
Box86, an x86 app player for ARM with native rendering performance - jdonald
https://github.com/ptitSeb/box86
======
ekianjo
See this for a lot more details:
[https://www.giantpockets.com/box86-run-x86-code-and-games-
on...](https://www.giantpockets.com/box86-run-x86-code-and-games-on-arm/)

~~~
jdonald
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
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
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.

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daneel_w
"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.

~~~
jdonald
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.

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

~~~
mappu
Hangover kind-of works:
[https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover/releases](https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover/releases)

------
drudru11
Where does he get these games? Are they freeware?

~~~
voltagex_
[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
Nice - thanks

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

~~~
jdonald
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...](https://blog.vpetkov.net/2019/07/12/netflix-and-spotify-on-a-
raspberry-pi-4-with-latest-default-chromium/)

------
snvzz
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.

~~~
daneel_w
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
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
> 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.

