Box64 is an emulator for Linux that can run Intel software – such as games – on non-x86_64 hardware such as ARM64 systems. The now released version 0.3.0 of Box64 supports vector command extensions such as AVX and AVX2. This should allow more software to run, and even faster.
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Prime customers: Amazon is giving away “Rise of the Tomb Raider” and “Suicide Squad” Release Notes for Box64 version 0.3.0 Particularly highlight AVX and AVX2 support, as well as other extensions such as BMI1, BMI2, ADX, FMA, F16C and RDANDR finding their way into the emulator. The use of extensions can be controlled with environment variables. BOX64_AVX Set to 1, this enables the AVX, BMI1, F16C, and VAES extensions, while a value of 2 also enables AVX2, BMI2, FMA, ADX, VPCLMULQDQ, and RDRAND.
Dynamic recompilation
To gain more steam for apps running in emulation, Box64 supports “Dynarec”, i.e. dynamic recompilation of programs. The recompiler has also learned AVX and AVX2 instructions and can translate them into ARM’s vector instruction extension NEON. Box64 is built for ARM64 so AVX and AVX2 are enabled by default for Dynarec.
The release notes list a number of minor changes. Support for some CPUID opcodes has been optimized, which improves CPU identification. The DynaRAC compiler has received some improvements for ARM64 opcodes, as well as support for the Chinese Loongson 64 processor architecture. RISCV-64 support has also been expanded: some new opcodes were added and several were fixed. The infrastructure has been expanded to support RISCV vector instruction extensions for SIMD emulation. Many minor changes and improvements went to the operation of x87 (the mathematical coprocessor of the x86 CPU), registers, and internal jumps.
Further improvements include support for Wayland. This is how Wine-Wayland now works, the developers report.
The current version of Box64 is available as source code on Github Ready. Since the infrastructure for building Debian packages is set up there, the new version should soon be available for installation in the repositories of the general distribution.
(DMK)
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