Software Emulator

Koen Kooi koen at dominion.kabel.utwente.nl
Sat Feb 17 19:10:15 CET 2007


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Richi Plana schreef:
> On Sat, 2007-02-17 at 17:36 +0100, Koen Kooi wrote:
>>> Seems one of the more common sentiments around here (myself included). I
>>> was wondering if we could get a statement from Sean et al. on where a
>>> software emulator 
>> What do you want to emulate?
>>
>> If it's the cpu, qemu can do that, but not 100%, so you still need a real arm920t device
>> to test on.
>> If it's the screen, you don't have a 300dpi screen on your desk, so you still need a real
>> device to see if the gui makes sense.
>> If it's the touchscreen, you also need a real device.
>> If it's the gsm modem, you still need a external modem.
> 
> Software phone emulator for the ARM binaries. And yes, I'm aware that
> there are emulators out there which emulate the processor, but not
> necessarily the machine. I wasn't asking if FIC was developing their own
> emulator, but rather what their plans where with regards to providing an
> emulator for software developers. One possibility is that they could
> package up qemu and add the things (configuration, etc.) needed to
> emulate the Neo1973.
> 
>> If it's just the apps, Xoo is good enough.
>>
>> Running openmoko built natively inside Xoo/Xephyr/Xnest is Good Enough(tm) for the biggest
>> part of people trying to get an idea of openmoko.
> 
> "For the biggest part" may be true, but I've done extensive work on
> embedded software development for phones and I can tell you there are
> just a lot of things that you'd think was alright because they worked
> well when natively compiled on the host machine but which functioned
> very differently on the hardware platform. We've gotten complaints of
> engines being too slow or too fat. And software development WILL include
> low level subsystems like developing IMEs, integer pixops, etc. "Good
> enough" is relative.

A small nitpick: qemu won't help with developing integer pixops, you still need to test it
 on the real device due to things like memory access times and all that. I agree with the
rest.

regards,

Koen

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