[HN Gopher] FEX-emu - Run x86 applications on ARM64 Linux devices
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       FEX-emu - Run x86 applications on ARM64 Linux devices
        
       Author : open-paren
       Score  : 284 points
       Date   : 2025-11-12 20:15 UTC (9 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fex-emu.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fex-emu.com)
        
       | open-paren wrote:
       | > FEX allows you to run x86 applications on ARM64 Linux devices,
       | similar to qemu-user and box64. It offers broad compatibility
       | with both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries, and it can be used
       | alongside Wine/Proton to play Windows games.
       | 
       | > It supports forwarding API calls to host system libraries like
       | OpenGL or Vulkan to reduce emulation overhead. An experimental
       | code cache helps minimize in-game stuttering as much as possible.
       | Furthermore, a per-app configuration system allows tweaking
       | performance per game, e.g. by skipping costly memory model
       | emulation. We also provide a user-friendly FEXConfig GUI to
       | explore and change these settings.
       | 
       | > On the technical side, FEX features an advanced binary
       | recompiler that supports all modern extensions of the x86(-64)
       | instruction set, including AVX/AVX2. The heart of this recompiler
       | is a custom IR that allows us to generate more optimized code
       | than a traditional splatter JIT. A comprehensive system call
       | translation layer takes care of differences between the emulated
       | and host operating systems and implements even niche features
       | like seccomp. A modular core enables FEX to be used as a
       | WoW64/ARM64EC backend in Wine.
       | 
       | Used by the new Steam Frame
       | (https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamframe) which is an
       | ARM64 Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that will run PC and PCVR gaming titles.
        
         | sitkack wrote:
         | Not just used by, Valve is sponsoring FEX.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903610#:~:text=Valve%...
        
           | cubefox wrote:
           | I wouldn't call this random comment reliable testimony that
           | they are sponsoring FEX.
        
             | teroshan wrote:
             | As the random commenter I agree. By "support" I meant that
             | they have a line of product and a strategy that relies on
             | FEX to work and work as seamlessly as possible.
             | 
             | If they contribute to FEX at even a fraction of what they
             | did to wine and Proton it is indeed huge.
        
             | Lightkey wrote:
             | https://gamersnexus.net/pc-builds-news/valve-steam-
             | machine-d... "Valve has devoted significant resources to
             | the development of FEX emulation."
        
             | thehias wrote:
             | Man, Fex is Valve, Valve is Fex! The steam logo is right
             | there in the logo!
             | 
             | https://files.mastodon.social/accounts/headers/110/652/595/
             | 6...
             | 
             | Center of left side, it is a Valve product. All main devs
             | are employed by Valve.
        
             | mirashii wrote:
             | https://www.igalia.com/2025/11/helpingvalve.html
        
         | geerlingguy wrote:
         | CodeWeavers' Crossover just released a Preview version for Arm
         | that incorporates Fex and allows games like Cyberpunk 2077 to
         | run: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2025/11/6/twist-
         | ou...
         | 
         | I've tested it on an Ampere workstation, and was trying it on a
         | Pi, but it seems with Trixie, there may be some bugs with both
         | that and box64 right now, I was having trouble with both of
         | them.
        
           | nialv7 wrote:
           | Hey, it's that YouTube guy with cursed Raspberry Pi setups!
        
           | somanyphotons wrote:
           | What motivates CodeWeavers specifically to work on this?
        
             | aj_hackman wrote:
             | They make CrossOver, which is a productized version of Wine
             | that lets you run Windows software on MacOS. They also work
             | closely with Valve, who have just announced Steam Frame (a
             | device that runs SteamOS on ARM).
        
             | GeekyBear wrote:
             | > The main corporate sponsor of Wine is CodeWeavers, which
             | employs Julliard and many other Wine developers to work on
             | Wine and on CrossOver, CodeWeavers' supported version of
             | Wine.
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
        
         | globalnode wrote:
         | Does that mean I can run windows games on my rpi? (In theory at
         | least)
        
           | adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
           | Yes (just possibly at ~2 fps)
        
             | GCUMstlyHarmls wrote:
             | Into the Breach is back on the menu.
             | 
             | There's probably a mountain of x86 games that would not
             | need to hit above 15-30fps to be fun.
        
