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First off, IANAI (I Am Not An Author) but my Significant Other is. So I think I can contribute something here.

: "I'm currently about halfway through writing my first novel.
: After the release of books to the net by such people as Stephen King

Stephen King is a Johnny-come-lately to the world of electronic publishing. There are several publishers already out there that cater to electronic/on-line books, such as New Concepts, EBooksOnThe.NET, Diskus, and so on. Some of them have been in business for several years, and there are many authors who have their works published by these companies. Also realize that the so-called phenomenal success King had with that (60 page) book was mainly because they gave it away. I'll bet the sales receipts would show a lot fewer than half a million copies from paying customers.

: I'm wondering if it might be worth my while to cut out the middleman,
: ie the publisher and release the book online.

The difficulies you'll face with this are:

1. How to get payment for the work, assuming you're not giving it away for free. Shopping Cart type software is almost essential, and thence you get to deal with major credit card companies.

2. Promotion. A good publisher will help you with this, though the companies that do mostly or exclusively electronic works will likely not have as many resources as the titans (big publishing houses based in New York).

I know of some authors who have "gone it alone" and one or two of these have had some modest success. Others have not. YMMV.

: ...I'd like to be able to get some sort of reward for my efforts,
: ie minimise the amount of unpaid-for copies made of the book

Then I would recommend you hunt around for a good electronic publisher.

: and release it to a multi-platform environment - not just Windows
: software but Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc. Are these goals mutually exclusive

No. Most "e-books" are released in HTML or PDF format, which are readable anywhere (just about). There's a palm pilot format too, but that doesn't strike me as a good platform for serious readers; and there's the Rocket Book Reader, but that requires a M$ system and the format is closed and proprietary. The new Crusoe based web pads will IMHO be far better at this sort of thing (and if they are wildly successful, may well create a huge new market for electronic books). Besides, they're based on Linux :-)

Many of the electronic publishers are also dipping their toes in print-on-demand technology. In this way, you could get the best of both worlds. There have also been many (apocryphal) stories going around about big (dead tree) publishers picking up e-published authors after said authors become successful and have a good book or two out there.

- Pat Murphy

Just yesterday I took the time to watch the the video of the Crusoe presentation. One of the key points they stressed is that an internet appliance must have plugin compatibility, and they are able to offer that since you are actually running a PC in disguise.
You don't need to develop new software, just use plain vanilla netscape and plugins, either for Win32 or Linux.

You have the videos available either in
http://www.transmeta.com/news
or
http://www.z dnet.com/zdtv/zdtvnews/features/story/0,3685,21191 39,00.html

No, I'm sorry, but I'm sick of people with no clue about a) computers and b) politeness using the net and making it all the worse for all of us. I remember the web back in the early 90s when it was first opened up, and their was *gasp* informative content readily available.

crappy homepages (who cares what your dog is called? And your picture is so fucking ugly!)

Perhaps people who are dog lovers, vets, or hold animal-related positions will care about this first peice of information, and as for the second, perhaps the picture is used to convey the person's appearance to someone geographically distant who would otherwise not be able to view the person in question.

Now, as for the commerical factor, no matter how you slice it, companies have been involved with the Internet's expansion from the time it has been opened up. Certainly, it's conception and implementation was intially handled by scientests, miliatry scientests and university hackers, but the actual expansion - which has led to it becoming the worldwide network it has become, is largely a result of corporate funding.

And with the newbies have come the script-kiddies, people who think they're 31337 because they can fuck other people's computers up. Now that's progress!

And, of course, with technology like the Transmeta Crusoe CPUA JVM could be built into the CPU using Transmeta's impressive Code Morphing(tm) technology, creating in effect, a "Java chip". Personally, that's the way I think AOL and Transmeta *should* go here, no eliminating Linux by any means, because Linux is an excellent platform, and I'm impressed with their insightfulness at choosing this operating system - but rather, to run Java and Linux side by side, perhaps implementing a customized JVM on top of the embedded Linux system.

In any event, it's good to see technologies such as Linux being used in devices such as this. I believe that with robust technologies such as Linux and Java, the embedded market could soar to new heights, and be used to improve human communication by orders of magnitude, part of which would involve humanising technology that would otherwise be frightening to the man in the street.

- Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform

- Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris

There has been a dearth of good technical analyses of the Crusoe available on the web

Have you looked at Transmeta's own pages? They have everything I would think of as "technical" from this article except the bit about being "bug for bug compatable" being the hardest bit (and since the article mangled that by defining it as getting the BSOD at the same place rather then tracking Intel's bugs so software dependent on them don't BSOD/segv I'm not giving any credit!). Oh, and the article also gives slightly more detail on what early Si bugs were worked around in software.

The Transmeta page will show you the code sequence the article used, and explain how it is derived, and how fast it is, along with a few others.

What I will say for the article is it did a good job explaining the nontechnical parts. It was intresting what it took to get the VCs rolling. What the work enviroment is like. How psyced the hardware folks are to get to do a brand new CPU every time.

Good article, worth the read. But not for the tech info.

The Crusoe-powered S3 internet appliance on Transmeta.com looks suspiciously like an Etch-A-Sketch.

In contrast, the point of Transmeta is to design a family of microprocessors. They don't build the boxes to put them in.

Bonus question: Can anybody figure out what day's slashdot appears in this picture of Quanta's Crusoe-containing web pad?

Mobile 'phones have already entirely replaced land lines for a few people I know, and have become the primary contact for many others. Around 40% of the UK population own a mobile phone, I believe Finland leads the world with over 70% usage. Extremely competative markets have put pricing within reasonable reach for many unemployed and students, even school kids. Mobile 'phones are sold in pre-packaged boxes in supermarkets.
Part of this is because most European telcos stopped charging the mobile 'phone owners for receiving calls quite some time ago. I understand that this still isn't always the case in the US?
In the UK, the coverage is very good in reasonably densely populated areas, and weak only in the very least densly populated areas of the country.
With upcoming technologies like GPRS and UMTS, mobile data will become a sensible proposition. Given that the mobile phone operators need to make 370UKP (about $590) profit from every man, woman, and child in the UK to just cover the costs of the recent radio-spectrum auction, you can bet that the companies will be heavily pushing products suitable for everyone, from accessing AOL and shopping channels to real-time video conferencing. You can also bet that the 'web pads' and the like, will be using CPUs from Transmeta and ARM, and hopefully those that aren't running EPOC will be running a free O/S.

unless of course he used some of that new found wealth to contract out the source maintenance...

Remember, Transmeta is maintaining a distribution called Mobile Linux, right?

I have read most of the comments thus far and I am struck by how negative and uninformed most of them have been, which is really an unusual combination for Slashdot (usually if they are negative at least people know what they are talking about! ;-P ). And it seems that only the most negative ones are being moderated up. So here is my RANTMODE=1 on this topic.

I am a Maine resident, and I am pretty familiar with Gov. King's laptop plan. I am a freelance techie (sysadmin/network hacker), but I am also heavily involved in K12 education. A lot of my customers are school systems, and in the past I have been a K12 school district technology coordinator, a technology consultant for the Maine State Dept. of Ed., and done some substitute teaching and taught several adult education courses. So I think I can lay claim to having a few clues about this stuff.

Yes, the plan has some serious drawbacks. It was developed almost entirely in a top-down fashion. A lot of the details were not worked out until questions surfaced after the announcement, and many other details are still unresolved. The Gov. and his staff did not try to get the backing of the state's K12 technology professionals and teachers until afterwards.

Training *is* part of the plan, but not in the same "pot of money". The plan is for the State Dept. of Education to spend $1mil/year on staff development for teachers out of their regular budget. Yes, they should be spending more than that, but it isn't so bad since we are a small state (1.2 million total population). One of the good features of the plan is that is setup as an endowment -- only the interest on the $50 million fund would be used to provide the equipment on an ongoing basis. If the program doesn't work out, the money is still there to be spent elsewhere.

Still, I think the idea (especially the on-going funding aspect) is worth pursuing, with some broader oversight and input from the educational community.

I have noticed that people seem to get all hung up on the word "laptop", and immediately think of a big, expensive and fragile device. Laptop was a poor choice of words by the people in the governor's office to get a cutesy slogan ("lunchboxes to laptops").

Think "thin client webpad" instead.

Also think about what sort of technology might be available as "commercial off the shelf" or nearly-COTS soon, and how prices will decline in the next two years -- the program really isn't going to start until fall of 2002.

I am envisioning something like that looks like these (color webpads with a transmeta CPU), but with flash storage, wireless 802.11b ethernet, USB ports, and some sort of keyboard/screen cover attachment. Running linux, of course. This seems reasonable for $400-450/each, if you were going to be buying 18,000 of them at once.

