Start-up makes x86 software run fast on Raspberry Pi and Odroid

A Moscow-based start-up says it has made it even easier to run thousands of x86-compatible applications available in the Raspberry Pi ecosystem.

Eltechs is the company behind the ExaGear Desktop which enables x86 applications such as Skype, Teamviewer, MS Word to run on Raspberry Pi, and other ARM-based devices, including Odroid.

It has been developing for the last two years a binary translator which allows x86 applications such as windows and Skype to run on Raspberry Pi without recompilation.

The x86 emulator has been around for a couple of years, but this latest version has a reduced data processing overhead of around 20-30%.

“We decided do not stop on it and focused last month on performance improvement of hard applications. As a result Google Chrome launch time speeded up twice: from 35 seconds to 17 second,” said Eltechs.

When you install an x86 app a shortcut automatically appears in start menu, which is then used to run the app.

There is also support of new Linux distributions and Ubuntu 15.04 is supported as well as new Raspbian released Sep 24 based on Debian 8 “Jessie” and provide Debian 8 “Jessie” guest image.

ExaGear is a virtual machine which runs Intel x86 applications on the ARM-based Raspberry Pi simultaneously with common native applications.

The virtual machine implements virtual x86 Linux container on ARM and makes it possible to run Intel x86 applications directly on ARM.

ExaGear Desktop System Requirements

Hardware requirements: