next xbox Backward Compatibility confirmed?

[gaming ultima]

Transitive Corporation, the leading provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system pairs, today launched its QuickTransit™ product line, a family of products that allows software applications compiled for one processor and operating system to run on another processor and operating system without any source code or binary changes.

The company’s breakthrough hardware virtualization technology is unique because it provides 100% functionality, transparent interactive and graphics performance, near-native computational performance, and allows virtually any processor/operating system pair to be supported.




In an interview with Wired News, Bob Wiederhold, President and CEO of Transitive Corporation said QuickTransit will allow the next-generation Xbox (which will have a POWER chip) to run first-generation Xbox software, which was written for an Intel chip.
http://media.teamxbox.com/dailyposts/quicktransit.gif
The first products available in the QuickTransit™ product line are:
QuickTransit for Opteron: with support for MIPS, POWER/PowerPC, and mainframe binaries
QuickTransit for x86: with support for MIPS, POWER/PowerPC and mainframe binaries
QuickTransit for POWER/PowerPC: with support for MIPS, x86, and mainframe binaries
QuickTransit for Itanium: with support for MIPS, POWER/PowerPC, x86, and mainframe binaries
How QuickTransit Works

QuickTransit utilizes a unique and patented modular architecture. It runs on top of the operating system, with no end user intervention. As a translated application runs, the QuickTransit “front-end decoder” reads in blocks of binary code and translates them into an intermediate representation (IR). An “optimization kernel” then optimizes the code represented in the IR, and a “back-end code generator” encodes the optimized blocks for the target processor and caches them. QuickTransit’s high performance comes from exploiting the fact that only 10% of the code in a typical application is executed 90% of the time. So, the optimizing kernel looks for frequently executed blocks of code and aggressively optimizes them as they are identified. The QuickTransit architecture is modular, allowing front-end decoders and back-end code generators to be easily mixed and matched for the source and target environment.

QuickTransit products support applications written in any language including C, C++, Fortran, Cobol, Basic, Ada, Pascal, Modula, PL/1 and assembly language. QuickTransit products let software applications run on the target platform exactly as they run on the source platform, with 100% functionality. Graphics and interactive performance are transparent, and computational performance is 80% of what could be achieved with a native port, which is often higher performance than is available on the original platform. Today’s Itanium, Xeon™ or POWER processors, for example, offer 10 times the computational performance of mid-1990’s mainframes. Using QuickTransit software, today’s processors could run the unchanged mainframe applications 8 times faster.

The system resource overhead of the translation process is small. QuickTransit itself uses only 500 KB of memory and requires approximately 10-30 MB of additional memory for large server applications, or around 25% of program memory for smaller applications.
teamxbox (http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/6754/Xbox-2-Backward-Compatibility-Update)

ok this is all very nice but i have a few points to make, first i dont think we can see it as being confirmed till the next xbox comes out because 1. microsoft haven’t said it themselves and they might end up denying it like they did when M-systems CEO said that the next xbox will not use a HDD and 2. this talks about emulation of the CPU, it does not mention anything about the emulation of the GPU as the xbox uses a custom (modified Geforce 3) GPU and the next xbox will most likely use a custom GPU based on the R480 or R500 maybe, and as xbox games are programmed specifically for the Nvidia GPU they specifically use all of its heavily patented graphics computational methods and so it has been thought by many industry experts that backwards compatibility would not be possible as it would breach a patent and unlike some company's you can bet Nvidia would sue them and then never stop fighting them, and last time Nvidia met Microsoft in the courts (what putt nvidia off them) Nvidia won
i also believe that this is one of the things Sony and Nvidia were talking about together a while back

enough of my rants, what does everybody else think?

[watashi]

Could you explain that in baby words? because that was hurting my head. lol
Also I thought Nvidia was gonna be on the next xbox? O_o and when was this sony/nvidia together movement, nvidia has some amazing graphics...


:)

[siren]

Plain language.

The company has written an application that allows for realitively simple porting of applications from one Processor architechture to another. In this case, Intel x86 to PowerPC.

Problems
- What about graphics. Can it also port all of DirectX's APIs to work properly on PowerPC? (probably not)
- What about devs that wrote to the metal and used access to specific registers in the Intel Chip that won't translate to the PowerPC. This would be extremely rare in the retail software space, but not so rare with Video games. These would have to go through an emulation layer at best.
- Even if this software did out of the box allow Xbox games to play on the Alpha Xenon kits that are supposedly based on PowerPC chips, without a HD in the Xenon (or other mass storage around 850mb) over 90% of Xbox games just won't work.

[*Xbox Medic*]

It does not reall matter about back ward compatibility the games for xbox 2 are planning to be amazing so to be honest no one really cares but it would be good maybe soemtimes to go back and play old games.i think the gaming world should move on not cater for past games.

[Blake]

Backwards compatibility allows gamers to purchase the last generations games when they are much cheaper. Games they might not of been able to get originally or now available to them for a much lower price and they dont have to have the originally system to play them. As for the games for Xbox 2..do you know anything about them? You know just as much about the Xbox2 as we do the PS3. Im sure there will be some great games on them but your completelly speaking out of your butt.

[ps3 Wanna be]

A report in a Japanese technology magazine has suggested that Sony will include PlayStation 2 hardware inside each PS3 to achieve backwards compatibility at launch.

Sony had claimed at the PlayStation Business Briefing in February that backwards compatibility would be achieved through software emulation. But according to Ultra One magazine, first edition PS3s will ship with the core PS2 chipset.

Since the software emulation required for backwards compatibility will require significant time and effort, hardware-independant backwards compatibility will be included in later revisions of the PS3. This will reduce production costs because the PS2 chipset will no longer be needed.

Whilst this does guarantee almost fault-free backwards compatibility at launch, it does raise questions about the visual improvements we will see with PlayStation 2 games. Hardware emulation is likely to mean the games will run similar to how they did on their original consoles.

The magazine did go on to reveal that the PS3 will feature onboard flash memory. Phil Harrison, president of SCE Worldwide Studios, has revealed that a standard PC hard drive can be used in the PS3, but there was some confusion over how the PS3 would then retain essential files like system updates. However, Ultra One suggests that the flash memory would store the PS3's OS and any critical updates. Presumably, then, the hard drive will be used exclusively for multimedia content and game caching.

Furthermore, if, in the future, changes in chip design cause problems with particular games, users will be able to connect to Sony's online service and download updates to fix these issues.

Could this mean that a system update will allow software emulation on the first PS3s, and therefore the visual improvements we're expecting?

Source (http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/711/711242p1.html)

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