[speculate] Will it be possible to play old 32-bit Windows/Linux/Mac games on Apple Silicon?

[macintologist]

Let's imagine someone in the future releases a Windows or Linux x86 emulator that can run 32 bit binaries. Would it be possible to use that environment to run 3d games that are hardware accelerated?

Or will I need to hold on to my old Mac running Mojave (or Windows) to run 32 bit games like Unreal Tournament 2004?

 

[Puonti]

The sensible solution here is to hold on to the legacy hardware, because there's no guarantee that you'll be able to emulate that environment on Apple Silicon to a satisfactory degree. That way you have both eventualities covered.

 

[velocityg4]

It may be possible. But emulation probably won't be as good as the real thing. As it usually isn't.

Although 68K emulation has gotten to the point where emulation is way faster than the original.

I haven't messed much with PowerPC emulation. But it seems people are playing at least some 3D games under QEMU. There's also all sorts of emulation of consoles for 3D gaming. So, it seems reasonable that at some point there could be fast enough emulation for x86 gaming that needs a GPU. I'd expect that sort of emulation will be better for Windows gaming than Intel Mac gaming. Just bear in mind there is usually a long gap between hardware releases and decent emulation of that hardware.

I'll expect the first emulation will be the same emulators which exist now. Just ported to ARM or x86/ARM binaries. Especially the open source stuff that already runs on basically every platform.

 

[dogslobber]

No.

 

[ChrisA]

Or will I need to hold on to my old Mac running Mojave (or Windows) to run 32 bit games like Unreal Tournament 2004?

It will be quite a long time before an ARM CPU is able to run an X86 emulator as fast as a real X86 chip from 2004. Also, the emulation of 2004 vintage 3D hardware might never happen.

Your best bet is to keep a real computer around that can run this all native.

I really do expect there will be an X86 virtual machine emulator for Apple Silicon at some point. But I don't expect native performance wich is OK, except for games and media editing

 

[Fomalhaut]

It will be quite a long time before an ARM CPU is able to run an X86 emulator as fast as a real X86 chip from 2004. Also, the emulation of 2004 vintage 3D hardware might never happen.

Huh? Isn't the DTK with Rosetta 2 already able to run x86 applications and the same performance level as mid-level 2017 Intel laptops? I appreciate that Rosetta 2 is doing up-front translation in most cases, rather than on-the-fly emulation, but it still appears to be quite capable.

Where are you getting your data from?

 

[ww1971]

Let's imagine someone in the future releases a Windows or Linux x86 emulator that can run 32 bit binaries. Would it be possible to use that environment to run 3d games that are hardware accelerated?

Or will I need to hold on to my old Mac running Mojave (or Windows) to run 32 bit games like Unreal Tournament 2004?

i believe that a intel Mac is more compatible with those software mentioned above and I believe that macs with silicon chips will only accept arm 64 bit versions of the software

 

[ChrisA]

Huh? Isn't the DTK with Rosetta 2 already able to run x86 applications and the same performance level as mid-level 2017 Intel laptops? I appreciate that Rosetta 2 is doing up-front translation in most cases, rather than on-the-fly emulation, but it still appears to be quite capable.

Where are you getting your data from?

Rosetta is doing something different. It is emulating a MacOS Intel environment on an ARM Mac. This is a MUCH easier job and it can be fast. One thing Rosetta can do is when the Intel app makes a system call, Rosetta can run the system call native because the ARM Mac has that function available. So all the file I/O, networking, and graphics are not emulated in Rosetta

But to run Windows apps on a Mac, you need a copy of Windows and you need to emulate the base machine on which Windows expects to run on. This means you can not run anything at all native. All privileged CU instructions have to be emulated

Rosetta works at a higher level of abstraction than does a true virtual machine

 

[macintologist]

Here's a follow up question: What about running ARM version of Windows but relying on ARM Windows to emulate 32bit x86 Windows games?

 

[ChrisA]

Here's a follow up question: What about running ARM version of Windows but relying on ARM Windows to emulate 32bit x86 Windows games?

Windows emulators are notoriously hard to write because many Windows apps make calls to undocumented features inside Windows. Microsoft kept much of the interface secret or at least never bothered to tell anyone.

Apple is in a unique position to Rosetta in that they control the entire environment and can change MacOS if that is needed to make Rosetta work

Wine is a good example of a Windows emulation. It emulates the publishes Windows interface. But it does not always work. To be 100% sure you need a copy of Windows and emulate the hardware at a low level.

The good news is that a computer from 2004 is cheap. you can find 16-year-old PCs for free and you should not have to buy one.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86 and https://twisteros.com might be of interest.
Two potential issues for AS:
- 32-bit ARM support. I have no idea if it is present in the CPU/SoC.
- GPU in VM.

 

[mr_roboto]

Huh? Isn't the DTK with Rosetta 2 already able to run x86 applications and the same performance level as mid-level 2017 Intel laptops? I appreciate that Rosetta 2 is doing up-front translation in most cases, rather than on-the-fly emulation, but it still appears to be quite capable.

One problem is that the up-front translation in Rosetta 2 seems unlikely to work at the scale of a whole operating system. Too much code to translate, and too many cases where it's difficult or impossible to do it up front. So it's going to just be a JIT.

