Status update on next release, 64-bit and the future
Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2019 1:13 am
Hi everyone,
I mentioned last fall that I would give a status update this spring, and as you can see things have unfortunately been a few months behind where I'd have liked them to be. But now I am ready to provide something.
As I mentioned then, Google is requiring that all updates after August 1st have 64-bit compatibility, meaning that we had to work on getting this support in the emulator.
This has mostly been done, if not yet to the extent that I would have liked. On 64-bit ARM the recompiler, 3D, and geometry have been converted. 2D and audio are not yet using optimized code. There are also a couple optimizations left to be done in the recompiler. So in practice, it is a little bit slower than the 32-bit version, depending on the game. This is something I intend to address more over the next couple months.
On x86 the recompiler supports 64-bit, but the optimizations for 3D and 2D have not been converted. This shouldn't be a huge effort, but it still needs to be done. This means that x86-64 performance is going back to what it was a few versions before the optimizations were made there. This is also something I intend to address over the next couple months.
With the status we attained on the core we eventually got to a point over the last few weeks where we worked out the bugs needed to actually get the Android build working.
Although Google won't let us post updates without 64-bit after August 1st the version currently up will still be available and will continue to work. For this reason we feel that it would be best not to rush to release an official non-beta release before August 1st unless there arises a compatibility issue that we must address. So unless it becomes necessary to do so sooner I expect to have the first full 64-bit official release out sometime in August. It'll be possible to sideload an older version. It'll also be possible to force a 32-bit installation on a 64-bit platform, but it will require doing a special installation over adb so won't be the most accessible thing for a lot of users.
Before that, in the next few days and ahead of August 1st, we should be posting a first beta with 64-bit support.
I've also mentioned before that I intend to make the emulator open source at some point. Right now xperia64 and I are expecting that to happen after the start of the new year. In the mean time we'd also like to push more releases on ARM Linux platforms like Odroid and RPi 2+ (32-bit and 64-bit binaries) and Windows.
I mentioned last fall that I would give a status update this spring, and as you can see things have unfortunately been a few months behind where I'd have liked them to be. But now I am ready to provide something.
As I mentioned then, Google is requiring that all updates after August 1st have 64-bit compatibility, meaning that we had to work on getting this support in the emulator.
This has mostly been done, if not yet to the extent that I would have liked. On 64-bit ARM the recompiler, 3D, and geometry have been converted. 2D and audio are not yet using optimized code. There are also a couple optimizations left to be done in the recompiler. So in practice, it is a little bit slower than the 32-bit version, depending on the game. This is something I intend to address more over the next couple months.
On x86 the recompiler supports 64-bit, but the optimizations for 3D and 2D have not been converted. This shouldn't be a huge effort, but it still needs to be done. This means that x86-64 performance is going back to what it was a few versions before the optimizations were made there. This is also something I intend to address over the next couple months.
With the status we attained on the core we eventually got to a point over the last few weeks where we worked out the bugs needed to actually get the Android build working.
Although Google won't let us post updates without 64-bit after August 1st the version currently up will still be available and will continue to work. For this reason we feel that it would be best not to rush to release an official non-beta release before August 1st unless there arises a compatibility issue that we must address. So unless it becomes necessary to do so sooner I expect to have the first full 64-bit official release out sometime in August. It'll be possible to sideload an older version. It'll also be possible to force a 32-bit installation on a 64-bit platform, but it will require doing a special installation over adb so won't be the most accessible thing for a lot of users.
Before that, in the next few days and ahead of August 1st, we should be posting a first beta with 64-bit support.
I've also mentioned before that I intend to make the emulator open source at some point. Right now xperia64 and I are expecting that to happen after the start of the new year. In the mean time we'd also like to push more releases on ARM Linux platforms like Odroid and RPi 2+ (32-bit and 64-bit binaries) and Windows.