@spud101

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So apart from x86/ARM maybe being more value/speed for money the FPGA approach is much more efficient

It's also slow. Perhaps if it was turned into an ASIC it would be way faster. What does Intel use to prototype chips?

Yes emulating it instead of simulating it on an FPGA is a brute force method of doing it. But brute force is the Intel way of getting it done. And look how well UAE runs now days.

Modern x86 can operate in big endian so there's a speed up there again. Though I don't know if big endian read/write is much slower than normal or a register endian swap. Not that it matters anymore, since eventually we might see PPC emulators for x86-64, that runs rings around my X1000.

@Hypex

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What does Intel use to prototype chips?

Their own fabs.