Windows IA-64 guest support

[binarymaster]

I wonder if this software could support Windows for IA-64 as guest system one day, at least Windows XP 64-Bit Edition that targeted original Itanium / Merced processor.

Recently I also found out that HP-UX could run such guests virtualized: https://virtuallyfun.com/2024/09/23/windows-server-2008-ia64-guest-on-hp-integrity-vm-hp-ux/ - maybe this information could help achieve emulation of Windows for Itanium-based systems.

[trofi]

It's probably not easy to run windows as a guest. Today ski relies on a few things to get something running: modified guest kernel has to to pass data in and out for the console output (for example), to emulate block device (instead of simulating real bus like PCI), there is no real ACPI namespace exported to the guest. No video card support either.

[BHTY]

It could probably be more feasible to use Ski to run Win64/IA-64 applications while not actually booting IA-64 Windows, instead using the CPU emulator while thunking up API calls, in a similar manner to my EmuWOW project.

[sskras]

Some related project (of userland emulation) could be found here: @itanium64 | https://itanium64.github.io/

It lived through two rewrites: Go –> Rust –> C#, only to get abandoned, it seems.

[Vincent392]

It could probably be more feasible to use Ski to run Win64/IA-64 applications while not actually booting IA-64 Windows, instead using the CPU emulator while thunking up API calls, in a similar manner to my EmuWOW project.

By the time you would even be able to GET there, ski would probably be able to load the IA-64 NTOSKRNL anyways and boot the whole OS as making Ski into an app layer would require a whole rewrite.

[BHTY]

It could probably be more feasible to use Ski to run Win64/IA-64 applications while not actually booting IA-64 Windows, instead using the CPU emulator while thunking up API calls, in a similar manner to my EmuWOW project.

By the time you would even be able to GET there, ski would probably be able to load the IA-64 NTOSKRNL anyways and boot the whole OS as making Ski into an app layer would require a whole rewrite.

Making Ski into an app layer would not require a whole rewrite, it would just require only using the CPU emulation portion of Ski, which wouldn't need to be changed at all. Moreover, the level of CPU emulation needed to run some simple Windows apps is a lot simpler than what's needed to execute NTOSKRNL.