               | ThatPlayer wrote:
               | Into the Breach can even run on a Pi 4:
               | https://youtu.be/jF6xGlmKVUQ
        
             | geerlingguy wrote:
             | Put a GPU on it, and you can get 30+ fps in some newer(ish)
             | games, 60+ fps in older games.
        
         | coredog64 wrote:
         | A binary recompiler for running x86 on a different
         | architecture? Where have I heard this story before?
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32
        
       | cultofmetatron wrote:
       | I'n incredibly impressed by valve's commitment to playing the
       | long game. It makes sense to have the frame by arm since the
       | system is lighter and its clear this is just the trojan horse to
       | get arm linux into every gamer's house. I wouldn't be surprised
       | if we end up with an arm steamdeck 1-2 version from now when the
       | tech is ready.
        
         | sitkack wrote:
         | Too bad Arm doesn't allow architectural licenses, because this
         | is _exactly_ the kind of thing Valve and the FEX developers
         | would want to extend the ISA to support. I bet we see a RISC-V
         | backend to FEX in the next 6 months, it probably already exists
         | in a private repo.
         | 
         | FEX is the shootstring, extra special discount budget (not
         | maligning) version of Rosetta. Apple should sell Rosetta to
         | Valve.
        
           | JoshTriplett wrote:
           | > Too bad Arm doesn't allow architectural licenses
           | 
           | QEMU exists. I doubt they want the bad press of suing an Open
           | Source project everyone is using.
        
             | happymellon wrote:
             | ARM were perfectly fine getting the bad press for suing
             | Qualcomm for releasing the Snapdragon that was finally
             | performing enough despite these companies paying them a lot
             | of money.
             | 
             | They seemed quite happy to destroy their eco system if they
             | won.
             | 
             | https://www.rcrwireless.com/20251001/business/qualcomm-
             | arm-2
        
             | anthk wrote:
             | And GBA emulators. And before that, BBC Accorn ones with
             | Risc OS.
        
           | geerlingguy wrote:
           | Box64 already runs on RISC-V. Just, the available processors
           | are so slow it's hard to even play 5-10 year old games.
        
             | snvzz wrote:
             | This means that, when the much faster chips implementing
             | RVA23 arrive next year, they'll be immediately able to run
             | Box64.
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | My understanding is that Rosetta sidesteps a bunch of tricky
           | memory model issues by using non-standard hardware extensions
           | only present in Apple Silicon, so even if Apple did share
           | Rosetta, which they certainly won't, it wouldn't work
           | properly on Valves hardware anyway.
        
             | fooblaster wrote:
             | yeah that is correct. The m series chips can turn on total
             | store ordering memory model solely for Rosetta. There's
             | also some hardware extensions to arm to support x86
             | condition codes in the hardware because it's way more
             | instruction efficient that way.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | If you mean FEAT_FlagM, that's standard in ARMv8.4.
               | (There's also FlagM2 and AFP that are optional.)
               | 
               | The JavaScript instruction is cooler though.
               | 
               | https://developer.arm.com/documentation/dui0801/g/A64-Flo
               | ati...
        
               | gorkish wrote:
               | RISC is dead; long live RISC
        
               | sgerenser wrote:
               | The latter is now an optional feature in the mainstream
               | Arm ISA now (FEAT_FlagM and FEAT_FlagM2). Similarly the
               | "alternate floating point mode" that Apple uses to match
               | nuances of x86 FP semantics is a standard architectural
               | feature as well. The TSO option though is Apples own
               | thing.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | It's not only present in Apple Silicon, it's just not
             | required by the ARM standard. Fujitsu also has an ARM64 CPU
             | with TSO.
        
