Running x86_64 Apps on an AArch64 Desktop: A FEX-Emu Experiment
2025-08-07
This post details an experiment running x86-64 applications on an Ampere Altra-based AArch64 desktop system using FEX-emu. While Steam and Factorio ran, performance was poor, scoring a measly 459 and 4110 on Geekbench 6's single and multi-core tests respectively. Optimizations to FEX-emu's configuration and replacing the x86_64 version of the Ninja build tool with an aarch64 version yielded some performance improvements. Ultimately, the author concludes that x86_64 emulation on this AArch64 system is limited in practicality, primarily useful for running older games.
Development
x86_64 emulation