Talk:Binary translation

More historical examples
''To do: a few more historical examples. Including FX!32, IA-32 Execution Layer, HP Dynamo, Valgrind?'' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ferkelparade (talk • contribs) 14:16, 8 November 2005‎ (UTC


 * The article mentions FX!32 and the IA-32 Execution Layer. Guy Harris (talk) 17:02, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Apple's 68K emulator
I believe that Mac OS 8.5 was fully PPC native, whereas the article states that it wasn't until OS X. Somebody care to confirm this? - David McCabe (talk) 05:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

qemu
qemu - is it a binary translation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by A5b (talk • contribs) 23:50, 2 June 2010‎ (UTC)


 * According to the home page of the QEMU wiki as of right now, it uses binary translation. Guy Harris (talk) 14:54, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

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 * Worked, but I changed the reference to use and used a later archived copy. Guy Harris (talk) 19:58, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Binary *translation* vs. binary *recompilation*
We have pages binary translation and binary recompilation, and it's not obvious which forms of "take machine code as input and produce machine code as output" correspond to those terms.

Binary recompilation says:

"A binary recompiler is a compiler that takes executable binary files as input, analyzes their structure, applies transformations and optimizations, and outputs new optimized executable binaries."

which could include all those forms, although "and outputs new optimized executable binaries" suggests that this specifically refers to optimization, and that doesn't speak of generating binaries for an instruction set different from the input instruction set.

Binary translation says:

"In computing, binary translation is a form of binary recompilation where sequences of instructions are translated from a source instruction set to the target instruction set."

which seems to imply that it's for turning machine code for one instruction set into machine code for another instruction set, but then says

"In some cases such as instruction set simulation, the target instruction set may be the same as the source instruction set, providing testing and debugging features such as instruction trace, conditional breakpoints and hot spot detection."

which sounds like the exact same thing as binary recompilation.

So should we just merge the pages, or should "recompilation" refer to processing that goes from one instruction set to the same instruction set, and "translation" refer to processing that goes from one instruction set to a different instruction set, or what? Guy Harris (talk) 21:17, 5 January 2018 (UTC)