pax86 - Main Page

What is pax86?

pax86 is the name of my x86 emulator core. The purpose of pax86 is to allow running old DOS games and other x86 processor architecture software on devices that use ARM or MIPS processor architecture. It is available for commercial licensing.

See my blog for latest news about pax86, and see the sections below for more information about pax86.

Here is a video capture of my Asus Nexus 7 Android tablet running Doom in pax86:

Supported platforms

Currently pax86 runs on the following platforms and processor architectures:

CPU architecture Example Platforms Example Implementations
ARMv5 Nintendo DS DSx86
ARMv6 Raspberry Pi, Roku 3 rpix86
ARMv7 Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 8 Raiden Legacy mobile game by DotEmu
MIPS32r1 SuperCard DSTwo DS2x86
MIPS32r2 GCW Zero zerox86

Features

Here are some feature highlights of pax86:

Performance

The following table lists the Doom timedemo test results on various platforms. Please note that these results also count the platform-specific front end code (drawing the emulated game screen on the device display, playing audio using the device features, etc) which are not part of the actual pax86 emulation core available for licensing.

real tics avg fps SoC/CPU Type Device Corresponding x86 CPU speed
2660 28.1 ARMv7 (Tegra 3 @ 1.3 Ghz) Nexus 7 Tablet 80486 @ 100MHz
5387 13.8 ARMv7 (Snapdragon S3 @ 1 Ghz) Nokia Lumia 520 80486 @ 50MHz
6451 11.6 MIPS32r2 @ 1 Ghz GCWZero 80486 @ 40MHz
14352 5.1 MIPS32r1 @ 396MHz DSTwo 80386 @ 33MHz
24112 3.1 ARMv6 @ 700MHz Raspberry Pi 80386 @ 20MHz

Licensing

pax86 is available for non-exclusive worldwide commercial licensing. Licensing pax86 allows you to re-release your legacy DOS software on contemporary devices with very little porting work. Contact me for licensing details. To avoid spam I don't have a mailto link in here, instead I give you this hint: My email address is simply my first name at my domain name. Domain name meaning "patrickaalto.com".