Last Updated on: 27th December 2023, 05:04 pm
Web site: pearpc.sourceforge.net
Category: Machine Emulators
Platform: BSD, Linux, Windows
License: GNU GPL
Interface: GUI
Wikipedia: PearPC
First release: May 10, 2004
PearPC – an architecture independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running most PowerPC operating systems. It includes a JITC for x86-Processors.
PearPC is a multi-platform emulator of the PowerPC family of processors which enables operation of many operating systems, designed for PowerPC computers, such as: OS X, Darwin and GNU/Linux. It can be run on Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and other POSIX compatible systems. It is distributed under the GPL license. The first official version was released on May 10, 2004.
The emulator has an extension that dynamically translates the commands of the PowerPC architecture into commands of the IA-32 family of processors. This enables emulation even in real time.
Due to the nature of emulation, PearPC is quite slow (the client will run about 500 times slower than the host). Note that only the CPU is that slow, the speed of the emulated hardware doesn’t suffer that much from the emulation; e.g. the speed of simulated harddrive/CDROM is quite good, especially when using the busmaster interface. This situation is better if you can use the JITC (about 40 times slower) but still not ready for productive use.
Because the author has only access to little endian machine, PearPC will most likely only run on little endian architectures due to some stupid assumptions in the code. This shouldn’t be hard to fix, the author would fix this himself if he had big endian hardware.
Because of some equally stupid reasons PearPC will only run on 32-bit architectures.