Cycle-Accurate 8088 Emulation – Daniel Balsom

Despite the age and popularity of the 8088 CPU, the secrets that allowed cycle-perfect emulation were only recently unlocked. In this talk I will discuss the various reasons for why cycle-accurate emulation of the 8088 is so difficult and describe the challenges faced and techniques used to develop MartyPC.

[atv]

Amazing presentation on the fascinating topic of instruction execution of the 8088. I really appreciate how he explains the approach he took to solve the problems.

[josephfatur]

Wow. Imagine deciphering the microcode design by looking at die images (assuming I understood this correctly). What clever boys do in their spare time. Geez.

[jess]

though it’s aimed ay fellow programmers Daniel does a great job explaining how the hardware works and the quirks of its memory addressing methods in a way the layman can understand really well. I could follow along and really start to understand what made emulating it a difficult task for the longest time

[migry]

Vey impressive project. Excellent presentation.

[thcoura]

I wonder if I will live enough to see the SPICE accurate sim of an old processor 😅