Transitive, the company that makes the binary translator (named Rosetta by Apple) that enables software written for IBMs PowerPC chip in Apple's Macintosh computers to run on Apple's new Macs with Intel Dual-Core processors inside without being altered, has confirmed that it has entered an agreement with Intel to increase the amount of Intel processors it supports.

One of the first aims of the deal is to make it possible to run RISC environments that ran on non-Intel hardware, on Itanium 2 and Xeon processors.

Intel's Kirk Skaugen said that Intel will work with Transitive to speed migration from RISC to Itanium based machines. He claims his customers will see "outstanding performance" from their RISC-based binaries on Itanium systems.

For Intel one of the benefit of the relationship is that essentially means that any application from any operating system could be brought to the company's platform, perhaps helping the company regain some of the market share lost to AMD.

The agreement could also prove promising for Mac users looking to run Windows applications on the Intel-based Macs, and also for companies that lack the resources to produce more than one layer of code for applications or games. It would only be necessary to produce the Windows based code and Transitive's software would convert the program to run on a Mac.

While currently the binary translation software only translates Unix and Linux based code, this could all change now that Intel is onboard. A source in the company hinted that translation of Windows applications is possible, and that this might be in the pipeline before the end of the year.