Rather than talking about backward-compatibility, enterprise now has to embrace forward-compatibility, designing systems based on new technology to meet evolving user needs and creating customer value.

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To overcome the problem of backward-compatibility, modern x86 chips such as the Pentium are able to take x86-style instructions from old software and split them up into several smaller micro-operations which lend themselves better to performance-enhancing trickery.

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Toshiba says the DVD device for computers it will manufacture will have backward compatibility - it will be able to read CD software.

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Bug-for-bug compatibility is a problem, but breaking backward compatibility would be a much bigger problem, so even as the lowest layers of the operating system are revised and rewritten, the layers that applictions talk to (the application programming interface, or API) are carefully tested to ensure that no changes are visible to the application.

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