Transitive Corp.’s QuickTransit is the engine that drives Rosetta: The binary translation technology that lets PowerPC software run on Apple’s new Intel-based Macs. On Tuesday Transitive announced plans to support Intel’s Itanium 2 and Xeon platforms, as well.
Could this provide some insight about what’s to come in Apple’s own server line? Both the Itanium 2 and Xeon are positioned as server chip architectures.
The Itanium 2 is Intel’s premier server chip architecture: It’s a 64-bit chip design that was created to handle parallel computing tasks. It’s been successfully deployed in supercomputing systems, large corporate servers and other similar environments.
The Xeon chip is another Intel offering for the business server market. Successfully used in multi-processor configurations, newer Xeon offerings have also featured 64-bit support and dual-core designs.
Intel will fund Transitive’s efforts; the companies will focus on developing QuickTransit products for these platforms for market release in 2006, they said in a statement. Intel and Transitive also plan to promote QuickTransit technology to the companies that need to use it: Computer makers, independent software vendors (ISVs), software developers and IT services companies.
In addition to Intel-based Macs, Transitive’s technology also ships on all of Silicon Graphics’ Linux/Itanium-based systems.
Transitive is exhibiting at this week’s Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, Calif.
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