17 Sep
2004
17 Sep
'04
12:42 a.m.
FWIW
"A startup claims it has created software that lets programs run on any
operating system?and any processor?without slowing down. Is the hype for
real this time?"
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/09/wo_hellweg091704.asp?p=0
or
http://tinyurl.com/3l3px
17 Sep
17 Sep
3:04 a.m.
Bill Dawson wrote:
FWIW
"A startup claims it has created software that lets programs run on any
operating system?and any processor?without slowing down. Is the hype for
real this time?"
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/09/wo_hellweg091704.asp?p=0
or
http://tinyurl.com/3l3px
What they are doing is something similar to what Apple did for the 68K
to PowerPC transition. If you look at Transitive's own website, they
admit that the emulation has overhead. I think their claim is that they
are around 80% of native performance on comparably-powerful hardware,
and that in the expected scenario of bringing legacy software forward to
a newer platform, the newer harware would make up the difference.
With modern dynamic translation techniques, emulation can be this
efficient, though performance can vary considerably with characteristics
of the workload -- dynamic translation schemes are like caches, and are
sensitive to program locality, among other things. It could very much
be real, in a useful and pragmatic sense, but there's no magic there.
--Bill
5:08 a.m.
Rumor has it that William Maddox may have mentioned these words:
What they are doing is something similar to what Apple
did for the 68K to
PowerPC transition.
Or DEC with their WinNT4 software that allowed DEC Alphas to run 32-bit
Intel WinNT4 binaries. IIRC, it could be done "on the fly" (more overhead)
or "precompiled" and saved back to the hard drive. Pity my memory sucks to
the point I can't remember what it was called...
If you look at Transitive's own website, they
admit that the emulation has overhead.
They'd be fools not to!
I think their claim is that they
are around 80% of native performance on comparably-powerful hardware,
and that in the expected scenario of bringing legacy software forward to
a newer platform, the newer harware would make up the difference.
That's very possible.
With modern dynamic translation techniques, emulation
can be this
efficient, though performance can vary considerably with characteristics
of the workload -- dynamic translation schemes are like caches, and are
sensitive to program locality, among other things. It could very much
be real, in a useful and pragmatic sense, but there's no magic there.
Can you say "Transmeta Crusoe in software?" Under the right conditions
(read: compiled with special optimization flags) it's clock for clock
faster than the x86 it's "emulating."
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right??? Randomization is better!!!
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
5:27 a.m.
On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 10:08:28 -0400, Roger Merchberger wrote:
Rumor has it that William Maddox may have mentioned
these words:
That stuff was called FX!32 ...
Bernd
Bernd Kopriva Tel: 07195 / 179452
Weilerstr. 24 E-Mail : bernd(a)kopriva.de
71397 Leutenbach
What they are doing is something similar to what
Apple did for the 68K to
PowerPC transition.
Or DEC with their WinNT4 software that allowed DEC Alphas to run 32-bit
Intel WinNT4 binaries. IIRC, it could be done "on the fly" (more overhead)
or "precompiled" and saved back to the hard drive. Pity my memory sucks to
the point I can't remember what it was called... 
6:05 a.m.
At 09:27 AM 9/17/2004, Bernd Kopriva wrote:
I might be able to find a CD of WinNT for AXP with Fx32 on it,
as well Visual C for AXP.
I was a developer back in the day, but sold my machines on eBay
a while back for next to nothing. One was a prototype Acer
that never made it to market.
- John
Or DEC with
their WinNT4 software that allowed DEC Alphas to run 32-bit
Intel WinNT4 binaries. IIRC, it could be done "on the fly" (more overhead)
or "precompiled" and saved back to the hard drive. Pity my memory sucks to
the point I can't remember what it was called...
That stuff was called FX!32 ...
6:04 a.m.
Or DEC with their WinNT4 software that allowed DEC
Alphas to run
32-bit Intel WinNT4 binaries. IIRC, it could be done "on the fly"
(more overhead) or "precompiled" and saved back to the hard drive.
Pity my memory sucks to the point I can't remember what it was
called...
IIRC, each time you ran the software through the FX!32 emulator it
translated more of it to native code. So the more you ran an app the
faster it got up to a certain point. I tried it briefly, and it
seemed to work fairly well.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
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days inactive
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5 comments
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participants (6)
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bernd＠kopriva.de -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
whdawson＠localisps.net -
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zmerch＠30below.com