“A Silicon Valley startup claims to have cracked one of most elusive goals of the software industry: a near-universal emulator that allows software developed for one platform to run on any other, with almost no performance hit,” Leander Kahney reports for Wired News. “Transitive Corp. of Los Gatos, California, claims its QuickTransit software allows applications to run ‘transparently’ on multiple hardware platforms, including Macs, PCs, and numerous servers and mainframes.”
“In demonstrations to press and analysts, the company has shown a graphically demanding game — a Linux version of Quake III — running on an Apple PowerBook… Transitive launched the software on Monday with versions for Itanium, Opteron, x86 and Power/PowerPC chips,” Kahney reports. “The company is initially going after the server and mainframe markets because that’s where the money is, but said it will eventually focus on desktop PCs and consumer electronics. It claims QuickTransit will support almost any pairing of processor and operating system. Transitive said it already has six customers — all PC manufacturers — but declined to name them. The first will go public later this year, Transitive said. Transitive said QuickTransit allows a foreign application to do everything it does on its native platform, with 100 percent functionality.”
“QuickTransit fully supports accelerated 3-D graphics and about 80 percent computational performance on the main processor. It requires no user intervention: It kicks in automatically when a non-native application is launched,” Kahney reports. “‘It’s pretty darn impressive,’ said analyst Jim Turley. ‘It’s remarkable because it’s unremarkable (to see it in action): It just works.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If this really works, Virtual PC won’t be doing great business in the future. This would also remove one of the greatest remaining psychological stumbling blocks for Windows users wishing to switch to Macintosh: their Windows software would run on their new Mac OS X machines at usable speeds. These switchers could then upgrade their applications to Mac OS X versions over time at their own pace. If this is for real, Microsoft won’t like this one bit. More about information about Transitive here.
Startup? Kahney is late as usual; I first heard about Transitive about three years ago, then not a peep until now. I suspect that they had much greater difficulty with their development than they had anticipated, because it seems as if they’ve scaled back their performance claims from what I recall. I seem to remember them saying that there would be “virtually no degradation” which sounded like BS to me at the time, given the fact that they had to add an emulation layer to the target system. I agree with many of you; I’ll believe it when I see it. And dmiller’s comment is right on target. What about AltiVec performance? How will they emulate that?
Forgot to let you all know: I’m ba-aack! My family and I made it through Hurricane Ivan unscathed, and I want to offer my heartfelt gratitude to Hg Wells, Seahawk, Mac & PC Guy and DNA for your words of prayer and encouragement. I can’t tell you what it meant to me during a terrifying experience. Power hasn’t been restored as yet (could be 3-4 weeks given the widespread damage here in Jamaica), and partial phone service was re-established just this morning, so I’m on dial-up for the foreseeable future. It’s great to read your posts again.