Digital Equipment Corp has a new version of its FX!32 binary translation software that aims to make any Intel x86 application run on its own Alpha RISC-based systems without porting. The new version, 1.3, is said to boost overall application performance on Alpha systems by 20%, and in some cases, 40%. It is free of charge and runs Windows NT 4.0. FX!32 includes a more efficient re-write of the core Optimizer translation module, and now supports all x86 services, including screen savers, printing and other services embedded within x86 programs. It has also been optimized for media content creation applications, such as Adobe FrameMaker, Illustrator and PageMill, Microsoft Publisher, and Macromedia Director, tying in with DEC’s launch of a new Creation Studio Alpha workstation aimed specifically at that market. Strangely, Quark Inc’s QuarkXpress is not listed as an FX!32 supported application, and DEC says it’s waiting for the native version to come out (CI No 3,262). FX!32 now supports plug-in programs, such as Adobe Acrobat, as long as they are available for Alpha native versions of the Netscape Communicator 4 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 web browsers. DEC says that over 3,500 applications have been ported to run natively on its Alpha platform though it clearly needs as many applications for its proprietary RISC as it can get. It launched the first version of FX!32 back in 1996 (CI No 3,016), basing the work on three previous generations of binary translation products that helped move applications from VAX to Alpha, MIPS to Alpha and Sparc to Alpha. In January this year, DEC agreed to work jointly with Microsoft Corp to integrate the FX!32 translation and emulation technology into NT 5.0 (CI No 3,336), and ultimately, that work will take over from the 1.x development stream. However, work has already started on FX!32 version 1.4, as the transition to NT 5.0, due out towards the end of the year, is likely to take some time. The NT 5.0 version will see release 2.0 of the translator integrated with Microsoft’s own Wx86 software, technology Microsoft developed to run x86 Win32 applications on RISC processors in the days when NT was also supposed to run on Mips and Power PC chips. That should lend FX!32 greater compatibility and faster applications performance, particularly with Microsoft’s own applications, according to DEC. FX!32 version 1.3 can be downloaded from http://www.service.digital.com/fx32/fx32_kit.html, although system buyers will get the updated version factory-installed on new Alpha NT systems. A CD-ROM version will also be available, from May.