The whole project must be done with wireless networking. Maine may lead the nation in having nearly 100% of all schools and public libraries connected to the Internet (with at least a 56k Frame Relay connection), but most buildings still don't have any network wiring outside of a few labs or office areas. Building cabling is still pretty expensive (minimum of $100/port to do it right). Wireless can get the job done a lot cheaper. It also enables the devices to be used anywhere, without any cords, which is a real enabler.

What I envision is that most of the real software and content/reference material would be on central network server (a mix of HTTP based and PDF-type resources, along with remote X or ICA sesssions for running some software packages). The student's work and information (email, notes, etc.) would be synced onto the server every time they were in the building, where it would be backed up in case they break their unit and need a replacement.

I think having some sort of information appliance like this available to all students (and teachers!) in a school setting could be a tremendous tool for learning. -- if used properly. Imagine being able to share test probe data from lab equipment in a science class with everyone at once, collect field data, etc. Even kids in Jr. HS can do meaningful real-world science, especially with the appropriate software.

Forget all that advanced learning stuff for a minute -- I think most of you forget that the average teacher doesn't have an email account, let alone one that they can access from their desk in their own classroom. How well could you do your job if you could only read your email for 10 minutes a day and had a to travel to a special room in your building to do it? Oh, and also remember that this applies to telephones too. Imagine a school where everyone has email -- students, teachers, and administrators -- and they use it. I have seen first hand how something as simple and basic as an email account for everyone in the building (and the equipment to use it) can have a profound change on the culture of the school, and improve the communication all around. It isn't the highest and best use of the technology, but it sure beats paper cubbyhole mailboxes and reams of paper killed every time the morning announcements are distributed.

Here is another thing -- people complain that textbooks are expensive and often out of date. It can cost between $50-100+ for a single copy of a science or history book that might be outdated in two years, but generally won't be replaced for 10+ years. If you look at the number of text books that the average college track high school kid will need during his/her HS career, you are talking about many hundreds of $ and dozens of pounds worth of text books (yes, they are reused several times over many years). Some of those books could be replaced with electronic versions, especially if the webpad device had a high quality display. Doesn't anyone remember having so many textbooks that is was almost impossible to shoulder your fully loaded book bag without incurring a muscle injury?

Some have stated that the money would be better spent on repairing buildings, higher teacher pay, more textbooks etc. I don't disagree that those needs are there. But, a lot of money is already spent in all of those areas -- not adequate, but at least the bulk of the needs are being met. Technology in education is not generally being funded at a level that leads to successful projects that have an impact on learning.

Most schools spend FAR more money on custodians and school buses than they spend on technology and curriculum integration. This is not to say that buses and custodial services actually get all of the money they need either, but they are generally funded at a multiple of the per capita technology and curriculum budgets.

Blah. I'm tired now. Looks like the latest budget deal hammered out between the state legistature and the Governor has reduced the fund to $30 million and it is now a general "technology for education" fund. At least it is a start.

Not 3dfx. (3dfx makes the Doodoo, erm, Voodoo graphics cards. At least they open sourced Glide.)

YM 3DNow! the streaming SIMD extended instruction set AMD added to the K6 chips and that Intel copied in Katmai/PIII.

BTW, SIMD = single instruction multiple data. First, instruction decoding limitations produced RISC (reduced instruction set CPU). Then the increasing popularity of graphics apps brought about SIMD (apply the same filter to a whole bunch of filters). Clock speeds rose so much that even the scheduler in a RISC chip was having trouble keeping up, leading to VLIW (very long instruction words) used in Intel's Merced Itanium and (internally) in Transmeta's Crusoe.

The Vadem Clio has a screen that can be flipped over, covering the keyboard and can be used as a writing tablet. Unfortunately, it is also a WinCE device with limited storage capacity. Putting that sort of ability on a real laptop with a hard drive and a more sophisticated OS like the Powerbook, the Thinkpad, or whatever Transmeta finally puts out would be an even bigger leap forward than putting it on the trackpad.

This would give a mini-notebook much greater versatility. If you are sitting at your desk and type on the keyboard and do any of the work you would normally do on a desktop. If you are on the run or sitting through a meeting, you can write directly on the screen. Throw in better power management and a Crusoe processor and you've got a real "road warrior" machine.

I know I'd buy one.

The itsy - did that have specifications? I think a project would be cool that was to make gpl circuit diagrams, so people can buy a crusoe cpu, compactflash card, ethernet driver and a touchscreen lcd - and make a hell funky pda.

