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This is encouraging news for folks on Apple Silicon looking to run x86 programs on Asahi Linux, or folks on Android looking to play PC games via the upcoming Cassia emulator.
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The open-source FEX-Emu project continues advancing as an emulator to run x86/x86_64 Linux binaries on 64-bit ARM (AArch64), even for games, Valve’s Steam Play / Proton, and other complex software.
FEX-Emu 2308 is out today with more performance optimizations and other features implemented for this emulator.
FEX-Emu 2308 has been working on more performance optimizations to handle x86/x86_64 emulation faster with items like faster unaligned memory accesses, optimized x87 memory accesses, optimizing vector TSO load stores, and optimizing other x86 instructions.
There’s also been bug fixes, MinGW build improvements, and implementing other missing features.
FEX has already proven itself capable of running x86/x86_64 games on AArch64, including with Steam Play (Proton).
More details on the FEX-Emu 2308 release via the fex-emu.com blog.
what’s the difference between box86 and FEX-Emu?
The main difference is that Box86 does not support 64-bit binaries. There is Box64, but it can’t run 32-bit. FEX does not have that limitation, which is handy if you want to run Windows games (which are mostly 32-bit) on Apple Silicon (64-bit).
There’s also a performance difference. A benchmark from last year showed box86 outperforming FEX considerably in CPU-only workloads (50% faster), but the difference in OpenGL performance wasn’t much. There have been several improvements to FEX since, then so I’d expect it would’ve closed the gap by now.