[lbussell]

I believe Ryujinx actually translates the ARM code to .NET IL, which is then JIT compiled to machine code by .NET. As far as I know it’s a pretty innovative approach to emulation!

And on Apple Silicon, it just runs the Switch’s Arm64v8 instructions natively using a hypervisor! [1]

[1] https://blog.ryujinx.org/the-impossible-port-macos/

[averne_]

This isn't true anymore. It was their first approach, but since then they have switched to their own JIT recompiler. You can read their rationale here: https://github.com/Ryujinx/Ryujinx/pull/693

For the MacOS port, they also added an ARM-to-ARM JIT in case hypervisor runs into issues.

[steelframe]

> they have switched to their own JIT recompiler ... they also added an ARM-to-ARM JIT in case hypervisor runs into issues

Having worked in industry for some multiple of decades, I can say with some confidence that if a small team were to successfully build and deploy their own JIT recompiler to solve an actual customer problem, they would be considered gods by management and given bonuses and promotions. Realistically the project would never get off the ground because their management would be pressuring them to hurry up and add some random new API within the next quarter. Most devs just looking at the existing code and are more or less doing a copy-and-paste with some minor tweaks for their new "feature." They're trying to slap together quick demos that are little more than, "And now this thing makes an RPC call to that thing." The level of performance I see from people who pull down well into 6 figures of income typically falls well below the level that I'm seeing in this Switch emulator project.

Usually for something like that to actually happen it takes a VP mobilizing an org of size 20+, with multiple layers of management taking a year or more to hire or steal talent from other orgs. Some companies are built differently (i.e., Apple) and can pull cross-org talent together for something like "get Intel binaries running pretty well on M1." But I find that tends to be the exception rather than the norm for larger tech companies.

Maybe I'm just working in the wrong places.

[IggleSniggle]

That's the difference between people working for a paycheck and people working for a passion project. Even if 90% of the people working at a company are doing it for the passion and not the paycheck, they still have to contend with the other 10% who do not have the passion (but may be good at hiding this fact).

With a passion project, you start and stop whenever you want, and if you're not interested, you're not working on it anymore. So only the people who are truly intrinsically motivated will continue.

A paycheck is a form of compulsion. "You could be do anything, but you're doing this for me specifically because I pay you." You might also be very interested, but it's the only thing that specifically binds you to the company vs bound to the work itself.

[imtringued]

I don't get it. For me the biggest problem isn't the "ulterior" motive of the paycheck but rather that you simply don't get to work on exciting problems to begin with.

If you told me I have eight hours a day to work on this and I have to spend those eight hours a day, you will get a far better emulator than if I had to do this only on the weekends and I could quit at any point and that is how most personal projects end up. In some half baked state and nobody uses it.

[whizzter]

I think that first approach (Part of the name RyujinX from RyuJIT?) while not optimal did get them off the ground quickly, now with a bit of traction (people into the project since it actually functions) they can could easily find takers(or the time) to write the improved JIT.

I'm actually tinkering on a WASM runtime and emitting MSIL code from WASM trees is quite straightforward so far (tho running into some more complicated cases now that I'm integrating the test-suite), compared to the non-trivial (code stamping) pure native JIT's I've done in the past it's quite a big timesaver (and those still only did target one CPU platform).

[josephg]

I wonder if wasm would be another good target for this sort of thing in the future.