I’m just inviting a little fun with this “what is an emulator” question (my brain doesn’t really hurt). Mostly the question is moot nowadays, since microcode is fading into retro land, although Intel processors probably still have some for implementing legacy, low performance instructions. Or do the recent Intel CPUs simply have a hardware translator from x86-ish to an internal RISC instruction set that is then injected into the pipeline?
Yes, the MIPS architecture was implemented in “vertical microcode” on a 4004. Next challenge: boot Linux on a Motorola MC14500B one-bit controller. (
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