| [Forum] A big step forward in cross-platform computing | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 15-Sep-2004 22:32 GMT by Gary Goldberg | 39 comments
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By Leander Kahney
02:00 AM Sep. 13, 2004 PT
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...
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,64914,00.html?tw=wn_6techhead
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| A big step forward in cross-platform computing : Comment 39 of 39 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 21-Sep-2004 08:24 GMT | In reply to Comment 35 (MarkTime):
Obviously, if I have a program that calls another program, and that other program doesn't exist...
then transitive can't do anything about that.
So if I have a windows binary, and I call some OS DLL's, but that OS DLL doesn't exist...i.e.
you never installed windows and you don't have a license for it...then that binary WILL NOT WORK.
This isn't an OS emulator at all...if you want to run windows programs, you will have to have a copy of
windows.
As regards the Transitive product, we don't *know* if they've included anything WINE-like (which takes the place of some core Windows DLLs, enough that you can, so I've heard, run Doom 3 without needing any of Windows installed)* or not. This is because they don't actually *sell* a freaking Windows product yet, as noted.
Presumably their UNIX compatibility modules include *some* essential libraries or functionality to replace them, but that is, indeed, mostly a much easier 'mapping' task. (The fact that it *is* modular suggests that they can do a quick mapping where they can, then reimplement all of Cygwin or EMX and beyond to do the same trick mapping pick-your-*NIX-to-Windows_or_OS/2 if they'd want. Which I'd imagine they'd never bother with, because that's a seriously absurd amount of work for little profit, but if they've been running Windows-on-UNIX demos, they've been playing with the idea whether or not they do need a license of Windows around to support it.)
[So in other words, they can rip out half their product and replace it with something completely different depending on the target. Which is, like I just said, extremely nontrivial, but they're making a point of saying the option's open to do it.]
*If I'm wrong here, I welcome a swift kick. But please confirm it firsthand before you aim it. |
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