Dominik Behr and his AI partners released IRIS, a Rust‑written emulator for the SGI Indy workstation. The tool reproduces the MIPS R4400 hardware well enough to launch IRIX 6.5 and 5.3, complete with a shell, networking stack and X11 graphics. Development leaned heavily on Claude and Gemini, which generated much of the complex code. The effort also serves as a proof‑of‑concept for vibe‑driven development, showing how Rust learners can tackle legacy hardware.

Current builds support multi‑user boot, ping, telnet and FTP, while the optional Cranelift‑based JIT translates hot MIPS blocks to native x86‑64. Graphics can run with a REX3 shader JIT, and a copy‑on‑write overlay protects the base disk image during testing. Build flags let users enable lightning speed, JIT, or graphics acceleration as needed. Headless mode enables CI pipelines, and port forwarding lets developers interact with the guest via telnet, simplifying automation.

The project ships under a BSD‑3 clause license, and the repository accepts bug reports and merge requests. A detailed README walks newcomers through required disk images, PROM files and command‑line features, while a “rules” directory documents hard‑won JIT debugging lessons. IRIS demonstrates that large language models can contribute substantive low‑level systems code without sacrificing openness. Performance benchmarks place the JIT‑enabled build at roughly twice the speed of the interpreter, making everyday development tolerable.