Microsoft Live Labs Volta Team Blog - Ignoring the architecture team

Volta is a way to ajax-ify an application with a few clicks & some minor code changes.  It converts compiled MSIL .NET languages to Javascript, among other things.  It has some limitations, mainly around VB.  It should allow clients to change their minds about tier scaling & requirements with just a little work to change.

But what is Volta?  It is probably a path from Silverlight 1.1 to Silverlight 2.0, since a core focus is not converting to Javascript, but converting from Javascript to .NET, ultimately a more powerful transition and a key driver to .NET adoption.

My question, was it named after Alessandro Volta, the guy who electrified frogs legs?

The final question that is frequently asked is how Volta relates to Silverlight.  Is Volta meant to replace Silverlight?  Are we trying to make JavaScript work for the same scenarios as Silverlight?  Simply put, no.  As others have observed, Volta is compatible with and is built to be complementary to Silverlight.  The Microsft PressPass Q&A about Volta further explains that Volta is an MSIL to MSIL toolkit aimed at making writing distributed applications easier. Silverlight is an implementation of the .NET platform that therefore will automatically benefit from the advantages of the Volta toolkit. The technologies complement each other well, and we believe that amplifies and validates the importance of the complete .NET platform, including Silverlight.   

All the benefits of the Volta toolkit, such as declarative tier-splitting and asynchronous programming or declarative import of JavaScript libraries into .NET, will apply to programs deployed to the Silverlight platform. In fact, we are in the process of replacing the browser helper objects used to facilitate debugging in this preview, which host the regular desktop CLR in IE and Firefox, and are replacing them instead with the Silverlight 2.0 runtime.

Microsoft Live Labs Volta Team Blog