This would presumably let x86 windows games run on ARM hardware.
This is almost certainly meant for the next Valve VR headset, but ARM has so much better power efficiency than x86 that a future ARM based Deck would be a huge improvement to battery life.
Also see this tweet:
VR games that have already secretly pushed Android ARM builds onto the Steam Store are ran via Waydroid (androidARM to LinuxARM)
VR games that do not have an ARM build on Steam (windows x86) are being translated/emulated via ProtonARM and FEX
Winlator already does this on Android, for what it’s worth. Oblivion plays fine on my phone although touch input sucks.
As for games on Asahi, there’s box64/box86 to accelerate games (redirecting graphics APIs and such to native code).
You can already run apps made for foreign architectures by simply installing the right qemu package (not the virtual machine, the binary translator) and running the software using standard Wine. Conversely, you can also run Raspberry Pi software this way on normal PCs, which has proven very useful to me for cross compilation scenarios.
I assume Valve will take all of this tech and optimise it a bit more. If you’re on a MacBook, your biggest challenge will probably be driver support, which is advancing at a rapid pace, but I’m not sure if you can get maximum performance out of it yet.
