Transitive Technologies Powers Rosetta

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif

News.com confirms that Transitive Technologies is, in fact, the technology behind Apple's Rosetta PowerPC Emulator for their upcoming Intel-based Macintoshes.

Jobs reportedly confirmed Transitive's role in a New York Times interview, but in general, Apple has been very quiet about their Transitive's role in Rosetta. Of note, Jobs' keynote speech on Monday gave no mention to the startup.

It appears Transitive's technology can provide 60-80 percent performance of native software based on real world experience with SGI. Some analysts, however, have doubts about the performance promises.

First mention of Transitive came in July 2003. The most accurate and earliest rumor about Transitive's use by Apple came as a Page 2 news item in February 2005:

...there is evidence that Apple has had special internal seeds of Tiger which support [Transitive's technology] for the x86 platform. Beyond allowing Tiger to run on x86, perhaps more significantly is the potential to also allow existing Mac OS X applications to be run on the x86 (PC) platform without recompilation.

Apple, of course, is not offering Mac OS X for the PC, but instead offering Intel-based Macs.

[Peace]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif

News.com confirms that Transitive Technologies is, in fact, the technology behind Apple's Rosetta PowerPC Emulator for their upcoming Intel-based Macintoshes.

Jobs reportedly confirmed Transitive's role in a New York Times interview, but in general, Apple has been very quiet about their Transitive's role in Rosetta. Of note, Jobs' keynote speech on Monday gave no mention to the startup.

It appears Transitive's technology can provide 60-80 percent performance of native software based on real world experience with SGI. Some analysts, however, have doubts about the performance promises.

First mention of Transitive came in July 2003. The most accurate and earliest rumor about Transitive's use by Apple came as a Page 2 news item in February 2005:



Apple, of course, is not offering Mac OS X for the PC, but instead offering Intel-based Macs.

Man I was wondering about this.Now I know..

So we're seeing the Transitive at work in this "transition"

[corywoolf]

Originally Posted by Peace

Man I was wondering about this.Now I know..

So we're seeing the Transitive at work in this "transition"

Old news... I already said this four days ago.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...09#post1501709

[corywoolf]

I think most people that are regulars here already knew (or had a good bet on it) this was the way they would switch to intel.

[joeboy_45101]

I wonder what type of performance we will see after a year of further development and tweaking on the part of Apple and Transitive. We may see near-full performance using Rosetta when it ships.

One thing I have been thinking about is this, Steve said that they would probably have the first Intel based Macs ready to show and probably sell by WWDC 2006 but Leopard is not going to ship for some time after that. So, I am wondering what version of Mac OS X will be shipped on these Macs. Is much of the software needed for the Intel based Macs already present in Tiger? Or will Apple be shipping a new version of Tiger that can be installed on either the PowerPC platform or the Intel platform.

[Cybernanga]

Originally Posted by joeboy_45101

I wonder what type of performance we will see after a year of further development and tweaking on the part of Apple and Transitive. We may see near-full performance using Rosetta when it ships.

The current "reported" performance of around 805% is pretty darn impressive, I sincerely doubt that they'll be able to tweak it much more that that.

Originally Posted by joeboy_45101

One thing I have been thinking about is this, Steve said that they would probably have the first Intel based Macs ready to show and probably sell by WWDC 2006 but Leopard is not going to ship for some time after that. So, I am wondering what version of Mac OS X will be shipped on these Macs. Is much of the software needed for the Intel based Macs already present in Tiger? Or will Apple be shipping a new version of Tiger that can be installed on either the PowerPC platform or the Intel platform.

Steve also said that OS X has been "leading a double life". They've had it running on Intel for the last five years, so I figure most of the code is already in ther, and just needs to be "activated". Hopefully a Software Update (restart required, natch) will do the trick.

[RBilRamZ]

i could be wrong, but doesnt this seem like its only a minor hack away from being able to put OSX on any old PC. i dont know how to do it myself, but it seems like once the switch to intels is made, it wouldnt me to hard for someone to manipulate their PC to accept and run OSX, any thoughts?

