Obituary for 32-bit

[dampflokfreund]

(06-11-2017, 05:25 AM)nveleven22 Wrote: I realize the drop in support happened years ago but I was just affected today by it.

Tablets with the Intel Atom quad core processor and HD graphics include the x64 instruction set an but because of the 32bit UEFI BIOS included on these devices, no one has successfully been able to install a 64 bit Windows Operating system. These include the Dell Venue, HP Stream, Winbooks, etc.

Dolphin would gain a lot of popularity by continuing to release builds for the 32bit flavors of Windows as many of us could enjoy Gamecube games on-the-go with a tablet attachable controller.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dolphin+tablet&spfreload=1

Yeah, I agree. Every quarter of a year or half a year with a 32 Bit release would please most people. I believe it could run on those Atom tablets, if Dolphin uses multi threading heavily. Dolphin has made so many changes that I would be confident they are able to run it on Atom cpus.

Also, with the release of Snapdragon ARM Windows devices it would make sense to compile for 32 bit again, since they only support x86 emulation.

[ExtremeDude2]

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/05/19/obituary-32bit/#maintenance

[dampflokfreund]

(01-04-2019, 06:18 AM)ExtremeDude2 Wrote: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/05/19/obituary-32bit/#maintenance

That is why I'm suggesting releasing only quarterly updates of Dolphin 32 bit.

[Helios]

No.

[mbc07]

Dolphin 32-bit support was dropped so long ago that you would probably need to write a 32-bit JIT from scratch to reintroduce it nowadays (hint: nobody is interested in that) and honestly, if your computer lacks support for AMD64 instruction set then it's something so old that it isn't even worth bothering trying to run Dolphin on it (even the ancient versions which did support 32-bit OS)...

[JosJuice]

Only releasing quarterly updates doesn't make it much easier. You still have to keep the 32-bit JIT around and working, which takes a significant amount of effort. And the lack of testing that the article mentions would be made much worse than it already was!

For the Snapdragon ARM Windows devices, it would make a lot more sense for us to just use our existing 64-bit ARM JIT.

[dampflokfreund]

(01-04-2019, 07:33 AM)JosJuice Wrote: Only releasing quarterly updates doesn't make it much easier. You still have to keep the 32-bit JIT around and working, which takes a significant amount of effort. And the lack of testing that the article mentions would be made much worse than it already was!

For the Snapdragon ARM Windows devices, it would make a lot more sense for us to just use our existing 64-bit ARM JIT.

Hm, okay. I thought 64 Bit to 32 Bit would be way easier than 64 Bit to ARM.

Then it makes no sense of course. My poor Intel Atom tablet...

[KHg8m3r]

Depending on what tablet you have, you should be able to reinstall Windows as 64-bit. All licensees are 32 and 64 bit.
Or install Linux as dual boot, and then only use it to run Dolphin (plus getting into Linux is fun)

[degasus]

(01-04-2019, 07:41 AM)dampflokfreund Wrote: Hm, okay. I thought 64 Bit to 32 Bit would be way easier than 64 Bit to ARM.

You are right, it is. It would be easier to port to 32bit Intel than to ARM. *But* we've already ported dolphin to ARM, just look up our Android version. Fun fact, we only support 64bit on ARM as well...