"Step Toward Universal Computing"

[xortam]

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.

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.

[Kurt]

QuickTransit...somehow "laxative" comes to mind...

[schmosef]

I'm skeptical... but interested. There are some Mac games I'd love to play on my PC.

[Dr Mordrid]

Unless you have multiple cores or CPU's matching each of the OS's you plan to run I don't see how this will differ from any other emulator; they're generally slow and inconsistant.

Dr. Mordrid

[Sasq]

Most emulators run a line at a time.

From what they say, the convert blocks of the code into a 'common' syntax then run. which also would allow conversion of code during cpu inactivity.

Dont belive a word of it yet, I'll tell you when i see it actually running

[xortam]

That's correct ... the code is translated at a macro level so its possible to take advantage of efficiencies of various architectures. The concept is good and apparently they've had good success so far. I'd question how many apps would be capable of running in this environment as many programmers hack implementations to get around performance and compatibility issues. Well written apps will probably do just fine. The biggest issue may be, who supports the apps now? The user is always going to have to replicate bugs on an approved platform before the app vendor will look at the problem. The app vendors will eventually have to support the QuickTransit VMs if this thing really takes off.

[rylan]

Originally posted by xortam
... Well written apps will probably do just fine...

I guess that rules out any software by Microsoft!