Here"s the scenario: Run any application on any OS on any type of processor with no performance hit. Sounds like a dream, right? Linux apps on Windows, Mac apps on Linux, Intel codebase on a PowerPC chipset... Impossible!
Not according to Silicon Valley startup, Transative Corp. They claim their QuickTransit software will allow applications to run transparently on multiple hardware platforms including Mac, PC, mainframes and servers with no user intervention and almost no performance hit.
The company claims 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.
"This opens up a whole new world of things you can do, because previously software was tied to (a) particular processor," said president and CEO Bob Wiederhold. "It gives you access to a much greater diversity of software. One of the key breakthroughs is performance. You can"t tell the difference between a translated application and a native application."
"It"s pretty darn impressive," said analyst Jim Turley. "It"s remarkable because it"s unremarkable (to see it in action): It just works." Turley said he watched a Windows laptop running the Gimp image editor for Linux. The software quickly and efficiently performed a series of processor-intensive graphics transformations and effects, Turley said. "There was no performance hit," he said. "I was expecting a lag, some symptom that things were not as they should be, but that was not the case. There was no hand-eye delay. It seemed completely normal. It responded really quickly."