Eric Traut is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

and

software emulation In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peri ...

pioneer. Traut graduated from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1992. From 1993 to 1995 he worked for

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

, creating a

Mac 68K emulator The Mac 68k emulator is a software emulator built into all versions of the classic Mac OS for PowerPC. This emulator enabled running applications and system code that were originally written for the 680x0-based Macintosh models. With a few exceptio ...

to be used in

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

-based Macintoshes.Eric Traut: Distinguished Engineer
His work on this project led to a patent on a form of

dynamic recompilation In computer science, dynamic recompilation is a feature of some emulators and virtual machines, where the system may recompile some part of a program during execution. By compiling during execution, the system can tailor the generated code t ...

. Traut went on to join

Connectix Connectix Corporation was a software and hardware company, noted for having released innovative products that were either made obsolete as Apple Computer incorporated the ideas into system software, or were sold to other companies once they became ...

, where he developed successful commercial emulators such as

Virtual PC Windows Virtual PC (successor to Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, and Connectix Virtual PC) is a virtualization program for Microsoft Windows. In July 2006, Microsoft released the Windows version free of charge. In August ...

and

Virtual Game Station The Virtual Game Station (VGS, code named Bonestorm) was an emulator by Connectix that allows Sony PlayStation games to be played on a desktop computer. It was first released for the Macintosh, in 1999, after being previewed at Macworld/iWorld ...

. He became Connectix's Chief Technical Officer in 2001. Traut became a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

employee after the company purchased Connectix in 2003. Traut left Microsoft in late 2012. Traut rejoined Microsoft in May 2014 and is now a Technical Fellow.

References

External links

Eric Traut on Microsoft PressPassEric Traut talks about Windows 7 and MinWin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Traut, Eric Living people Microsoft employees Microsoft technical fellows American software engineers Year of birth missing (living people)