Finaly a new release of box64 and box86! And while box86 simply got some improvments backported from box64, box64 got a lot of new things.
Starting with a new Dynarec target: Loongarch! Both 3A5000 and 3A6000 architecture are supported. This platform use a non x86 4K Pagesize, meaning that some software, like Wine, will not work for now. But Linux games actually work, thanks to some improvment in the pagesize handling.
While very young, Box64 on loongarch already is on par with latest LATX in term of speed, the in-house x86 emulation from Loongson. There are still some issue to hunt down, and more work is left on the 16K pagesize handling. But it’s already promissing.
Speaking about 16K pagesize, the mac M1 running Fedora Remix with Asahi also benefit from those improvments. Still no Wine, but Linux games now runs. And yeah, the M1 GPU is also surprinsingly fast!
And yes, RiSC-V backend also got a good chunk of improvments and fixes. Wine can run, but 32bits games using OpenGL will be slow on Wine/WoW64 (because lots of memory is being copied between high and low memory). Unfortunatly, dxvk doesn’t work yet on RV64. Some Vulkan wrapping issue probably that will need to be debugged later.
Some linux games are now running, and Unity3D games mostly stables. We are almost there.
Still, current RV64 cpu are still a bit slow compared to other arch. They’re improving, fast, but still a bit behind.
Also, some opcodes are still missing from the Dynarec, making comparison a bit biased. And yet, once vulkan is fixed, i’m confident old 3d games will be perfectly playable on RV64 machines.
Of course, the ARM64 backend also got lots of improvments, with more opcodes optimisation and improved compatibility.
The Dynarec infrastructure as improved, allowing the use of the CALLRET and BIGBLOCK optimisation in more games. Those 2 optimisation, on some games, gives very nice boost!
To sum up, lots of new stuff in this update, with Box64 now having 3 Dynarec backends: ARM64, RiSCV and Loongarch, and an overall faster emulation!