Felix86 is an x86-64 emulator for RISC-V hardware

Some programs and most games are designed for x86 hardware, and we’ve already seen projects like box86 x86 emulator for 32-bit Arm targets and Box64 x86-64 emulator for 64-bit Arm hardware to run games on Arm hardware.

The Felix86 x86-64 emulator is similar to Box64, except it targets specifically RISC-V hardware. The project is very new, but it can already run some Linux games like World of Goo 2, SuperTuxKart, and Quake OpenArena, while the Wine emulator can currently handle simple Windows games like Solitaire. You’ll find the full compatibility list on the project’s website.

Felix86 features:

• Just-in-Time (JIT) recompiler
• Uses the RISC-V Vector Extension for SSE instructions
• Utilizes the B extension, if available, for bit manipulation instructions like bsr
• Supports a variety of optional extensions, such as XThead custom extensions

You’ll find the source code on GitHub.

Testing has mostly been done on a Banana Pi BPI-F3 SBC powered by the SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V SoC. The screenshot above shows SuperTuxKart on the Ubuntu-based Bianbu Linux distributions using an AMD HD 7350 graphics card connected to the BPI-F3 through an mPCIe to PCIe adapter board.

However, the progress report (May 1, 2025) indicates the demo currently runs at 10 frames per second, so there’s more work to do to improve performance. The user experience will depend on the games, and we’re told VVVVVV could run at “decent” framerates, while World of Goo would only render at 0.5 FPS.

Other graphics cards were tried, notably an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti, but Nouveau drivers are missing in Bianbu, and an AMD Radeon HD 7790, which also had its own set of issues. So, for now at least, it’s better to stick to an AMD HD 7350 if you want to reproduce the setup above. The MILK-V Jupiter mini-ITX motherboard is probably a better hardware platform than the BPI-F3 SBC to play wth graphics cards since it features a proper PCIe slot and can also be installed in a mini-ITX chassis.

Via Hacker News

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