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I've been working on a project on an IBM POWER8 system. I'd like to translate some very simple binaries from x86-64 to PPC.

Is there a tool that can either:

  1. Translate the binary from x86-64 to PPC (similar to how Apple Rosetta did PPC to x86-64)
  2. Decompile the x86-64 binary into C code (doesn't need to be human readable) so that I can recompile it on a PPC system

I'd love to know if there's any other way to get that done as well.

EDIT: Also, I'm not comfortable using commercial software, but am okay with closed-source.

Thanks!

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    To the person who downvoted, I'd love to know why and learn from that. Thanks.
    – TajyMany
    Feb 18, 2018 at 21:47

1 Answer 1

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For 1, there is QEMU which can be built for PPC and supports i386 and x86-64 emulation. If you run Linux, there may already be a precompiled package available for your distro.

For 2, there are some decompilers which can produce C pseudocode from x86-64 binaries. Alternatively, tools like McSema can perform lifting to LLVM bitcode which can then be recompiled to PPC (in theory).

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  • Thanks for your answer! With QEMU, I can see that User-Mode Emulation would allow me to run that binary on PPC. However, is there software that actually "translates" the binary itself to run natively on PPC? Also, sorry I didn't state this in the answer, but McSema uses commercial software, which I can't use. Are there any alternatives to this? Thanks again!
    – TajyMany
    Feb 18, 2018 at 22:14
  • if you want to have completely independent native PPC binaries you'll have to go with option 2. Note that Rosetta worked like QEMU - it ran unmodified binaries via emulation.
    – Igor Skochinsky ♦
    Feb 19, 2018 at 12:42
  • Alright, thanks! Do you know any resources that would help me get that emulation setup? Again, I don’t want to install an operating system emulating PowerPC, but I want to run an emulated PowerPC program. I can’t find too many resources online for that.
    – TajyMany
    Feb 19, 2018 at 13:27
  • wait, first you ask about emulating x86 on PPC and now the other way around? Ask on superuser.com or something, this does not seem related to RE.
    – Igor Skochinsky ♦
    Feb 19, 2018 at 18:11
  • Sorry was confused, was leaving for a flight; meant I don’t want an OS emulating x86, but instead emulating an x86 program on PPC
    – TajyMany
    Feb 19, 2018 at 20:48

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