JavaScript emulator with asm.js

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nippur72
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Posts: 574
Joined: Thu Sep 07, 2006 8:35 am

JavaScript emulator with asm.js

Post by nippur72 »

When investigating how to increase the speed of a Javascript based mobile emulator, I stumbled into this thing called ASM.JS which seems very promising.

It's a subset of JavaScript, compatible with the existing one, where you are allowed to use float and integers and nothing else. If you do this, the browser recognizes it and compiles it down to machine code, with a noticeable increase in speed.

By doing this, they already ported many games and emulators for the browser.

Indeed it's the actual environment for emulating a CPU (e.g. the 6502) or a video chip, because in the end it's just number manipulations.

Someone even managed to compile VICE for the browser (see VICE.JS) but unfortunately he did only for C64/128. It runs at 100% frame rate on my mobile phone (browsing it with Chrome for Android).

So, if you are an emulator developer, have a look into it. If your source code is C or C++ you are very close to compile it for the browser.
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