The bigger performance problem is that Rosetta 2 gains a lot from only emulating userspace. A whole-machine emulator (which is what you'd need to boot Windows) has to support all the weird odds and ends only available in the privileged (kernel) operating modes of x86. It also has to emulate I/O peripherals. I/O can be accelerated somewhat by borrowing some paravirtualization tricks, but it's still a lot slower than what happens in Rosetta 2.

https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86 and https://twisteros.com might be of interest.
Two potential issues for AS:
- 32-bit ARM support. I have no idea if it is present in the CPU/SoC.
- GPU in VM.

That's roughly equivalent in scope to Rosetta 2, not a whole-machine emulator. "Box86 lets you run x86 Linux programs (such as games) on non-x86 Linux, like ARM (host system needs to be 32bit little-endian)." I don't think any of it will be relevant to ARM Mac.

 

[leman]

But to run Windows apps on a Mac, you need a copy of Windows and you need to emulate the base machine on which Windows expects to run on. This means you can not run anything at all native. All privileged CU instructions have to be emulated

This is what WINE does. In combination with Rosetta it should run all applications it is able to run currently. Bigger issue is support for 32 bit code... one would need a Rosetta-like translator or at least 32 bit to 64 but translator.

 

[deconstruct60]

Let's imagine someone in the future releases a Windows or Linux x86 emulator that can run 32 bit binaries. Would it be possible to use that environment to run 3d games that are hardware accelerated?

Or will I need to hold on to my old Mac running Mojave (or Windows) to run 32 bit games like Unreal Tournament 2004?

It would probably suck not so much because of GPU emulation but because of 32 bit code emulation. However, the 32 bit app would be running against a emulated GPU ( will extremely likley be running inside of VMware or Parallels. ). That emulated GPU will try to pass along hardware calls with minimal overhead , but here will be overhead. Bigger issue is that is appears that Apple has dropped 32 arm support in their SoC. So there is no 32-bit hardware to run your app against. Whch means that 32-bit-ness has to be emulated in software. That will be a bigger hit to the driver of GPU calls (which are also going through a layer).

It will probably run. But pretty good chance some much more affordable x86 box (with a 2020-2021 Intel or AMD CPU) with a future GPU will run circles around it.

 

[deconstruct60]

Huh? Isn't the DTK with Rosetta 2 already able to run x86 applications and the same performance level as mid-level 2017 Intel laptops?

No. The DTK can only run x86-64 apps. And only inside of macOS. Rosetta doesn't even try to run 32 bit apps at all ( which is technically is x86. )

 

[Fomalhaut]

No. The DTK can only run x86-64 apps. And only inside of macOS. Rosetta doesn't even try to run 32 bit apps at all ( which is technically is x86. )

Ah, OK. I read "x86" as x86-64 - I wasn't paying attention to the title of the thread

 

[mr_roboto]

Bigger issue is that is appears that Apple has dropped 32 arm support in their SoC. So there is no 32-bit hardware to run your app against. Whch means that 32-bit-ness has to be emulated in software. That will be a bigger hit to the driver of GPU calls (which are also going through a layer).

I fully agree that GPU and other hardware driver overhead would doom the high performance of a full system emulator, but 32-bitness isn't a problem with AArch64. There's zero-overhead support for 32-bit operations baked into the 64-bit ISA; most integer instructions have a 32-bit and a 64-bit form. That should make it easy to emulate a 32-bit CPU. (Where by "easy" I mean no harder than doing it on a 32-bit ISA.)

What Apple dropped is support for the legacy 32-bit only AArch32 instruction set. (which is a retronym for what had been the only ARM instruction set until about 2011.)

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

That's roughly equivalent in scope to Rosetta 2, not a whole-machine emulator. "Box86 lets you run x86 Linux programs (such as games) on non-x86 Linux, like ARM (host system needs to be 32bit little-endian)." I don't think any of it will be relevant to ARM Mac.

Rosetta 2 is 64 bit only while box86 is 32 bit only. VM might be the only way to run 32 bit code on late Macs?

 

[Mikael H]

Rosetta 2 is 64 bit only while box86 is 32 bit only. VM might be the only way to run 32 bit code on late Macs?

A VM will only run code supported by the CPU of the host.
Emulation is the way, and as stated in a bunch of threads here in this sub forum that is unlikely to be performant enough in the short term.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

If I am not mistaken, Pi 4 has native geekbench 5 single core at about 200.

 

[theSeb]

I would love to play Crusader:No Remorse again like this.

 

[Mikael H]

I would love to play Crusader:No Remorse again like this.

I’d say DOSBox is not unlikely to get ported.

 

[mr_roboto]

If I am not mistaken, Pi 4 has native geekbench 5 single core at about 200.

Since you're still posting about it, I'm not sure if you understood that box86 will not be useful on ARM Macintosh.
It's similar to Rosetta: Rosetta runs x86 Mac programs on ARM Macs, box86 runs x86 Linux programs on ARM Linux.

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

I thought one could run arm Linux in a vm? If my physical Pentium 4 box can run a game. Can I expect the same game to run inside a vm on top of an i9?

 

[sanfrancisofont1984]

I do agree that keeping/buying some old x86 hardware is a better approach for most users. But I also think VM on ARM Macs might act as a fast RPi just fine. I mentioned potential difficulties already.