Interview FWB
La prochaine version de RealPC sera compatible Mac OS X. FWB compte attaquer très fort avec des performances jamais vues jusqu'à maintenant dans l'émulation PC sur Mac.
After the come back of RealPC 1.1 in the FWB product list, we could get an interview of Mark Prewitt, VP Sales & Marketing, about the next Mac OS X version which could be ready in a few weeks. The rumor says that Apple at the WWDC will present it in June to show the power of his new hardware architecture.
Why did you wait that Connectix sold VirtualPC to Microsoft to publish this new version?
We had an arrangement with Connectix to not release new versions of our software. With Microsoft purchasing VPC, this agreement was terminated.
What performances we have to expect with this new version? Will it be faster than the OS 9 version?
Our program is based on our Solaris product, which is Unix Native. We will be MUCH faster than any OS 9 ported product. Our product expects to take full advantage of the hardware we will be running on.
What about the multiprocessing support? Will you use it for the emulation itself or just the I/O tasks as Connectix did?
Yes, by nature, a Unix application will support multiple processors. We will be fully aware and take advantage of this.
What about the graphic emulation? Do you plan to bring back the 3D acceleration as you did with the support of the 3dfx chipset?
We intend to make this program the fastest emulation product on the market, and fare developing direct hardware acceleration with our graphics. Not emulation, but true hardware speeds.
Technically, does this mean that with an ATI 9700 in the Macintosh will be emulated as an ATI 9700 in RealPC ?
Yes, that is what we are working on... After all, what is the point of having a great graphics card if you can't play games on it in either Mac or PC mode.
For a long time, there are a lot of rumors about hardware adds-on to boost the performances of emulators. We've heard about such things with Playstation emulators, and more recently with the next release of VirtualPC. What do you think about such a technology? Is it difficult to deliver a hardware product in the emulation world without breaking some patents? Do you plan to do such a thing?
Why need a 'hardware add on' when there is already plenty of performance in the machine? Where the problem was is in the OS 9 code that could not properly work directly with the hardware and allow us the freedom to integrate the emulator with the hardware at a low level. We don't need add ons to make it run fast.
Imagine Apple gives us a 64 bits processor for the next hardware architecture. What would be the benefit of a 64 bit processor in the emulator world?
It will be benefited by any increase in performance in the processor. Remember, this is a true unix application. It will be built to use the hardware at a low level, thus taking advantage of any performance gain that is created by the hardware manufacturer, will it be optimized for that? Not at first, we'll have to tweak it for the new processors as they ship. They don't give those out to everyone you know.
Here is another question of the same nature: will RealPC use Altivec?
To be honest, I don't know the answer to this question. Our group is programming for raw speed of performance with Game play in mind.. If using the alitvec engine gets us that, I am sure they are using it.
On your website, you rely on a rumor published on oscast.com about the possibility that RealPC will be faster than a real PC with some tasks in a short future Apple hardware. What kind of tasks are they talking about? Do you approve this rumor ? Why did you rely it on your press Web page, it's strange from a company to rely a rumor about a product that is not on the market yet!
We are not relying on a rumor, we are joint pointing people to different sites talking about our release of Real PC. Will it be faster than a real pc? Depends on what kind of Mac you have and which PC you are comparing it to.
About your relation with Apple, how did Apple help you to develop this new version? Are they as much interested in your product as oscast.com suggests it?
We cannot comment on any relationship with Apple at this time.
Thank you very much to take the time to reply to our questions.
Some remarks: FWB has a Solaris version of his PC emulator. They deiced to start from this version for the OS X development instead of the old OS 9 version. But if the emulator works with the hardware at such low level, the computer could become very unstable, because they would have to talk straight to the kernel. But by this way the emulator would be really faster with the Input/Output accesses, like the hard drive or memory access, and of course for the graphics. The speed boost would be the most accurate at this level.
With this new version of RealPC, they clearly want to take back the PC emulator market to Connectix with a different concept.