A JIT Compiler for DOSBOX? \ VOGONS

A JIT Compiler for DOSBOX?

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First post, by orac81

Posted on 2024-07-14, 10:35

orac81 Offline

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I have recently made an old DOS checkers playing program of mine open source.

(Dynamo Draughts:Dynamo Draughts 9.18, vintage DOS game with source.)

Now on (rough) testing, both directly in DOS and under DOSBOX emulation in Linux with a fixed depth search (IE identical task for both) DOSBOX seems to be around 100 times slower than running native code.
Has anyone considered or tried adding a JIT Compiler to DOSBOX? Or is there another emulator that does this? The Amiga emulator WinUAE does have a JIT Compiler, which gives an improved performance. There are some programs that don't work with it, so it needs to be easy to switch it off.

Thoughts?

https://github.com/orac81

Reply 1 of 5, by jmarsh

Posted on 2024-07-14, 21:03

jmarsh Offline

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It already has one, that's what the dynamic core does (set core to either auto or dynamic in the config).
It will still never be as fast as native code executed on the same machine because that's just how emulation overhead works - you don't get extra features at zero cost.

Reply 2 of 5, by Azarien

Posted on 2024-07-16, 12:50

Azarien Offline

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Still, 100 times slower seems like huge overhead…

Reply 3 of 5, by orac81

Posted on 2024-07-17, 14:17

orac81 Offline

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Ah ok, I was using an older DOSBOX, I will dig around and try that out, thanks.

https://github.com/orac81

Reply 4 of 5, by leileilol

Posted on 2024-07-17, 15:22

leileilol Offline

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IIRC certain downstreams carry DOSBox binary without a dynamic recompiler for security reasons, so you're likely better off compiling DOSbox from the SVN yourself.

long live PCem

Reply 5 of 5, by jmarsh

Posted on 2024-07-17, 22:59

jmarsh Offline

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Rather than a security risk, I think it's because 0.74 was released before the dynamic_x86 core was 64-bit compatible so any 64-bit PC builds only use the slower "generic" dynamic core.

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