               | wmf wrote:
               | There are a bunch of undocumented flags and instructions
               | beyond TSO.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Trust me on this one?
        
               | chadaustin wrote:
               | https://dougallj.wordpress.com/2022/11/09/why-is-
               | rosetta-2-f...
               | 
               | > Apple M1 has an undocumented extension that, when
               | enabled, ensures instructions like ADDS, SUBS and CMP
               | compute PF and AF and store them as bits 26 and 27 of
               | NZCV respectively, providing accurate emulation with no
               | performance penalty.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Oh yeah, maybe that one was too obscure for me. I don't
               | think I've ever seen something use PF/AF...
               | 
               | You do want FEAT_AFP though, so you do want ARMv8.6+.
        
               | bonzini wrote:
               | SETP is used rarely to compute parity, though it doesn't
               | really save anything if you can use POPCNT. PF is also
               | used by floating point comparisons with a different
               | meaning though that is not useful for the Arm extension
               | from Apple.
               | 
               | AF indeed is basically unused. The problem for both is
               | that you need them for accurate emulation "just in case".
        
               | dangus wrote:
               | Perhaps another interesting aspect of this is that it'll
               | be Apple with their vertical stack that will decide when
               | to physically remove this logic from the chips.
               | 
               | macOS 26 is the last OS with an Intel build. Presumably
               | this means that in all likelihood, M6 chips will remove
               | this functionality.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | Why do you assume that dropping support for Intel
               | hardware from the OS will coincide with dropping hardware
               | features that help support for x86 applications? Have you
               | not seen Apple's documentation that states they plan to
               | retain some Rosetta functionality beyond macOS 27 for the
               | sake of x86 games?
        
               | lugu wrote:
               | Nice article on this topic:
               | https://lwn.net/Articles/970907/
        
               | sitkack wrote:
               | There are also RISC-V designs with TSO. If you are
               | targeting x86 workloads, it makes sense to have a per
               | thread TSO mode.
        
           | nullbyte808 wrote:
           | better yet, Apple should make it open-source on github.
        
           | scotty79 wrote:
           | > Apple should sell Rosetta to Valve.
           | 
           | Isn't Rosetta kinda bad though? And won't get much better
           | because it's not open source?
        
             | MobiusHorizons wrote:
             | Rosetta performance is best in class to my knowledge,
             | although they had the benefit of being able to add custom
             | instructions and modes to the cpu to make some parts
             | easier. Meaning Rosetta would not have helped valve unless
             | they built the frame on apple silicon.
             | 
             | As for not improving, it is likely that Apple no longer
             | feels the need to invest in Rosetta improvements now that
             | Apple silicon is so dominant and software support is
             | already very strong, but nothing is stopping them from
             | investing in it if they need it for example for gaming
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | Rosetta is abandonware:
               | https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-
               | silicon/abou...
               | 
               | Why would a company on its way to the moon, entrust such
               | an important project as translation layer between two
               | major architectures to a single rinky-dinky corp that got
               | rich selling common electronics marketed as luxury fluff,
               | that's on the decline and has head so far stuck up its
               | butt that it thinks it can do whatever it wants, instead
               | of just write it themselves with support of the global
               | developer community?
               | 
               | Apple could never do games because there are no luxury
               | games. That's completely out of their zone of
               | comprehensibility.
        
               | dontlaugh wrote:
               | I don't know if the two companies have such different
               | futures.
               | 
               | The games industry as a whole is in potentially terminal
               | decline, have you seen all of the redundancies lately?
        
               | kokada wrote:
               | The AAA games industry with their multi-million budgets
               | and "being too big to fail" mentality is on decline. It
               | seems that anything that is not a new Call of Duty is
               | considered not worth by the industry.
               | 
               | But smaller games and indie studios are thriving. We got
               | lots of very interesting indie games this year.
        
