Digitalis — ARM64-to-x86_64 Binary Translation

Architecture

Berberis is AOSP's binary translation framework, part of Android's NativeBridge system. It provides the core infrastructure for translating guest architecture instructions to host machine code at runtime — including a JIT compiler, an interpreter, an instruction decoder, syscall emulation, and proxy libraries. Berberis currently supports RISC-V-to-x86_64 translation in upstream AOSP.

Berberis (upstream AOSP)

RISC-V APK

→

NativeBridge

→

JIT / Interpreter

→

x86_64 Host

Digitalis extends Berberis with an ARM64 backend, enabling ARM64-only Android apps to run on x86_64 emulators. It reuses Berberis's translation infrastructure while adding ARM64 instruction decoding, JIT code generation, and interpreter support.

Digitalis (this project)

ARM64 APK

→

NativeBridge

→

JIT / Interpreter

→

x86_64 Host

JIT Compiler (Lite Translator)

Translates ARM64 regions to native x86_64 machine code. Handles ~98% of instructions. Translated regions are cached for reuse.

~98% coverage

Interpreter

Per-instruction fallback for syscalls, complex SIMD operations, and edge cases the JIT can't handle.

fallback path

Read the full how-it-works.md on GitHub → — complete walkthrough including register mapping, translation lifecycle, NZCV flag emulation, syscall path, proxy library forwarding, and the ARM64 → x86_64 instruction-mapping reference.

Features

JIT Compiler

Lite Translator converts ARM64 to native x86_64 machine code. Translated regions are cached for reuse, delivering near-native performance.

Interpreter Fallback

Per-instruction execution for syscalls, complex SIMD, and anything the JIT can't handle. Ensures complete ARM64 coverage.

Proxy Libraries

21 host libraries — Vulkan, libc/libm, EGL/GLES, AAudio, camera, NDK binder, NNAPI, JNI helpers — forwarded to native x86_64 implementations, with GPU-accelerated Vulkan via GFXStream VkDecoder. OpenGL ES is driven by ANGLE, which implements it on top of Vulkan in-guest — giving full OpenGL ES 3.2 and hardware MSAA on the host GPU. Symbols the auto-generated marshallers can't handle are covered in-surface with custom trampolines, including JNIEnv translation and host→guest callbacks.

84 Sample Apps

Ported NDK samples, Digitalis proxy-lib smoke tests, ARM-extension probes, full-engine samples, and third-party native-library integration samples prove end-to-end translation: Vulkan, OpenGL ES 1.x/2/3 (incl. an ES 3.2 EGL repro and a multisample/MSAA 1x/2x/4x/8x sample), OpenSLES + AAudio + Oboe, camera, MIDI, sensors, NDK binder, NNAPI, the Qt 6, React Native + Hermes, and Lynx + PrimJS UI engines; media and imaging (ijkplayer, libVLC, FFmpegKit, Fresco, GPUImage, libpag, gif-drawable, PDFium, RenderScript Toolkit); vision/ML (OpenCV, TensorFlow Lite, LiteRT-LM, PyTorch Mobile, ncnn, ZXing, Tesseract OCR); crypto/DB/storage (SQLCipher, Conscrypt, libsignal, Realm, ObjectBox, MMKV, zstd, QuickJS, Cronet); AndroidX-native (sqlite-bundled, graphics-path, camera-core, tracing-perfetto, AppSearch/Icing, Ink); plus NEON, FP16, BFloat16, FCMA, dot-product, I8MM integer matrix-multiply, JSCVT, PAC, LSE/LRCPC atomics, LDXP/STXP, CRC32/CRC32C, and SHA/AES crypto.

Getting Started

# Clone

$ mkdir digitalis && cd digitalis

$ repo init -b android-latest-release -u git@github.com:DigitalisX64/manifest.git

$ repo sync -c -d --no-tags --force-sync

# Build

$ source build/envsetup.sh

$ lunch sdk_phone64_x86_64_digitalis-trunk_staging-userdebug

$ m

# Run emulator

$ emulator -memory 4096 -writable-system -qemu -cpu host &

# Install and test

$ cd sample/hellodigitalis && ./gradlew assembleDebug

$ adb install hello-vulkan/build/outputs/apk/debug/hello-vulkan-debug.apk

$ adb shell am start -n com.example.hellodigitalis/android.app.NativeActivity

Sample Apps

ARM64-only APKs running on an x86_64 emulator via NativeBridge translation.

# Build all sample modules (ARM64-only APKs)

$ cd sample/hellodigitalis && ./gradlew assembleDebug

# Install and run

$ adb install hello-vulkan/build/outputs/apk/debug/hello-vulkan-debug.apk

$ adb shell am start -n com.example.hellodigitalis/android.app.NativeActivity

✓ Vulkan triangle rendered via NativeBridge translation

hello-vulkan

hello-gl2

gles3jni

teapots-classic

teapots-more

teapots-textured

native-activity

native-audio

native-codec

native-midi

hello-jni

hello-jniCallback

endless-tunnel

bitmap-plasma

camera-basic

camera-texture-view

sensor-graph

sanitizers

vectorization

orderfile

exceptions

unit-test

hello-gles1

hello-aaudio

hello-binder-ndk

hello-nnapi

hello-neon

hello-fp16

hello-bf16

hello-fp-vector

hello-complex

hello-dotprod

hello-widemul

hello-jscvt

hello-pac-ret

hello-lse

hello-lrcpc

hello-barriers

hello-sha-crypto

hello-ld-interleave

hello-libc-libm

hello-bti

hello-superpack-regress

hello-gles3

hello-msaa

hello-reactnative

hello-lynx

hello-mmkv

hello-qt

hello-ijkplayer

hello-opencv

hello-sqlcipher

hello-conscrypt

hello-graphics-path

hello-gif

hello-zxing

hello-quickjs

hello-sqlite-bundled

hello-tflite

hello-litert-llm

hello-libpag

hello-zstd

hello-libvlc

hello-ink

hello-appsearch

hello-libsignal

hello-fresco

hello-objectbox

hello-pdfium

hello-tracing-perfetto

hello-renderscript-toolkit

hello-pytorch

hello-gpuimage

hello-camera-core

hello-tesseract

hello-oboe

hello-ffmpeg-kit

hello-ncnn

hello-realm

hello-aes

hello-cronet

hello-ldxp

hello-cntvct

hello-sigaction

Beyond the in-tree samples, real unmodified third-party ARM64 APKs are tracked on the Verified Apps page.