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Universal Emulators Return
webmilhouse writes "Wired has an article about Transitive Corporation that claims their software "allows any software application binary to run on any processor/operating system" without any performance hit. That would allow any program written for Windows to run on Linux or Mac, and vice-versa, which Wired likened to digital alchemy. The Transitive software is supposed to be released today. What do you think, vaporware or miracle?"
that's not possible, just translating to another set of instructions takes some of the cpu's resources
According to TFA, this is a pre-compiler/translator, not an emulator. i.e. The entire program is recompiled for another platform using only the binary data as the source. This is theoretically possible and has been attempted many times, but such compilers often trip over levels of indirection that programmers add.
For example, a programmer might place the video address in a variable, then reference that for screen paints. Such a trick would be impossible to detect at compile time, and would only be properly handled by a true emulator.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
When I can run Office 2003 natively inside Linux then we can talk.
Define 'natively'. Because Crossover Office can run Office 2003 on Linux just fine, today.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
...that they seemed to run only processor-native code. Even Linux-Quake: Linux IS ported to the Mac ;-)
And the example of the XBox: Xbox is essentially a PC anyway.
This looks more like the technique the WINE project is using: Run a program on it's native hardware platform on another OS by making library- and systemcall-wrappers.
If that is indeed the case, "translating the code page-wise" can be translated to "re-linking dynamically loadable code page-wise".
Just my 2 cents
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
The marketing jargon goes a bit over the top, but it isn't impossible to translate code for one ISA to an intermediate form, optimize it, and then generate code for another ISA. I don't know that it's revolutionary either. Note that LLVM takes a similar approach, and has a very simple intermediate form. I hear someone on their team is working on a PPC front-end, and as for language front-ends, Java and C# is in the works.
Getting back to Transitives, in July 2001, they claimed to already be doing x86->MIPS translation, which bodes well for x86->PPC. However, doing things efficiently the other way around is tougher. And of course you need to support or translate a ton of the native OS API calls etc. It'll be interesting to see for Windows on Linux (for example) if they require a copy of Windows to run the binaries.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
After reading this, the term Universal Emulator doesn't seem to apply. Here is the text from Transitive's Website:
Honk if you're horny.
"Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group said Transitive benefits from the fact that most modern machines are fast enough to emulate each other without much affecting performance."
All I needed to know. This guy will say anything and if he appears in your press release (yeah, it's an "article" but certainly the material is in a press release), chances are you're straining for credible commentary.
Do a Google search for PearPC. People have most certainly gotten MacOS X running on their x86 boxes.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The graphic on Transitive's website shows only Unix/Linux operating systems. One of their steps, Operating System Mapping, says "QuickTransit supports operating system mapping between any two Unix/Linux-like operating systems, as well as mapping between mainframe and any Unix/Linux-like operating systems." Doesn't sound like Windows to me.
All of this is supposedly done on the fly, and not beforehand.
Quake and The Gimp wouldn't be my choices to show off flexibility. Quake is OpenGL on Linux and OSX, so there isn't any graphics magic going on. And the ability of BSD-based systems to run Linux binaries is old hat. The Gimp isn't exactly taxing on a CPU as far as user responsiveness goes.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Press conferences for journalists aren't a conducive forum for proving anything. They are a good place to baffle 'em with bullshit, though.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
and
so yes, it does affect performance. You take a 20% hit. The "almost no performance hit" means, in this context, "computers are fast enough that no one will notice unless they're doing something crazy like video editing. Go back to surfing slashdot."
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Stephen Hawking starts his book A Brief History Of Time with an anecdote about a scientist giving a public lecture on the nature of the earth, the solar system, and the galaxy. After his talk, an elderly woman rises from her chair and says "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." "Ah. And what is the tortoise standing on?" asks the scientist. "You're very clever, young man, very clever," retorts the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."
_ cu lture_media/ture_turtles.asp
http://www.imdiversity.com/villages/native/arts
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Do a Google search for PearPC. People have most certainly gotten MacOS X running on their x86 boxes.
I have. PearPC has been great for firing up Safari and Mac IE on my AMD 64 3200+ box to test websites. It's no speed demon, though. It's sluggish even on my system. The PearPC folks state that performance is roughly 1/40th that of native.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc