CPU emulation

No. It has been tried, but it doesn't work well.

EDIT: and by well, I mean at all.

 

Many have tried, none have been successful. The machine architecture makes it a very difficult emulation process.

 

It could be possible but to give you an idea of how slow it would be, try Q emulator and run windows 95 and see how slow it is even on a G5.

 

I think your best bet would be an old version of VirtualPC.
The paid version let you run a windows VM on a PPC Mac.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't quite think you understand exactly how complex this is. Emulators and virtualization are typically not even developed by average software engineers/programmers, they're often worked on by people with Ph.Ds in CS and CE.

I'm assuming you want to do a technology like rosetta, which first of all, probably will be extremely difficult, but not impossible, since Apple DOES make Darwin's kernel public... Essentially when an Intel binary were to be launched, you would then have your code launch and translate in real time the instructions as they're being executed. This is an extremely daunting task, and would take MANY years for even a team of professionals to develop. It is definitely NOT a hobby project.

 

The only way that PPC would be brought back to life is if people start developing for it again. I don't mean putting things like Linux or Android (don't even think about it, not even going to work now that we're past 1GHz), but making actual apps that are made especially for them.

 

Absolutely! I worked on CPU emulation way back in the day, and it is NOT trivial and you aren't going to learn how to do that via iTunes U. Translating instructions and making sure all of the processor oddities are emulated properly requires a TEAM of engineers, who know the internals of the hardware at assembly level. A lot of the emulation requires deep knowledge of the instruction set, the assembler code, and especially the endedness of the CPU. If you don't understand all of that don't bother to try.

 

geesh you guys seem a little harsh. he is just starting out. the first time i took a C class my plan was to write a 3d game engine from scratch... needless to say I worked very hard and created a program that someone (no one lol) could use to help you budget your money and was very proud

I think the only way a powerpc machine could emulate a x86 for anything important would be using some kind of hardware add on device

 

That'd be a dream come true.