QuickTransit was a cross-platform virtualization program developed by Transitive Corporation. It allowed software compiled for one specific processor and operating system combination to be executed on a different processor and/or operating system architecture without source code or binary changes.
Silicon Graphics announced QuickTransit’s first availability in October 2004 on its Prism visualization systems. These systems, based on Itanium 2 processors and the Linux operating system, used QuickTransit to transparently run application binaries compiled for previous SGI systems based on the MIPS processor and IRIX operating system.
This technology was also licensed by Apple Computer in its transition from PowerPC to Intel (x86) CPUs, starting in 2006. Apple marketed this technology as "Rosetta".
IBM announced a partnership with Transitive 18 Nov 2008 to run Linux/x86 binaries on its Power Architecture based Power Systems machines. IBM named this software System p AVE during its beta phase, but it was renamed to PowerVM Lx86 upon release.
In November 2006, Transitive launched QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/x86-64, which enabled unmodified native Solaris/SPARC applications to run on 64-bit Linux/x86-based systems. This was followed in October 2007 by QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/Itanium, which enabled Solaris/SPARC applications to run on Itanium systems running Linux. A third product, QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Solaris/x86-64, was released in December 2007.
QuickTransit is an extension of the Dynamite technology developed by the University of Manchester Parallel Architectures and Languages research group, which now forms part of the Advanced Processor Technologies research group at the University of Manchester
IBM acquired Transitive in June 2009 and merged the company into its Power Systems division. While existing customers of other QuickTransit combinations are supported the only combination still available is the PowerVM Lx86 product.
Famous quotes containing the words quick and/or transit:
“I fell her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train;—
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)