Changelog:
* documentation/faq.sgml
Add an entry answering the eternal question:
When will Wine integrate an x86 CPU emulator?
Index: documentation/faq.sgml
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/wine/wine/documentation/faq.sgml,v
retrieving revision 1.13
diff -u -r1.13 faq.sgml
--- documentation/faq.sgml 28 Jul 2003 19:06:10 -0000 1.13
+++ documentation/faq.sgml 20 Aug 2003 20:37:51 -0000
@@ -130,6 +130,58 @@
</qandaentry>
<qandaentry>
+ <question id="Integrate-an-x86-emulator">
+ <para>When will Wine integrate an x86 CPU emulator so we can
+ run Windows applications on non-x86 machines?</para>
+ </question>
+ <answer>
+ <para>
+ The short answer is 'probably never'. Remember, Wine Is Not a
+ (CPU) Emulator. The long answer is that we probably don't want or
+ need to integrate one in the traditional sense.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Integrating a CPU emulator in Wine would be extremely hard,
+ due to the large number of Windows APIs and the complex
+ datatypes they exchange. It is not uncommon for a Windows API to
+ take three or more pointers to structures composed of many fields,
+ including pointers to other complex structures. For each of these
+ we would need a conversion routine to deal with the byte order and
+ alignment issues. Furthermore, Windows also contains many callback
+ mechanisms that constitute as many extra places where we would have
+ to handle these conversion issues. Wine already has to deal with
+ 16 vs. 32 bit APIs and Ansi vs. Unicode APIs which both
+ introduce significant complexity. Adding support for a CPU emulator
+ inside Wine would introduce at least double that complexity and
+ only serve to slow down the development of Wine.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Fortunately another solution exists to run Windows applications
+ on non-x86 platforms: run both Wine and the application inside the
+ CPU emulator. As long as the emulator provides a standard Unix
+ environment, Wine should only need minimal modifications. What
+ performance you loose due to Wine running inside the emulator
+ rather than natively, you gain in complexity inside of Wine.
+ Furthermore, if the emulator is fast enough to run Windows
+ applications, Photoshop for instance, then it should be fast enough
+ to run that same Windows application plus Wine.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ Two projects have started along those lines: <ulink
+ url="http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/";>QEMU</>, an
+ open-source project, and <ulink
+ url="http://www.transitives.com/tech_overview.htm";>Dynamite</>,
+ a commercial CPU emulator environment from
+ <ulink url="http://www.transitives.com/";>Transitives Technologies</>
+ which has been <ulink
+ url="http://www.transgaming.com/news.php?newsid=37";>paired
+ with Wine</>.
+ </para>
+
+ </answer>
+ </qandaentry>
+
+ <qandaentry>
<question id="Why-would-anyone-want-Wine-Windows-suck">
<para>Why would anyone want Wine? Doesn't Windows suck?</para>
</question>
--
Francois Gouget fgouget@free.fr http://fgouget.free.fr/
Linux, WinNT, MS-DOS - also known as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
