A 25 year Perspective on Binary Translation: What worked, what didn't
David Ditzel (INTEL)
Distinguished Lecturer Series
Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 3:30 pm
EE-105
Abstract
Binary Translation is a technique that continues to grow in acceptance. It has been used for moving customer applications across systems which would otherwise be binary incompatible. Early examples include Hunter Systems XDOS and Digital Equipment's FX!32, to Transitive Technologies current use by Apple Computer to help move customer applications from PowerPC to Intel processors.
Transmeta Corporation used dynamic binary translation to build microprocessors. It built several generations of hardware/software co-designed microprocessors over a ten year period with special purpose hardware support to provide efficient support for binary translation, such that the combined hardware/software system was indistinguishable from a traditional hardware implemented microprocessor.
It seems likely that binary translation techniques will become increasingly common in the future as a way to introduce new techniques in computer architecture while proving backwards binary compatibility.
Bio:
Dave Ditzel has worked on the design of leading edge computer systems for over 30 years. He is perhaps best known as the founding president and CEO of Transmeta Corporation, a company that popularized low power x86 compatible computing with its Crusoe and Efficeon microprocessors that used Dynamic Binary Translation. Prior to his 13 years at Transmeta, he spent 10 years at Sun Microsystems where he was CTO of the SPARC processor business unit, Director of Sun Labs and Director of Advanced Systems. While at Sun, he started the first collaboration in computer design between the United States and Soviet Union, by hiring Soviet Supercomputer designer Boris Babayan and his team and establishing the Moscow Center of SPARC Technology, which was later acquired by Intel. Prior to Sun he spent 10 years at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey where developed CRISP, one of the first RISC processors, and was a co-author of "The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer." Dave received undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering and another in Computer Science at Iowa State University, and did his graduate work at the University of
California at Berkeley under Professor David Patterson. Dave has worked on the development of over two dozen computer systems, has published three dozen papers on advanced computer design, and has half a dozen patents.