Fellow developers,

I'm thinking of starting a VM project to allow running x86 Windows apps on ARM Android. This will obviously involve binary translation. I've read about QEMU's �tiny code generator and think for a usable experience,

�the intermediate micro-op representation will have to be abandoned, and use a�more efficient, though less portable x86 to ARM translator. I also saw some Google SOC project that tried to incorporate LLVM into QEMU, but with disastrous slow down if done naively. I still think it's worth to do so, but lots of care will need to be done to only optimize code that needs it like Sun's HotSpot Java compiler does.

Questions:

1. How useful would this be and how much interest?

�� Obviously, this will be a huge project, and I just want to gauge the interest before I jump in. Microsoft will be releasing Windows for ARM soon, so there will be no need to worry about

�� running Office, Matlab, Visual C++, etc on ARM, leaving only�legacy applications and games to benefit from binary translation. I'm mostly interested in seeing some 3D games run on my

�� Xoom.

2. What's the best design: �whole system VM (qemu) or process VM (qemu & wine)?

Process VM:

+ easier to incorporate 3D acceleration at API level

+ uses less memory

+ better performance (e.g. no need for MMU translation when accessing memory)

+ much better integration with host OS

- needs to maintain custom Windows API implementation (Wine)

Whole system VM:

+ simpler, more unified to implement

+ much better support for apps that are dependent on new, proprietary, obscure Windows libraries, interfaces � �(moot because Office, Matlab, etc will soon be available for ARM)

Given the aims of only running legacy applications and games, it seems a foregone conclusion that Wine's process VM approach is best. Comments?

3. �Will Wine ever incorporate binary translation?�

�� My proposed design will obviously use Wine's implementation of the Windows API, which is huge. I'm not sure how disruptive of a change binary translation will be to Wine.

�

�� If Wine does incorporate binary translation, maybe they can change the name to Wine Is Now an Emulator

If your're interested in this project, please reply.