WinUAE for Windows 8 ARM?

[Mequa]

Now that [ Show youtube player ], are there any plans to produce a Windows 8 ARM port of WinUAE, once the SDK becomes available?

Of course such a build would not include JIT, or pixel filters written in assembler. Perhaps if such a build of WinUAE is produced, some pixel filters such as hq2x or Scale2X written in ARM assembler could be incorporated into ARM WinUAE (and ARM PUAE if it doesn't have it already), to provide faster pixel filters on mobile devices.

Perhaps there could then be a bounty for a 680x0-to-ARM JIT-compiler for WinUAE-ARM (and PUAE-ARM for non-Windows ARM platforms).

When Windows 8 is finally released for x86, x64 and ARM, I would like to see 3 builds of WinUAE:
- WinUAE-x86 (with JIT)
- WinUAE-x64 (without JIT)
- WinUAE-ARM (without JIT)

IMO, lack of JIT is not enough to scrap WinUAE-x64 entirely as a build.
However, an ARM build would be far more useful, even without JIT.

[Vairn]

You would be better off porting PUAE, since will work on arm;
If Microsoft do it properly it might not be that hard to port Winuae, since it is still a windows platform, but atm we don't know what the SDK will be like for the ARM version of windows.

It is missing JIT for it though. At the bottom of my todo list is to investigate JIT for ARM processors. But that is alot of work, and waay into the future atm. Once I have other ARM optimising done.

[Mequa]

Windows 8 Developer Preview is out (for x86/x64):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

I'm not sure if the included build of Visual Studio Express yet supports cross-compilation to ARM, but this will almost certainly be the case soon.
Thus, if Toni can eventually update WinUAE to support the Windows 8 SDK (retaining backwards compatibility with older Windows), and also allow builds which do not depend on x86-specific code (as with the experimental x64 build), cross-compiling an ARM build may not be too difficult.

Unfortunately, it appears ARM builds of Windows 8 will be "locked down", like the iPad, with apps only available through Microsoft's app store:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ft-tablet-apps

Presumably WinUAE will have to be downloaded from there on ARM platforms, rather than via the web.
A Windows 8 version of WinUAE may eventually benefit from a "Metro" touch-compatible interface, which is what MS are pushing now for ARM tablets.

But Windows 8 is still a year away from final release.

[Madcrow]

I'm not sure if emulators will even be allowed under the terms of the Windows App Store. Certainly nothing that requires unlicensed ROMs in order to work will ever be allowed. Thus, if I were targeting Win8, I would either see if some funds from Cloanto (who would presumably want WinUAE for ARM as the basis of a "Amiga Forever Tablet Edition") could be obtained or I would work on getting a simple AROS-based profile optimized for use with Amiga developers who might want to embed it in order to create tablet-ready versions of their projects (AMOS for Tablets, anyone?)

[Mequa]

If you download and install the Windows Developer Preview (x64 build with dev tools - ideally using a DVD-9 as it's almost 5GB), then install Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview via the web, it's possible to develop apps using the Metro interface (based on HTML5 and Javascript, with some support for .NET) which can call natively-compiled C/C++ code, and already see them in action.

Technically, it should be possible already to redesign WinUAE's interface in Metro-style. This would feature a full-screen configuration screen with tiles, and run the actual Amiga emulation fullscreen or side-by-side with other Metro apps. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement, but it does seem it requires a different kind of build to the conventional Windows .exe .

It should then eventually be possible to do an ARM build - depending of course on the Windows App Store policies. I'm wondering if a combined WinUAE plus full AROS-68k install would be problematic, as this is totally free software without requiring copyrighted ROMs? (Though it might be slow without JIT.)

I suppose a lot of this depends on how things pan out, and how restrictive a policy MS decides to stick to in the end. (In the worst case, a hacked version of WinUAE/PUAE for jailbroken Windows 8 ARM tablets might be possible!)

[sack]

wouldn't pixel filters be better implemented as pixelshaders running over a textured quad? Amiga emulation is pretty intensive as it is so anything you can offload away from the CPU would help, and it'd remove some of the asm from the equation.

[Mequa]

An ARM build of WinUAE may involve porting WinUAE from Win32 API to WinRT. This may also involve providing support for the latest DirectX used on WinRT.

The Windows 8 Developer Preview (with Visual Studio 11 Developer's Preview download) already allows WinRT development (as well as Win32), including for MS Visual C++ with the latest DirectX/Direct3D. Building for ARM is not yet available, but once this is done for WinRT x86/x64, it should be relatively simple to cross-compile for ARM when that feature becomes available in the new Visual Studio (provided MS do not change the API too much).

It looks like Visual Studio (11?) will be the official SDK for ARM Windows 8.
(Hopefully GCC may one day be able to target this platform too.)

I'm not sure if Toni is interested in this new ARM Windows platform, since WinUAE has always been Win32 (with an experimental 64-bit build) - but if it does get a port of WinUAE, I hope it will be easy to keep in sync with new WinUAE Win32 developments.

As for the JIT issue: Are there any Motorola 680x0 JIT compilers available on ARM yet? (Whether suitable for UAE or not.)