[barneygumble]

Originally Posted by RBilRamZ

i could be wrong, but doesnt this seem like its only a minor hack away from being able to put OSX on any old PC. i dont know how to do it myself, but it seems like once the switch to intels is made, it wouldnt me to hard for someone to manipulate their PC to accept and run OSX, any thoughts?

i seriosuly doubt that this will work, only a limited number of hardware configurations will work and apple will be the only ones supplying them

[fox2005]

i think macs running on intel will have a different chipset, something like altivec or equivalent or some other propietary chip that will add funtionality and make it "different" than normal wintel machines... it will also make difficult to run plain windows from the box on them...

[gwangung]

Originally Posted by RBilRamZ

i could be wrong, but doesnt this seem like its only a minor hack away from being able to put OSX on any old PC. i dont know how to do it myself, but it seems like once the switch to intels is made, it wouldnt me to hard for someone to manipulate their PC to accept and run OSX, any thoughts?

There are some Darwin folks over on ars.technica involved in porting Darwin to other chipselts, and according to them, it's far from a minor hack.

Some people dismiss that, but I would think practical experience would trump web board BSing....

[savar]

So is QuickTransit/Rosetta a chip or a piece of software?

[Cybernanga]

Originally Posted by savar

So is QuickTransit/Rosetta a chip or a piece of software?

Rosetta is Software.

[Amdahl]

The process of translating code the first time it is run sounds a bit like modern Java virtual machines.

Do PPCs do self-modifying code? I bet that would really hurt performance.

[steeldrivingjon]

If anyone is going to try running XBench on an Intel Mac to test Rosetta performance, I would suggest doing the following:

Run the test twice, without quitting, and use the second set of results.

As the benchmark goes through the various tests, Rosetta will cache the translated binary. But it won't get to use the cache as would normally be the case, because a benchmark doesn't go back to repeat prior steps.

In the first run through the benchmark, Rosetta will have to do the translation to Intel, which slows things down even more. In the second run through the benchmark, Rosetta will be able to use the cached Intel code, which should result in better performance the second time around.

If you just run XBench once, and take the results, you won't get a realistic benchmark. of Rosetta. In real use, Rosetta will have a PowerPC app's cached binary around, and most of the time it won't have to re-translate. So it'll perform better.

[Omni Geno]

Originally Posted by steeldrivingjon

If anyone is going to try running XBench on an Intel Mac to test Rosetta performance, I would suggest doing the following:

Run the test twice, without quitting, and use the second set of results.

As the benchmark goes through the various tests, Rosetta will cache the translated binary. But it won't get to use the cache as would normally be the case, because a benchmark doesn't go back to repeat prior steps.

In the first run through the benchmark, Rosetta will have to do the translation to Intel, which slows things down even more. In the second run through the benchmark, Rosetta will be able to use the cached Intel code, which should result in better performance the second time around.

If you just run XBench once, and take the results, you won't get a realistic benchmark. of Rosetta. In real use, Rosetta will have a PowerPC app's cached binary around, and most of the time it won't have to re-translate. So it'll perform better.

I'd really like to see some of these results.

[swissmann]

And so many of us (including myself) thought that Transitive was vaporware.

[Davito]

I am afraid that when as all the lines are transported to Intel chips, 3rd party developers will soon stop compiling for PPC. Therefor I would like to see a 'Reverse-Rosetta' to keep my G5 running new software for some more years!

[steeldrivingjon]

Originally Posted by Davito

I am afraid that when as all the lines are transported to Intel chips, 3rd party developers will soon stop compiling for PPC. Therefor I would like to see a 'Reverse-Rosetta' to keep my G5 running new software for some more years!

Why would they give up all those potential sales?

[aegisdesign]

Originally Posted by Davito

I am afraid that when as all the lines are transported to Intel chips, 3rd party developers will soon stop compiling for PPC. Therefor I would like to see a 'Reverse-Rosetta' to keep my G5 running new software for some more years!

Well, Transitive do an Intel to PPC mapping - http://www.transitives.com/products.htm

The can also map calls to one OS API to another so for instance, running Linux binaries on OSX would be pretty easy.

