Box64 and RISC-V in 2024: What It Takes to Run the Witcher 3 on RISC-V
In August 2024, The Witcher 3 became the first AAA game to run on RISC-V architecture, showcasing advancements in emulation despite ongoing challenges with x86 instruction support and performance.
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In August 2024, significant progress was reported in running x86 games on RISC-V architecture, particularly with the successful execution of The Witcher 3, marking it as the first AAA game to run on a RISC-V machine. This achievement was made possible through the Box64 emulator, Wine, and DXVK, following a year of development that included fixing numerous bugs in the RV64 DynaRec and implementing new x86 instructions. Initially, the RISC-V backend could only handle simpler Linux games due to limitations in graphics support and instruction set completeness. The introduction of devices like the Milk-V Pioneer, which supports AMD graphics cards, allowed for broader testing and improvements. Despite the advancements, challenges remain, particularly in the emulation of certain x86 instructions that are not well-supported in RISC-V, leading to less efficient translations. The current implementation of RISC-V still lacks critical instructions for efficient x86 emulation, which affects performance. Nevertheless, the ability to run The Witcher 3 at up to 15 frames per second demonstrates the potential of RISC-V for gaming applications.
- The Witcher 3 is the first AAA game successfully run on a RISC-V machine.
- Progress in RISC-V emulation has been made through the Box64 emulator and new hardware support.
- RISC-V currently lacks certain x86 instructions, impacting emulation efficiency.
- The Milk-V Pioneer and other devices have enabled better graphics support for RISC-V.
- Despite limitations, RISC-V shows promise for future gaming applications.
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- Commenters express curiosity about the technical differences in software engineering for RISC-V compared to x86, particularly regarding optimization and instruction set limitations.
- There is a recognition of the challenges faced in emulating x86 on RISC-V, with some noting the need for more instructions to achieve feature parity.
- Several users share their experiences with other emulation projects and hardware, highlighting the growing capabilities of RISC-V and its potential for gaming.
- Optimizations and performance comparisons between RISC-V and other architectures, such as ARM and x86, are discussed, emphasizing the importance of efficient instruction sets.
- Overall, the comments reflect a mix of excitement and skepticism about the future of RISC-V in gaming and computing.
24 commentsI would imagine that executable size increases, meaning it has to be aggressively optimized for cache locality?
I would imagine that some types of softwares are better suited for either CISC or RISC, like games, webservers?
Elbrus has native translator, though, and pretty good one, afaik. Atomic Heart was kinda playable, 15-25 fps.
RISC was explained to me as a reduced instruction set computer in computer science history classes, but I see a lot of articles and proposed new RISC-V profiles about "we just need a few more instructions to get feature parity".
I understand that RISC-V is just a convenient alternative to other platforms for most people, but does this also mean the RISC dream is dead?
I'm wondering, how's the landscape nowadays. Is this the leading project for x86 compatibility on ARM? With the rising popularity of the architecture for consumer platforms, I'd guess companies like Valve would be interested in investing in these sort of translation layers.
And:
Milk-V Pioneer A 64-core, RISC-V motherboard and workstation for native development
Since RISC-V ISA is worldwide royalty free and more than nice, I am writting basic rv64 assembly which I do interpret on x86_64 hardware with a linux kernel.
I did not push the envelop up to have a "compiler", because it is indeed while waiting for hardcore performant desktop, aka large, rv64 hardware implementations.
This is just insane and gets us full-circle to why we want RISC-V.
Wow...that's substantially more than I would have guessed. Good times ahead for hardware
Hey! ;-)
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