1 Magician, an OpenGL implementation for Java which yields Java code that seamlessly uses existing native OpenGL libraries to provide high-performance rendering over a variety of platforms - how's that for starters?

2 Crusoe, a processor which can emulate x86 instructions - and I'm pretty certain that it'll be able to handle bytecode as well as x86 instructions sometime in the near future. IBM has backed the chip for the past years as has their interest in Java increased a lot in the same time span.

Hooray.

I think TM should at least document the instruction set for their chips

You left an "s" out following "instruction set"; Transmeta's technical white paper on Crusoe says on pages 7 and 8 that "the native ISA of the model TM5400 is an enhancement (neither forward nor backward compatible) of the model TM3120's ISA and therefore runs a different version of Code Morphing software."

As others have noted, publishing the native instruction set architecture may trap them into continuing to provide products that implement that ISA (or writing a binary-to-binary translator (he says, avoiding the "CM" phrase) to map that ISA to the new chip's native ISA), and that appears to be one thing they don't want to do - they want to be able to change the internal instruction set from product to product as they think appropriate.

This is fairly straight-forward: Making money at a day job, and pursuing a hobby (read: Open Source software development) are two entirely different things for many people. Some fortunate people at a growing number of companies get to develop "free" software and be paid for it, but a lot don't... and that's fine. OSS is -not- a de-facto industry; it's a well-developed hobby, purused by thousands and thousands of people around the world.

Linus Torvalds' day-job has nothing to do with his hobby, which is a sort of stweardship and direction-provider for the Linux kernel. Sure, Linux is part of the Transmeta strategy; why? Not because Linus works for them, but becuase they're smart... it doesn't take a lot of marbles to figure out that the Linux kernel is a very suitable fit for the 'portable computing' and 'internet appliance' market, than, say, the Windows 98 kernel.

Of course, they also got Windows to operate on their platform, which is really just a demonstration of 100% x86-compatibility. Good for them; it shows that they're not blind to where a good chunk of the market is still at.

You said: If the Open Source movement and philosophy are strong enough that companies such as Red Hat, SuSe, TurboLinux, VA Linux, and others are willing to build a business around it, then Transmeta, with Open Source's icon as an employee, should be out in front of everbody else. Instead, they cynically use Linus to garner interest and at the same time to shield themselves from criticisms of the company's behaviors.

Uhh, no. Transmeta isn't targeting just the Linux audience. Linus is there, helping with the Linux end of things; that doesn't exclude Transmeta from creating something that's Windows-compatible, too. And let's face it, the Technology behind Transmeta is pretty darned cool (literally!)... But he's not a decision-maker there by any means. He's an employee.

So what if he's world-famous for the work he's done outside of the context of Transmeta? It's a hobby...

Daltorak.

(P.S. For what it's worth, more and more companies are putting up "open source"esque pages. Why? Cause they want to give the appearance that they're 'with it', and they want to attract the attention of the otherwise hard-to-impress segment of computing society -- the geeks)

This is fairly straight-forward: Making money at a day job, and pursuing a hobby (read: Open Source software development) are two entirely different things for many people. Some fortunate people at a growing number of companies get to develop "free" software and be paid for it, but a lot don't... and that's fine. OSS is -not- a de-facto industry; it's a well-developed hobby, purused by thousands and thousands of people around the world.

Linus Torvalds' day-job has nothing to do with his hobby, which is a sort of stweardship and direction-provider for the Linux kernel. Sure, Linux is part of the Transmeta strategy; why? Not because Linus works for them, but becuase they're smart... it doesn't take a lot of marbles to figure out that the Linux kernel is a very suitable fit for the 'portable computing' and 'internet appliance' market, than, say, the Windows 98 kernel.

Of course, they also got Windows to operate on their platform, which is really just a demonstration of 100% x86-compatibility. Good for them; it shows that they're not blind to where a good chunk of the market is still at.

You said: If the Open Source movement and philosophy are strong enough that companies such as Red Hat, SuSe, TurboLinux, VA Linux, and others are willing to build a business around it, then Transmeta, with Open Source's icon as an employee, should be out in front of everbody else. Instead, they cynically use Linus to garner interest and at the same time to shield themselves from criticisms of the company's behaviors.