           | LeFantome wrote:
           | You are looking for Felix86
           | 
           | https://felix86.com/
        
           | clausecker wrote:
           | ARM already has most stuff required for this on board. Two
           | proprietary extensions are used by Rosetta: one emulates the
           | parity (rarely used) and half-carry (obsolete) flags, which
           | can also be emulated conventionally. The other implementa TSO
           | memory ordering, which can either be ignored or implemented
           | with explicit barriers; some other chips apparently have a
           | similar setting.
           | 
           | The other stuff is all present in ARMv8.5 I think.
        
         | theoldgreybeard wrote:
         | It's amazing what you can do when you have a business that
         | prints money hand over first and you have no obligations to
         | shareholders.
        
         | notepad0x90 wrote:
         | Last I heard, they don't even have bosses there, a flat
         | hierarchy. They vote on things and pick each other to work on
         | teams and appraise performance. Perhaps that radical culture
         | has merit to it?
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | Anything works when you have infinite money and the company
           | is privately owned by a chill dude.
        
           | systematizeD wrote:
           | How much did Gabe own Valve, 50%?
           | 
           | Gabe Ownership/co-founder:
           | 
           | - Valve - Yacht Companies - Starfish Neuroscience (Neuralink)
           | - Submarine Companies
        
           | bbminner wrote:
           | I've heard that to ship hl2 (or anything really) they had to
           | stip some of that flatness somewhat.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | I would appreciate more if they also would take devs into
         | SteamOS water, instead of relying on Microsoft kindness.
        
         | Havoc wrote:
         | Helps that they are in dominant position and basically just
         | need to not fuck up
        
       | Venn1 wrote:
       | I tried out FEX on a modern ARM board with a discrete GPU. Really
       | impressed with the performance.
       | 
       | https://interfacinglinux.com/2025/06/30/fex-emu-gaming-on-th...
        
         | roody15 wrote:
         | Wow decent results.. impressed.
        
           | Plagman wrote:
           | I would keep in mind that the results reported there are
           | likely quite a bit lower (in terms of CPU-side performance)
           | than what you could achieve in practice, because it's running
           | all of x86 Steam+Proton in the emulator. In a pre-configured
           | environment (like SteamOS for ARM), the Steam client and
           | Proton itself would be native ARM code, and emulation would
           | stop at the win32 API boundary (or at certain critical
           | libraries' APIs if you're using Linux apps).
        
             | Lightkey wrote:
             | Fancy seeing the Plagman here. Last time I saw you was on
             | Freenode (R.I.P.). So you are still working for Valve? ;-)
        
         | TinkersW wrote:
         | FEX is a CPU JIT, so your GPU settings are irrelevant to it, it
         | is translated but not by FEX, and there is no real perf hit for
         | the GPU
         | 
         | The old games don't really matter with regards to FEX perf, so
         | the only relevant bit is the semi newer games at 30/40 fps,
         | which seems very slow to me, given that you are only running at
         | 1080p/Medium, so you likely have a CPU bottleneck there.
        
       | fooblaster wrote:
       | How does fex deal with the fact that the memory model on arm is
       | weak and x86 is total store ordering. It seems like would need to
       | hammer performance by putting memory barriers everywhere to
       | handle all cases. Perhaps fex only works when there are well
       | defined mutexes it can gain visibility into? anyone know?
        
         | nialv7 wrote:
         | I think that's right, there is no better way than just adding
         | barriers. On Apple hardware it can probably make use of the
         | special memory ordering mode, but on normal ARM64 there's
         | probably nothing it can do.
        
           | ant6n wrote:
           | There's one trick: run those threads on one cpu. But that may
           | be slower than barriers on multiple CPU's, unless the code
           | uses a lot of library code that can be emulated directly,
           | separately on other cpus.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | Looks like they do expensive conservative TSO emulation by
         | default, but they're able to piggyback on compiler work that
         | Microsoft did to make newer Windows x86 binaries easier to
         | emulate. Since MSVC 2019 they annotate the executable with
         | metadata that informs an emulator of when TSO is or isn't
         | needed for correctness.
         | 
         | https://fex-emu.com/FEX-2510/
         | 
         | FEX also has settings which weaken or disable TSO altogether,
         | favoring performance over correctness. You wouldn't want to
         | rely on those for anything important but a game possibly
         | crashing isn't the end of the world.
        
