An Emulator is a tool or application which imitates another computer, hardware, platform, etc. The emulators are generally used to run different applications, games, or operating systems on different platforms. For example, an emulator can be used to run Windows applications on macOS operating system and platform.
What Is Emulator?
An emulator can be software or hardware but generally, the software is used to run applications on different platforms in an easy and cost-effective way. Actually, the term emulator is used for a wide range of applications like application emulator, OS emulator, driver emulator, etc. One of the popular use cases for emulators is the games where a game created and designed for a specific platform or hardware can be executed on different platforms and hardware. For example, many old arcade games can be run on Windows computers or PCs by using emulators even if they are created for different platforms like AMIG, Atari, etc.
How does Emulator Works?
Emulators’ main purpose is the ability to translate the guest application or operating system instructions into the host operating system or platform. Also, the host operating system functions and resources should be provided to the guest application or operating system.
Emulator Types
An emulator is a very popular tool that can be used in different cases with different types. Below is the list of the emulator types.
OS Emulators are used to emulate operating systems. There are different types of operating systems and platforms like Windows, Linux, MacOS, Unix, etc. It is not possible to run Windows on Linux without any emulator. But business requirements force different scenarios like running Windows on Linux systems. The OS Emulators are used to run Windows On Linux.
Game Emulator is used to emulate different gaming platforms like Atari, Playstation, etc. Game emulators are generally used to run a single game or game application for a PC or MacOS. One of the most popular emulator types is Game Emulator as it is easy to implement and very popular. An atari game can be played on a PC easily without the need for hardware or software of the Atari.