In news that may have implications for the hot topic of backwards compatibility in Microsoft"s next console, Wired News today reports on a new software development that may solve that problem. California startup Transitive Software claims that its new QuickTransit allows nearly any major platform to effectively emulate nearly any other, with minimal performance hits.
QuickTransit (whose developers apparently prefer the term "hardware visualization," rather than the occasionally stigmatized "emulator) employs a new and unusually efficient means of translating software written for one platform to another, according to its creators. It"s been demonstrated running Windows games on the Macintosh operating system, Linux applications on Windows, and with other mis-matchings of software, operating system, and processor.