Step Toward Universal Computing

Found on Wired on Sunday, 12 September 2004
Browse Computer

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.

The company claimed QuickTransit eliminates the need to port software from one platform to another. Software applications written for one platform will run on almost any other, without any modifications to the underlying program.

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.

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.

Weidel said in most cases, QuickTransit allows translated applications to run faster on new hardware than it did on the original platform, thanks to the speed of today's machines compared with those made a decade ago.

Now that sounds spiffy. I finally could play my old Amiga games without running an emulator, just like any other application.