Transitive
Company Profile - News - History - Media
Company History
The origin of Transitive’s QuickTransit® technology
dates back to 1992, when an unrelated computer design project
underwent a late change of instruction-set-architecture.
After a short gestation period, the development of QuickTransit® began
in 1995 .
The initial research goals of the project were to determine
the effectiveness of a modular, re-targetable, dynamic
binary translator, providing 100% compatibility between
pairs of different processor instruction sets. These goals,
coupled with the then-absent pressure of producing a commercial
product, allowed exploration of the best way to design
intermediate representations of the software being translated,
which paid dividends in the modularity and optimizing capability
of the resulting translators.
The
research team quickly discovered that the novel
principles underlying QuickTransit® would lead to a
unique combination of configurable translators, providing
high fidelity and outstanding performance. Patents were
filed on key components of the technology, and several
options for commercializing the technology were explored
during1998 and 1999.
QuickTransit®’s technology shows promise in many
areas. Besides easing the application migration of software
between different conventional computer families, it has
potential in the design of application-centered CPUs, in
dynamic re-optimization of performance-critical software
at run-time, and as a component in computer systems deeply
embedded in consumer electronics – from cell phones
and PDA's through digital entertainment centers and games
consoles. One key challenge during the technology’s
early days was to establish a commercial focus on a suitable
subset of these fields.
Transitive was founded in 2000 as the vehicle to develop
QuickTransit® technology for the commercial market.
Initial technical work was focused on developing the technology
into a robust, commercial and industrial software base,
and to complete the many features necessary for full customer
deployment.
Development contracts were signed in 2001 and 2002 with
early customers acting as technology partners, and 2003
saw the beginning of focused sales activity with key customer
prospects in the industry. Silicon
Graphics launched the first commercially available
product incorporating QuickTransit® in April 2005, Apple
acknowledged its relationship with Transitive in June
2005, and Transitive expects further product launches with
computer companies over the next 12 months.
