When people think of a binary translator, they usually just think of the ISA aspects, as opposed to the complicated interactions with the OS etc. that can consume just as much (or even more) engineering effort overall.
How do you communicate with the rest of the organization? What is the lifecycle and release process like? Do you write requirements and specs for others (like validation or integration) to base their work on? Basically, what does the day to day work look like?
As far as Rosetta in particular was concerned, I think I was just in the right environment to consistently be in a flow state. I have had fleeting moments of depression upon the realization that I will probably never be this productive for an extended period of time ever again.
On your last point, I’ve felt something like that myself and I hold onto hope that it isn’t true for myself (and now for you in your future endeavors). But even if it is true, you achieved something superhuman in your niche and the vast majority of people throughout the history of time have no idea what that is like. Tasting Heaven cannot last too long while on Earth. Maybe AI will bring us a little bit closer to that Heaven.
I wonder if Apple's renowned secrecy is a help with this. If nobody outside your small team knows what you are doing then it is hard for them to stick their oar in.
QEMU was something like a factor of 5-10x slower than native, IIRC.
Flags are also tricky, though they're pretty well optimized. In the end the main issue with them is also the spilling, but QEMU's generic architecture makes it expensive to handle consecutive jump instructions for example.
I don't understand why Apple even bothers these days, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's gaming market is a quarter of what the Linux gaming market currently is (thanks to Valve and their work on proton and by extension wine)...