Uhh, no. Transmeta isn't targeting just the Linux audience. Linus is there, helping with the Linux end of things; that doesn't exclude Transmeta from creating something that's Windows-compatible, too. And let's face it, the Technology behind Transmeta is pretty darned cool (literally!)... But he's not a decision-maker there by any means. He's an employee.

So what if he's world-famous for the work he's done outside of the context of Transmeta? It's a hobby...

Daltorak.

(P.S. For what it's worth, more and more companies are putting up "open source"esque pages. Why? Cause they want to give the appearance that they're 'with it', and they want to attract the attention of the otherwise hard-to-impress segment of computing society -- the geeks)

This is fairly straight-forward: Making money at a day job, and pursuing a hobby (read: Open Source software development) are two entirely different things for many people. Some fortunate people at a growing number of companies get to develop "free" software and be paid for it, but a lot don't... and that's fine. OSS is -not- a de-facto industry; it's a well-developed hobby, purused by thousands and thousands of people around the world.

Linus Torvalds' day-job has nothing to do with his hobby, which is a sort of stweardship and direction-provider for the Linux kernel. Sure, Linux is part of the Transmeta strategy; why? Not because Linus works for them, but becuase they're smart... it doesn't take a lot of marbles to figure out that the Linux kernel is a very suitable fit for the 'portable computing' and 'internet appliance' market, than, say, the Windows 98 kernel.

Of course, they also got Windows to operate on their platform, which is really just a demonstration of 100% x86-compatibility. Good for them; it shows that they're not blind to where a good chunk of the market is still at.

You said: If the Open Source movement and philosophy are strong enough that companies such as Red Hat, SuSe, TurboLinux, VA Linux, and others are willing to build a business around it, then Transmeta, with Open Source's icon as an employee, should be out in front of everbody else. Instead, they cynically use Linus to garner interest and at the same time to shield themselves from criticisms of the company's behaviors.

Uhh, no. Transmeta isn't targeting just the Linux audience. Linus is there, helping with the Linux end of things; that doesn't exclude Transmeta from creating something that's Windows-compatible, too. And let's face it, the Technology behind Transmeta is pretty darned cool (literally!)... But he's not a decision-maker there by any means. He's an employee.

So what if he's world-famous for the work he's done outside of the context of Transmeta? It's a hobby...

Daltorak.

(P.S. For what it's worth, more and more companies are putting up "open source"esque pages. Why? Cause they want to give the appearance that they're 'with it', and they want to attract the attention of the otherwise hard-to-impress segment of computing society -- the geeks)

Dave Taylor (formerly of id, founder of crack.com, currently at Transmeta)'s crack.com game Abuse (now open-sourced, I believe) uses LISP as its scripting/scenario engine... That was *really* cool, but couldn't survive the onslaught of the first-person shooters and real time clickfe^H^H^H^H^H^H^H strategy games during 1995 or so...

If you read the Transmeta technical white paper, it's implied that the TM3120 and TM5400 (and their associated CodeMorphing software) were designed with x86 as their sole target ISA. (Otherwise, why not bill it as a universal processor and give the software layer the ability to run multiple other ISAs?) While it might be possible the get them to emulate other processor architectures (by writing a new CodeMorphing layer), my guess is that it would turn out sub-optimally.

The whole point of Transmeta's design philosophy is to pick your target application domain, and optimize the hardware, software, and hardware/software division for the constraints of that domain specifically. Executing x86 and PowerPC instructions are different enough that I would expect the Transmeta answer to be "make a new hardware core and a new CodeMorphing layer".

Cut from the second to last page of the Benchmark report file available for dld here

Pentium III data from a commercially available major OEM mobile PC, 64M PC-100 SDRAM, 0.18u integrated L2 Coppermine @ 1.54V core on 440BX mobile module, ACPI power management at maximum power savings.

TM5400 data measured on TM FTM platform, 64M PC-133 SDRAM, 266 MHz @ 1.225V - 533 MHz @ 1.6V, ACPI at maximum power savings, LongRun TM power management enabled.

TM3120 data measured on TM WTM platform, 64M PC-133 SDRAM, ACPI power management at maximum savings.

So from what I read here, they used superior ram for the Crusoe chips, and if you look at the results, they apparently combined the results for the TM5400 at 266MHz and 533MHz in a way that I was not able to figure out by reading the document. ie on their results page they had 3 columns: Mobile Pentium III 500 MHz, TM5400 266-533 MHz LongRun, and TM5400 Mobile Pentium III Ratio.

If it does not seem strange, please grab the doc for yourself and read it before flaming away. tx.