           | dbdr wrote:
           | So that optimization only works on executables produced by
           | MSVC? Are those annotations documented and/or produced by
           | other compilers?
        
             | saagarjha wrote:
             | No.
        
         | trollbridge wrote:
         | It would be nice to see more Arm chips adopt Apple's approach
         | (which fixes this problem) for Rosetta 2. Basically, Apple's
         | chips can be switched into a TSO mode and a few other minor
         | tweaks that make x86 code run much, much faster.
        
       | nullbyte808 wrote:
       | Now we just need a decent ARM Linux laptop.
        
         | overfeed wrote:
         | Snapdragon Elite X laptops are plenty decent.
        
           | ben-schaaf wrote:
           | Not for Linux they're not. IIRC Audio and camera don't work,
           | and firmware is non-redistributable and so you need to mooch
           | it off a Windows partition. On top of that the performance on
           | Linux hasn't been great either.
        
             | LeFantome wrote:
             | Highly depends on which laptop
        
           | donkeylazy456 wrote:
           | Qualcomm's linux support is not.
        
             | overfeed wrote:
             | That's true Qualcomm in general, but is fortunately
             | outdated for the Snapdragon Elite _X_ (and only the X).
             | Qualcomm has been upstreaming patches to Linus ' tree[1] -
             | but only for the Elite X - the Elite P processors get the
             | classic Qualcomm treatment.
             | 
             | 1. https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstream
             | ing-...
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | You're mangling Qualcomm's branding to the point that
               | it's impossible to be sure what you're trying to say.
               | Qualcomm's current laptop SoCs are called "Snapdragon X
               | Elite" or "Snapdragon X Plus" or "Snapdragon X", all
               | derived from various bins of two SoC designs, and all
               | pretty much in the same boat for driver support purposes.
               | "Snapdragon X2 Elite" and lesser siblings are due in the
               | first half of next year, so a respectable degree of Linux
               | support would mean having driver support for those chips
               | in an upstream kernel release _now_ so that there might
               | be a mainstream distro supporting the hardware at some
               | point in the quarter after the hardware ships.
        
               | overfeed wrote:
               | My apologies to you and the entire Qualcomm marketing
               | team for my brand-guideline violations - I was going off
               | the top of my head. What I meant in my inscrutable
               | comment was: "Elite X" => "X Elite", "Elite P" => "X
               | Plus", I really should not have mangled the products
               | using such an elegant and intuitive naming convention.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | Ok, so having clarified the naming, it still looks like
               | you're wrong about which chips are getting driver support
               | upstreamed, because the Snapdragon X Plus parts are (with
               | maybe one exception, IIRC) literally _the same chip_ as
               | the Snapdragon X Elite parts. Do you really believe that
               | the upstream Linux kernel would accept patches that are
               | specifically crafted to only work on certain bins of the
               | chip, or to fail to enable a peripheral if not enough of
               | the CPU cores are enabled?
        
               | overfeed wrote:
               | Don't take my word for it - go to the Ubuntu Concept
               | Snapdragon thread[1] and search for "plus" or "x1p".
               | 
               | > Do you really believe that the upstream Linux kernel
               | would accept patches that are specifically crafted to
               | only work on certain bins of the chip, or to fail to
               | enable a peripheral if not enough of the CPU cores are
               | enabled?
               | 
               | It takes more than a kernel patch to boot a laptop.
               | Qualcomm has been neglecting to release the dtbs for Plus
               | laptops. If you want good peripheral support, don't buy a
               | "plus" variant. Getting back ro your question, the answer
               | is "Yes, Linux has always accepted patches that only work
               | on _some_ configurations " with no requirement to support
               | _all_ h /w configurations or variants. Infact, some
               | configurations are so obscure only the submitter can test
               | - the maintainer/subsystem tsar/Linus may not even know
               | what the potential variants are.
               | 
               | 1. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-
               | snapdragon-x-e...
        
