FX!32 is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use pe ...

program that allows

Win32 The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...

programs built for the

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...

instruction set to execute on

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set compute ...

-based systems running

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...

. Released in 1996, FX!32 was developed by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

(DEC) to support their Alpha

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...

s. At the time, there was a belief that RISC-based microprocessors were likely to replace x86-based microprocessors, due to a more efficient and simplified implementation that could reach higher clock frequencies. The one thing that held the Alpha back was application-compatibility with existing Win32 x86 applications. Emulation had been around for a while as a concept, but FX!32 went one stage further. It analyzed the way programs worked and, after the program ran, used binary translation to produce dynamic-link library (DLL) files of native Alpha code that the application could execute the next time it ran. This way even in the early 1.0 release, the FX!32 achieved speeds for Win32 x86 applications that ran 40-50% as fast as native x86 code, with a 70% speed projected as likely with improved optimization. Maurice Marks served as manager of the technical team. Eric Perkins provided the primary information on Windows NT, and wrote a

runtime system In computer programming, a runtime system or runtime environment is a sub-system that exists both in the computer where a program is created, as well as in the computers where the program is intended to be run. The name comes from the compile t ...

to allow binary translated application to run on Intel Windows NT based machines. A prototype of the system was demonstrated at

COMDEX COMDEX (an abbreviation of COMputer Dealers' EXhibition) was a computer expo trade show held in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, United States, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually ...

in 1993.

References

FX!32: A Profile-Directed Binary Translator

DIGITAL FX!32: Running 32-Bit x86 Applications on Alpha NT
from the Proceedings of the USENIX Windows NT Workshop, Seattle, Washington, August 1997
DIGITAL FX!32: Combining Emulation and Binary Translation
from the Digital Technical Journal, Volume 9 Number 1, 1997

External links

FX!32 v1.5 download
- Rename to .exe extension. {{emulation-stub Digital Equipment Corporation X86 emulators