computing may depend more on heterogeneous architectures than the CPU alone. The Arm ML Processor IP and corresponding offerings from competitors play a large role in this. * Can be generalized to custom cores designed by NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, and other vendors.
daneel_w 7y ago
"App player". That's a really curious term. Is there any chance this will run on 64-bit Arm cores in the near future? I may have gotten the wrong impression, but from the past few years that I've perused the market of Arm SBCs - including the incredible variety of highly affordable Chinese "Android TV boxes" - it seems that 32-bit Arm has more or less left the building already.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jdonald 7y ago
  Good question. ptitSeb's work tends to target armv7 as that's the architecture used by OpenPandora. I don't know if this design currently depends on specifics of the armhf ABI vs aarch64. With regard to the market, 64-bit SBCs (such as Raspberry Pi 4) often run 32-bit operating systems such as Raspbian. Even 64-bit ARM operating systems such as Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Manjaro are capable of running 32-bit software such as this via multiarch, chroot, or containers.
d--b 7y ago
Question: does anyone know if this can be used to run chrome / Netflix on a raspberry pi?
- jdonald 7y ago
  I guess it's theoretically possible to emulate the x86 Widevine DRM plugin while running other browser code natively. However, there's already an easier way to run Netflix on a Pi 4 natively. Someone figured out to just to grab the armv7l libwidevine binary from Chrome OS: https://blog.vpetkov.net/2019/07/12/netflix-and-spotify-on-a-raspberry-pi-4-with-latest-default-chromium/ https://blog.vpetkov.net/2019/07/12/netflix-and-spotify-on-a...

113 points by jdonald 7y ago

vxxzy 7y ago

Does this mean we can finally use 32bit wine on android??

mappu 7y ago
Hangover kind-of works: https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover/releases https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover/releases

ekianjo 7y ago

See this for a lot more details: https://www.giantpockets.com/box86-run-x86-code-and-games-on-arm/ https://www.giantpockets.com/box86-run-x86-code-and-games-on...

jdonald 7y ago
Thanks for linking that as well as your earlier HN posts about Box86: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19389120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19389120 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19400920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19400920 I think there are a couple factors that have limited the awareness of Box86. One is having the word "Box" in its title which reminds too much of existing solutions DOSBox or Bochs that already do their job. The second is occasionally headlining Box86 as an "emulator", taking into account that most of the audience does not get very far into the article. Even if Box86 does use x86 emulation it's important to highlight that libraries like OpenGL and SDL run natively. Compare that framing to WINE, which is so forthcoming on not being an emulator that it's in the name.

jbverschoor 7y ago

How does this compare to the ish.app Linux emu for iOS? I’d love tinker with using my iPhone as my workstation. Airplay or av-cable, usb keyboard

jdonald 7y ago
Good question. iSH appears to be a true emulator with syscall translation much like qemu-user, so it's versatile but wouldn't run a game library like SDL natively.

drudru11 7y ago

Where does he get these games? Are they freeware?

voltagex_ 7y ago
https://www.gog.com/game/airline_tycoon_deluxe https://www.gog.com/game/airline_tycoon_deluxe https://www.gog.com/game/world_of_goo https://www.gog.com/game/world_of_goo (was also free on Epic Game Store a while ago, plus in a million different bundles) for example. The games used as tests seem to be lower end indie titles that can be found DRM-free (because you don't also want to have to work around that)
- drudru11 7y ago
  Nice - thanks

snvzz 7y ago

Nice progress towards making x86 redundant. Too bad it targets ARM and not rv64gc, but it's a start. I'm curious why it isn't based on qemu-user.

pjc50 7y ago
It targets a widely deployed architecture rather than one you can't buy at consumer level?
sharpneli 7y ago
In addition of Risc-V not being generally available for consumers the currently available dev boards are hilariously slow compared to ARM. It’s bit like arm and x86 15 years ago. There is not even a contest between them. Only in the later years with the new 64bit arm cores it’s getting there, heck the latest Apple chips actually beat Intel ones in IPC. EDIT: The emulator doesn’t have anything arm specific. It will work on anything 32bit and little-endian.
daneel_w 7y ago
I understand your perspective, but I think it's GREAT that it targets Arm. If anything finally can and finally should replace x86/64, to usher in a new era of power-efficient computing, it should be Arm.
- dTal 7y ago
  Just curious why you think that? ARM cores can sip power when idle, but the story for performance-per-watt under load appears less clear.
  - jdonald 7y ago
    > the story for performance-per-watt under load appears less clear. Is this referring specifically to their in-order cores (Cortex-A53, A35), out-of-order cores (Cortex-A72, A73), or big.LITTLE configurations in general? * Thinking more broadly, the next era of power-efficient computing may depend more on heterogeneous architectures than the CPU alone. The Arm ML Processor IP and corresponding offerings from competitors play a large role in this. * Can be generalized to custom cores designed by NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple, and other vendors.

daneel_w 7y ago

"App player". That's a really curious term. Is there any chance this will run on 64-bit Arm cores in the near future? I may have gotten the wrong impression, but from the past few years that I've perused the market of Arm SBCs - including the incredible variety of highly affordable Chinese "Android TV boxes" - it seems that 32-bit Arm has more or less left the building already.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jdonald 7y ago
Good question. ptitSeb's work tends to target armv7 as that's the architecture used by OpenPandora. I don't know if this design currently depends on specifics of the armhf ABI vs aarch64. With regard to the market, 64-bit SBCs (such as Raspberry Pi 4) often run 32-bit operating systems such as Raspbian. Even 64-bit ARM operating systems such as Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Manjaro are capable of running 32-bit software such as this via multiarch, chroot, or containers.

d--b 7y ago

Question: does anyone know if this can be used to run chrome / Netflix on a raspberry pi?

jdonald 7y ago
I guess it's theoretically possible to emulate the x86 Widevine DRM plugin while running other browser code natively. However, there's already an easier way to run Netflix on a Pi 4 natively. Someone figured out to just to grab the armv7l libwidevine binary from Chrome OS: https://blog.vpetkov.net/2019/07/12/netflix-and-spotify-on-a-raspberry-pi-4-with-latest-default-chromium/ https://blog.vpetkov.net/2019/07/12/netflix-and-spotify-on-a...