         | thehias wrote:
         | Get a MacBook with Asahi Linux
        
           | thehamkercat wrote:
           | Asahi Linux doesn't support M3/M4/M5
        
             | sitkack wrote:
             | And? Get an M1/M2 off of ebay or craigslist.
        
         | rollcat wrote:
         | Anyone can recommend something viable for simple tasks? I don't
         | need 32GB of VRAM, just a reliable machine for everyday tasks
         | that's decent, lightweight, has a good battery.
         | 
         | (I know I'm describing an M2 Air, but I'd like to explore
         | alternatives.)
        
           | myndpage wrote:
           | I have the azus ZenBook a14 with X Elite, 32GB ram, 1TB SSD.
           | Overall it works great on Ubuntu concept. Only speakers and
           | camera do not work (I heard speakers can work with some
           | risk). I just use usb headphones instead and my webcam. The
           | laptop itself is very light with long battery life. I expect
           | it to be better supported at some point hopefully, but it's
           | getting there.
        
           | LeFantome wrote:
           | I would wait for X2 Elite laptops at this point.
           | 
           | Qualcomm is already upstreaming support into Linux.
        
           | danans wrote:
           | Lenovo Chromebook Plus 12 or Acer - Chromebook Plus Spin 514.
           | Both have an M2 equivalent MediaTek Kompanio ARM CPU/GPU, and
           | comes with native Debian VM built in (Crostini) that runs
           | standard Linux desktop apps. Battery life and performance are
           | great. You can even get it pretty loaded up with RAM to run
           | smaller LLMs if that's your jam.
           | 
           | As you can tell from my past comments about Chromebooks as
           | Linux workstations here, I'm a daily user and very happy with
           | them.
        
         | LeFantome wrote:
         | I would wait for X2 Elite laptops at this point.
         | 
         | Qualcomm is already upstreaming support into Linux.
         | 
         | Take this with a grain of salt but since we are one the topic
         | of games....
         | 
         | https://www.techpowerup.com/343081/qualcomm-says-90-of-games...
        
         | willis936 wrote:
         | Alternatively: we need fex-emu to run on macos.
        
       | jasonjmcghee wrote:
       | Curious how this will impact the major games that are
       | incompatible due to denuvo type stuff
        
         | paulryanrogers wrote:
         | IIUC that DRM involves kernel level tricks and attestation,
         | which means it'll basically never happen. Online gaming looks
         | similarly doomed.
        
           | dralley wrote:
           | Plenty of online games work fine. Rocket League, Squad, Arc
           | Raiders etc. are just the ones that I play.
        
             | rounce wrote:
             | In the case of those which use EAC/EOS they need to be
             | explicitly approved to run under Wine/Proton by the
             | developer. There are some cases (eg. iRacing) where the
             | developer refuses to enable support for whatever reason,
             | and on those we're still stuck.
        
               | ThatPlayer wrote:
               | It's not just 'running under Wine', it's a different
               | anti-cheat with different capabilities and the same name.
               | 
               | It's like comparing Office 2024 Excel on Windows to Excel
               | for iPad. They're both called Excel, and share basic
               | features, but once you start using features like VBA, it
               | will not run on iPad Excel.
               | 
               | Also does it even work in Wine? Last I checked EAC only
               | worked in Proton with the env variable to enable it being
               | _PROTON_ _EAC_RUNTIME
        
           | sintax wrote:
           | Denuvo anti-tamper DRM doesn't use kernel level tricks, it's
           | all userspace and works just fine on Linux/Proton. It's the
           | kernel level anti-cheats that don't work on Linux. And some
           | user level anti cheats (like AntiCheat Expert) that only work
           | on the Steam Deck as they check the CPU/GPU of the system and
           | refuse to work if it's not the one in the Steam Deck (which
           | also means those don't work on platforms like the ROG Ally).
        
