OpenRISC Emulator In JavaScript Can Run Wayland

An interesting open-source project pointed out to Phoronix this week was an OpenRISC emulator that's written in JavaScript. Making things more interesting is that it can now even run Wayland and a Linux image with keyboard support while being able to use JavaScript and other common open-source programs from this JavaScript-based emulator that runs in modern browsers.

The project is jor1k, an OpenRISC 1000 emulator written in JavaScript and running Linux. This emulator can then be run by any modern JS-enabled web browser complete with demo pages.

Committed to the repository on Friday was support for a keyboard device and a Wayland image and new Linux image with keyboard and epoll support, per the GitHub log.

The 4MB Wayland image runs the Weston compositor and can handle a few demos and a terminal. The jor1k OpenRISC emulator also has options for running an X window system with twm and glxgears, a graphics demo with ScummVM Monkey Island, and also an image that has the GCC compiler.

Emulated hardware specs for this system include a 32-bit OR1000 emulator, 63MB of RAM, UART 16550 support, an ocfb frame-buffer at 6400 x 400, an ATA hard drive, a Linux terminal emulator, and a 7MB image with the Linux 3.11 kernel and Busybox. As provided in the technical details, various optimizations were made to improve the emulator's performance due to the use of JavaScript.

More information on this JavaScript-based OpenRISC 1000 emulator can be found via the GitHub Wiki.

Thanks to Phoronix reader Sebastian Macke for pointing out the jor1k emulator and its landed Wayland support. Sebastian is also one of its developers.