• stingpie@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Yes. Any turing complete processor can perfectly emulate any other turing complete processor, whether it is x86, arm, or riscv. Mainline Linux can then run on this emulated processor without modification.

    • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Damn that’s gonna be slow.

      But I guess speed was not a criterion.

      • stingpie@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Emulated processors can do the same things as physical processors, including booting from disk.

        • Ross_audio@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Boot = Bootstrap

          If you’ve loaded up a virtual CPU first that’s not a boot of mainline Linux on the CPU.

          • stingpie@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I respectfully disagree. The turning machine is not doing any set-up before the emulated CPU begins execution, and all of the actual BIOS is done by the emulated CPU.