And lastly from one graphics API to another. Direct-X to OpenGL anyone?


Of course, who knows if Apple would actually include that. I'm sure they'd rather not include APIs from other OSs as then developers would then just stop writing for MacOS if they could just use a Windows API instead. That's my real fear with this - if it's now easy to run other OSs on a Mac, developers may just decide to write for those. Gamers may well just boot into Windows to play games as they are almost certainly going to be quicker than a Mac port of a windows game. That would mean the Mac games industry would tank.

[steeldrivingjon]

Originally Posted by aegisdesign

That would mean the Mac games industry would tank.

On the moderately bright side, that'd free up a bunch of talented Mac developers to work on other, more mundane Mac projects.

With luck, there'll be plenty of demand for Mac developers by then

[Lynxpro]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

Jobs reportedly confirmed Transitive's role in a New York Times interview, but in general, Apple has been very quiet about their Transitive's role in Rosetta. Of note, Jobs' keynote speech on Monday gave no mention to the startup.
It appears Transitive's technology can provide 60-80 percent performance of native software based on real world experience with SGI. Some analysts, however, have doubts about the performance promises.

Am I the only one that's not really happy about this? Software emulation is never as good as silicon, and people are not mentioning that this software technology is about squeezing 80% native speed of a G3 (not even a G4) out of a 3.6 Ghz Pentium4. It seems like this is going to be a bumpy transition one way or another for two years, so why not simply complement these Intel-beast Macs with at least a 1.2 Ghz G4 or something?

I also wish they could've had a consumer level app that could convert these fat universal binaries to optimized versions depending on the processor inside the owner's own Mac. Hell, they could've bundled that into the .Mac service as an added benefit and a further compelling selling point.

---------------------
And, while I'm at it, why can't Apple get Intel to license the Altivec instruction code set? It seems like such a waste to discard those codes for SSE2. I mean, really, I don't see Freescale objecting to licensing the code to Intel because they are already going to lose Apple as a customer so it would seem like a win-win situation for them even if it is a cash lump sum payment or a royalty per Intel chip sold.

[steeldrivingjon]

Originally Posted by Lynxpro

I also wish they could've had a consumer level app that could convert these fat universal binaries to optimized versions depending on the processor inside the owner's own Mac. Hell, they could've bundled that into the .Mac service as an added benefit and a further compelling selling point.

What?

Universal binaries *are* optimized for the processor that's inside your Mac.

A universal binary can still contain code that's optimized for a G4, or a G5, along with the code that's compiled and optimized for Intel.

The universal binary can be thought of as a regular PowerPC binary (just like now) glued onto an Intel binary. Your computer uses the right one depending on what the CPU is.

When you use XCode to build a program for Intel and PPC, it'll set up two folders in the build directory, one for each architecture. As it goes through the project, it'll compile each file (in the normal way) for PPC, then for Intel (or vice-versa), sticking the resulting object files in the appropriate CPU-specific folders. When it has compiled all the files for both CPU architectures, it links each bunch of object files into a CPU specific executable. Then it glues the two CPU-specific executables together as one MachO binary file with two CPU-specific segments.

The only thing new here is that each file is compiled twice, linking is done twice, and the resulting executable has two segments instead of one PowerPC segment.

There's nothing "unoptimized" about a universal binary. It's not like a Java program which is interpreted at runtime into code for your CPU.

Also, note that if a Universal Binary program uses CoreImage, CoreVideo, or Apple's Accelerate framework, then it'll make the best possible use of AltiVec on a G4 or G5, SSE3 on Intel, and multiple processors or cores on either, without the developer having to code specific optimizations.

--

As for Intel licensing AltiVec, that would be nice, but keep in mind it would take a few years for that to appear in Intel silicon, and it'd be in every Intel chip, so Windows would be able to use it too.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple suggests improvements for future Intel instruction sets, but I doubt they'll put AltiVec in as a whole.