         | sedatk wrote:
         | That doesn't even work properly on x86 Wine, so ARM is pretty
         | much hopeless right now.
        
           | akimbostrawman wrote:
           | That is false. Denuvo DRM works on Linux and has for many
           | years.
        
             | sedatk wrote:
             | I didn't say it doesn't work _at all_ , but it's been
             | problematic. An example:
             | 
             | https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/05/denuvo-will-lock-
             | you-o...
        
               | akimbostrawman wrote:
               | That issue only happens if there are other issue with the
               | game unrelated to denuvo on wine which requires trying
               | different prefixes resulting in the DRM locking you out.
               | Its the fault of the horrible DRM.
        
         | akimbostrawman wrote:
         | Denuvo DRM works on Linux and has for many years.
        
       | yakaccount4 wrote:
       | I believe a lot of the folks working on FEX are also core
       | contributors to Dolphin, the Wii/GC emulator.
        
         | zozbot234 wrote:
         | Nope, Dolphin emulates PowerPC not ARM or ARM64. Totally
         | different architecture.
        
           | yakaccount4 wrote:
           | I was saying some of the top contributors of Dolphin are also
           | top contributors of this project based on GitHub data.
        
             | HelloUsername wrote:
             | That's really cool! I didn't know, thx for your comment :)
        
       | cubefox wrote:
       | One problem I see is that (e.g.) Qualcomm Adreno GPUs don't even
       | run most Windows games well when executed natively under Windows,
       | due to games only being optimized for GeForce and Radeon. I
       | assume this problem only gets worse when trying to run DirectX
       | games through some sort of translation layer with FEX/DXVK.
        
         | LeFantome wrote:
         | The GPU is not run through a translation layer. The GPU is not
         | an x86-64 CPU.
         | 
         | Only the CPU code has to be emulated. The GPU runs natively.
         | 
         | That does not help with poorly supported GPUs of course.
        
           | cubefox wrote:
           | Pretty sure the GPU doesn't understand DirectX, which is used
           | for Windows games, so it must be run through a translation
           | layer.
        
             | scheeseman486 wrote:
             | Wrapping graphics APIs adds effectively zero overhead if
             | the featureset of the hardware and drivers are a close
             | enough match.
        
         | Philpax wrote:
         | See the corresponding Igalia article for more details:
         | https://www.igalia.com/2025/11/helpingvalve.html
        
       | skywal_l wrote:
       | Presentation at FOSDEM2022:
       | https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/event/fex/
       | 
       | A little old but still interesting.
        
       | pona-a wrote:
       | How is it different to box64? I couldn't really find much online
       | comparing these two except a brench by box64 themselves.
        
         | systematizeD wrote:
         | No different. Box64 only drm free game first, later they
         | support drm games.
         | 
         | Fex straight drm games.
        
           | yonatan8070 wrote:
           | Are you referring to Linux's Direct Rendering Manager or to
           | Digital Rights Management in this context?
        
             | systematizeD wrote:
             | Digital Rights Management
        
       | hydroreadsstuff wrote:
       | Some companies like to stress the efficiency or performance of
       | Arm SoCs, but really this is a hedge against more expensive x86
       | hardware. AMD has increased prices of mobile SoCs radically
       | recently. I'm looking forward to having more affordable SoC
       | options for laptops, handhelds and desktops, perhaps from
       | Mediatek or other lower-cost vendors.
       | 
       | The history of the PC is one of commoditization. A fractured
       | multi-polar landscape is detrimental to the
       | ecosystem/productivity and should ultimately fail.
       | 
       | x86 emulation is an important puzzle piece, and I'm happy Valve
       | recognizes this and sponsors it.
        
         | LeFantome wrote:
         | This is for the Steam Frame
        
       | VikingCoder wrote:
       | So, can you run Steam and games on a Raspberry Pi 500?
        
         | LeFantome wrote:
         | Yup
        
           | VikingCoder wrote:
           | Like, already, or in theory?
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-11-21 23:01 UTC)