The Scourge of x86 Emulation

Welcome to the first feature article on our site. We’re going to cover an ongoing problem with x86 emulation that affects every application that we emulate. This comes down to a single over-arching term that has wide-reaching ramifications; Emulating the x86 Total Store Ordering memory model (x86-TSO) .

The problems with emulating this memory model on the weak ordering memory model that ARM defines is multi-faceted and covers multiple issues. We’re going to go over all the problems that we can encounter and the ways we solve (or in some cases can’t solve) in this article. Get yourself a snack and a warm drink to enjoy, this is going to be a long one.