[Lynxpro]

Originally Posted by steeldrivingjon

As for Intel licensing AltiVec, that would be nice, but keep in mind it would take a few years for that to appear in Intel silicon, and it'd be in every Intel chip, so Windows would be able to use it too.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple suggests improvements for future Intel instruction sets, but I doubt they'll put AltiVec in as a whole.

Thanks for clarifying on the universal binaries, btw.

But as for licensing Altivec, I can't see how or why it would take 2 years for Intel to implement if Apple convinced Freescale (and again, if Freescale owns the rights to begin with) to grant Intel a license. I also don't have a problem with the Altivec instruction usage seeping into Windows and Linux either through use of the soon-to-be *universal* Intel chips. So be it. In the end, that will aide in multi-platform software porting, and would actually benefit the Mac side of things because Altivec usage on the Windows side would (probably) first be taken advantage of in gaming, which means the ports to OS X would also use the instructions. A side benefit for humanity as a whole (and not for profit) would be how all the various shared distributed processing scientific programs would benefit from universal Altivec usage.

Granted, I do see a weakness in the argument. Windows or DirectX at least would probably have to take advantage of Altivec first before we saw games and applications using such routines. Or maybe OpenGL might use it first. I guess it all depends on whether Altivec has been ported to the Cell processor, as well as the versions of the PowerPC chips that Microsoft is using in the Xbox360 and Nintendo in the Revolution.


----------------------------------------------------
I still think it would be wise for Apple to include a G4 for the first couple of years of this transition in the Intel based Macs.

[steeldrivingjon]

Originally Posted by Lynxpro

Thanks for clarifying on the universal binaries, btw.

But as for licensing Altivec, I can't see how or why it would take 2 years for Intel to implement if Apple convinced Freescale (and again, if Freescale owns the rights to begin with) to grant Intel a license.

It would take a while because Intel would have to figure out how to apply AltiVec in the Intel architecture, design a chip that incorporates the AltiVec circuitry (which probably involves many, many transistors and interconnections), test a simulation, then would have to prototype the silicon, then test it, then would have to put it into production.

I'm not sure exactly how long this would take, but I imagine it takes a fair while and quite a bit of money. If I'm not mistaken, it takes several years for a new CPU design to go from design to mass production. That's why CPUs get their feature set upgraded so rarely, compared to how often the speed is bumped.

It's not so much about the license or AltiVec. It'd be the same if Apple wanted Intel to add a function that didn't do anything at all. It's just the nature of silicon.

[aegisdesign]

Originally Posted by Lynxpro

Am I the only one that's not really happy about this? Software emulation is never as good as silicon, and people are not mentioning that this software technology is about squeezing 80% native speed of a G3 (not even a G4) out of a 3.6 Ghz Pentium4. It seems like this is going to be a bumpy transition one way or another for two years, so why not simply complement these Intel-beast Macs with at least a 1.2 Ghz G4 or something?

Transitive and SGI claim to get speeds typically GREATER than any of their older MIPS processor based kit on the Itanium. However I'm not sure what the comparitive speeds of MIPS v Itanium are and if they are both the same endian-ness. I suspect MIPS was way behind the Itanium though before SGI switched.

The problem with x86 and PowerPC is that they are of similar performance already so CURRENT comparisons will I think mean you're not going to get near G5 speed out of Rosetta with PowerPC apps. Secondly, the difference in endian-ness is a large performance hit as anyone running VirtualPC on the G5 would know. On a G4, Connectix used the G4's dual-endian abilities to get a decent speed. The G5 doesn't allow the same trick.

However, given another year or so, with faster Intel chips, the speed reduction may still yield application speeds faster than today's PowerPC macs. The XBench benches published so far haven't been encouraging however for emulated code, not that you can attach too much credence to XBench. Some things have been 45 times slower. That HAS to get better otherwise anyone switching from an Intel application to an old PowerPC application is going to notice a BIG drop in performance.

I've already been looking through my older applications that I use, that are carbonized and have been for some time, thinking what to replace them with should the developer not switch to Cocoa and not make the jump to Intel.

MYOB, Adobe, Macromedia - I'm looking at you. Get your Cocoa asses in gear now.