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Microsoft says “Prism” translation layer does for Arm PCs what Rosetta did for Macs (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] woelkchen 20 points 6 months ago (1 children)

For example, in the early days of World of Warcraft, it actually ran better on WINE on Linux than natively on Windows.

WINE literally stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

To be fair this is also a translation layer and not an emulator.

[–] woelkchen 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

To be fair this is also a translation layer and not an emulator.

Prism is an x86 emulator for ARM. If you think that Prism is "a translation layer and not an emulator", I refer you to the very first word of the second to last paragraph of the submitted article.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's assuming the writer knows what they're talking about. Last line from the second paragraph:

Windows 11 has similar translation capabilities, and with the Windows 11 24H2 update, that app translation technology is getting a name: Prism.

And first line from the third paragraph.

Microsoft says that Prism isn’t just a new name for the same old translation technology.

[–] woelkchen -3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

That’s assuming the writer knows what they’re talking about.

Certainly more than you because Prism emulates an x86 CPU and WINE doesn't, therefore the WINE comparison is still wrong.

Edit: Please prove the writer wrong.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This article seems to conflate "emulation" and "translation layer". I don't think there is anything that confirms "Prism emulates an x86 CPU", only that it allows for running x86 code on ARM. This does not inherently require emulation as demonstrated by Rosetta 2, which is a translation layer.

[–] woelkchen 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

only that it allows for running x86 code on ARM. This does not inherently require emulation as demonstrated by Rosetta 2, which is a translation layer.

WINE doesn't "translate" one CPU architecture to another CPU architecture either, so the WINE comparison is still wrong, no mater if CPU translation is called emulation by you or not. WINE is a wrapper for API calls within the same CPU architecture. That's it.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

WINE doesn’t “translate” one CPU architecture to another CPU architecture

Wrong again.

[–] woelkchen 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

"Windows apps are mostly compiled for x86 and they won't run on ARM with bare Wine"

What you linked is an effort to combine WINE with the QEMU x86 emulator which is an emulator because it emulates CPU calls. Hint that it's an emulator is in the name "QEMU" and an actual quote from the wiki page you linked and clearly didn't care to read: "Running Windows/x86 Applications: See Emulation"

EDIT: Let me also quote from the readme file of the Hangover project:

Hangover uses various emulators as DLLs (pick one that suits your needs, e.g. works for you) to only emulate the application you want to run instead of emulating a complete Wine installation.