From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1Bj4dU-00033d-JB for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 19:18:32 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1Bj4dS-0002zV-JK for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 19:18:32 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1Bj4dS-0002zG-Ej for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 19:18:30 -0400 Received: from [62.253.162.49] (helo=mta09-svc.ntlworld.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1Bj4b2-0005zT-C7 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 09 Jul 2004 19:16:00 -0400 Received: from [10.10.10.100] ([81.107.87.144]) by mta09-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.37 201-229-121-137-20020806) with ESMTP id <20040709221415.DUTW14360.mta09-svc.ntlworld.com@[10.10.10.100]> for ; Fri, 9 Jul 2004 23:14:15 +0100 Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: RFC for new features From: Antony T Curtis In-Reply-To: References: <40ED8EF0.1040501@bellard.org> Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1089411210.59382.215.camel@pcgem.rdg.cyberkinetica.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 23:13:30 +0100 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org List-Id: qemu-devel.nongnu.org List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: qemu-devel@nongnu.org On Fri, 2004-07-09 at 21:27, Emmanuel Charpentier wrote: > Fabrice Bellard wrote: > > [ that he wants our whishlists before porting the SDL version to other > platforms. ] > > Well, I have some wishes, but I'm not sure they fit well in your current > worplans. Please feel free to discard them : > > 1) There are still some CPU emulation issues ; I can't diagnose them but I > can prove that they exist : > After Win2k installation (whatever version), I have been unable to install > Mozilla 1.6. I have been able to install Mozilla 1.7, though. Windows being > .. well, Windows, I've been unable to locate error logs. Go figure ... > It tool me 4 trials to find a Win2k version that would allow for the > installation of Office 2000. I tried to install Office 97 twice, with no > luck. I didn't retry with the "correct" installation of Win2k. > The SP4 patch doesn't install (error a short while after unpacking) > The "disk full" issue while installing Win2k still happens every time. > > None of this happens using the very same files/disks while installing on > real hardware. Yes - I think that there are instances where the simulation is wrong... OS/2 Warp 3 seems to suffer from GPFs when running applications consistantly and repeatably. > 2) There are device emulation issues : > The current cirrusvga is a vast improvement over the previous bochs > device. However, pushing available memory to more than 4 Mb wold allow for > better resolutions : 1024x768x16 is a bit limiting in some uses. > There are still serious issues with audio emulation. The current SB16/AXE > device can do simple things (playing the "opening" .wav file, etc ...), but > trying to install Dragon voice recognition still fails very early (at the > first sound that the installer tries to play), and crashes the whole > emulation (the graphics window diseappear, and you're left with no mouse). Well - the CL-GD544X chips can only handle 4MB of memory, maximum. For larger framebuffers, we would have to emulate a different video chip - If we wish to stick to Cirrus Logic, The Laguna CL-GD546x chips can address up to 16MB I think.... Of course, there are many other chips - I think perhaps the Tseng Labs ET6000 may be simple enough to simulate and would support a larger framebuffer. > 3) I still think that a virtualizer based on QEMU, while quite a bit more > limited in scope than QEMU itself, would be extremely useful : letting > user-level code not touching hardware run native and trapping anything > related to I/O, memory-mapped I/O or changing protection level (allowing to > run *that* on the emulated CPU) would allow for a nice acceleration. This > would be a boon for all the people using QEMU to run hardware available for > their CPU but not their platform (think Windows user running Linux/FreeBSD > software and vice-versa), which may well be a majority among qemu users. Hmm... If a virtualizer is what is wanted, there are several options already available... "Xen" is supposedly very good. I think QEmu's strength is that it is not a virtualizer - it is a system simulator. Perhaps work can be done to get better performance when simulating the a similar system to the host... but perhaps there would be more real benefit in attemting to make the translator optimise the code it generates... LUA has already been mentioned as a possible alternative code generator. > None of this is absolutely critical, and QEMU is already *extremely* > useable (and useful ! ) as it is. The most critical are probably the CPU > emulation issues, the least the virtualizer. > > Hope this helps, > > Emmanuel Charpentier > > > > _______________________________________________ > Qemu-devel mailing list > Qemu-devel@nongnu.org > http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel > FLAGS (\Seen)) -- Antony T Curtis