Acceleration API in Parallels with SLS guest (and Rosetta support)

Question

Hi,
after reading a lot about Rosetta's support to get it to work on my brand new MacBook Pro, I bought Parallels 8 in a Bundle and a copy of Snow Leopard Server from Apple to install on it and finally get Rosetta working. Great !
But...
A lot of my PPC apps won't work. Paralles support explains : "There's no hardware acceleration for OS X guests. Apple doesn't open their API so Parallels can write the drivers.". OK, sorry not to have known that before ! I understand Apple wants to protect their soft.
I also read that Apple sells different versions of Parallels.Maybe so there is a version that does support acceleration API?
Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Apple doesn't focus on keeping old software and old hardware going and never really has, so the usual recommended course is to migrate off of the PPC software and to more recent and native applications. 
As an option, keep an older Mac around and screen-share with it pending retirement of the PPC software.
Whether the PPC software failures are due to bugs in the virtual machine (fairly unlikely, but possible) or due to latent timing or other bugs in the application code, or due to bugs in the Rosetta image translation itself, would require research into the apps and the failures.
As for the question, I see no reason to doubt what the Parallels support folks have stated; that there's no documented API for the hardware accelleration — though whichever particular hardware support for accelleration isn't clear.   Hardware accelleration for VM guests is usually a reference to the Intel chips and the associated VM assists present in recent versions of those chips, but the references to drivers implies this might possibly be a reference to graphics drivers or otherwise.
I'd expect Parallels would know about other versions of Parallels, so I'm not sure where that's headed.  I'd expect the same limitations would also effect VMware, if they're also following the documented APIs, but it might still be worth a try, to see of the translated PPC applications work there; if this is a Parallels bug, or something else.
Using undocumented APIs means the applications can break at random OS X patches and upgrades, too, and that's something most large-volume vendors want to deal with, too.
Coding applications directly to the drivers or bypassing the operating system entirely and going directly to the hardware is how Microsoft and their third-party providers got into their current mess with compatibility with Windows software for older versions of Windows, FWIW.  Various vendors bypassed the Windows software stacks, an approach which has led to legions of compatibility and security issues for Windows users over the years. 
If anything, OS X is headed the other direction here entirely with sandboxing and gatekeeper and trying to keep applications to specific and documented APIs, too.
FWIW...