emulate

Emulate is a verb meaning to imitate or reproduce the function, behavior, or appearance of something, often with the aim of achieving equivalent performance on a different system or context. In technology, emulation refers to the replication of a hardware and software environment so that programs created for one system can run on another, often with varying degrees of accuracy.

In computing, emulation typically involves full-system emulation or instruction-set emulation. Full-system emulation recreates an entire target computer, including its CPU, memory, and I/O devices, while instruction-set emulation translates or interprets the target system’s instructions on a host machine. Techniques such as dynamic binary translation are used to improve speed by converting target code to host code on the fly. Emulation is contrasted with virtualization, which shares the host’s hardware resources and may not replicate an entire original architecture, potentially limiting compatibility for non-native software.

Common applications include preserving and running legacy software or games on modern hardware, testing software across different platforms, and researching hardware behavior without the original devices. Challenges include performance overhead, timing accuracy, and the difficulty of faithfully reproducing specialized hardware features or peripherals.

Emulate is also the name of a biotechnology company that specializes in organ-on-a-chip technology. Such companies develop microfluidic devices that mimic the physiology of human organs to model disease, test drugs, and study toxicology, offering alternatives to traditional animal and in vitro systems.

See also: emulator, virtualization, compatibility.