If you were able to watch the PCWeek Webcast of the Transmeta press conference you would have seen Linus make only a cameo appearance.

The evidence suggests very strongly that Transmeta is not using Linus or Linux inappropriately to sell Crusoe processors.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

The receipe VA Linux + Xybernaut + Crusoe
would IMHO give birth to one of the hottest
markets for computing, the world has ever seen.

VA Linux would have the money, Xybernaut would
have the know how (and some nice patents) and
Transmeta would have the right piece of silicone.

Imagine a Linux powered wearable computer with
wireless connectivity to the Web. Any thoughts?

1. I run an ASUS P2B-DS with two PII/300s and two IBM ultrawide SCSI disks. The machine is bombproof and very fast. This is my desktop machine and is used largely for Java development - none of our servers have or need anything like this performance.
2. However, I wouldn't build or buy a new machine just now. I'm waiting to see whether anyone is going to put together a four-way or eight-way Crusoe motherboard and if so what it will cost. The Crusoe is a much smaller die than the Pentium and consequently is very much cheaper to produce. This doesn't mean it will be sold cheaper, but it could be; I'm prepared to bet the real production cost of eight Crusoes is significantly less than two PIIIs

But while we're on the subject of Transmeta, if you check out their Mobile systems webpage, they're showing off a picture of their product running Netscape with Slashdot being displayed. Soon trolls and First Posters can take their Slashdot anywhere on Earth!

Transmeta's Code Morphing technology is obviously not limited to x86 implementations.

That's not to say that they actually will - getting every last instruction set in there probably would be more work than it's worth. (Of course, I can make this bold statement because I have precisely no idea how much work it is.) But if it can perfectly emulate (and optimize!) the x86 set, I don't see why they couldn't build the code morphing layer around whatever set they feel like.

The other thing I want to point out is that GPRS is just the beginning, wait for EDGE (300Kbps) and UMTS(>2Mbps) in the next 5 years. Really, the future is wireless. Why do you think Transmeta chose to spend 5 years developing a killer-chip for wireless devices, rather just a high performance desktop chip?

The translation cache, along with the Code Morphing code, resides in a separate memory space that is inaccessible to x86 code.

• RAM access times are measured in nanoseconds and hard disks measured in milliseconds. It's magnitudes faster to simply re-morph code on the fly than use a disk based translation cache.
• The Crusoe is designed to be embeddable in systems which don't even have hard disks (i.e. set-top boxes, Webpads, etc).
• To maintain a hard-disk based code cache, the Crusoe would need to work with SCSI and IDE drives and understand partition tables and filesystems. Why build this complexity in at the CPU level, especially when you're aiming for a simple power-saving design?

There are benchmarsk on Transmeta site. They are typical task benchmarks, not plain CPU blast and according to them the smaller of two chips is somewhere around 0.8 - 0.9 Pentium III 500 and the bigger one (due midyear) is equivalent or better.

Have a look at them

Hmm, of course you can still make money while still complying with the GPL. For instance, You can always charge for end-user tech support, and there is always that part of your resume that will state that you have worked in cooperation with others on a large scale project.

There is also Condition 1 in the GPL (Version 2 June 1991) which states:-

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you recieve it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this license and to the absence of any warranty; and give any recipients of the Program a copy of this license along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. (emphasis added)

Also Ousterhout, by deriving proprietary extensions from the Tcl source tree (because that is what you do when you create an extension), it is automatically in breach of the GPL Condition 2b:-

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

BTW If you breach the licensing aggreement for proprietry software, then you should expect the owner (or their appointed agent) to 'savage you' so why can't the appointed agent to the free software movement do the same?

Remember, for many free software is a great way to learn new techniques and apply them to your own projects. It is usually a "leisure activity" for most, and many people work highly paid jobs, on the cutting edge of the technology, and if it wasn't for the sharing of Ideas, then the computing world would be still back in the days of the abacus.

The prime example of someone who produces GPL software and still earns a living is Linus Torvalds (who he you ask? :) ) who has been working at Transmeta Corp. for the last few years and whose product will change the face of computing again.

I will leave you to draw your own conclusions, but personally if it wasn't for GPL Software and Free software, I wouldn't have learned as much as I have done, and I wouldn't have the job that I work now.

www.gnu.org Try reading the situations vacant to see that you can really make money by supporting GPL Software.

If you break it down into business terms, GPL Software is a 'loss leader' where you sell as cheaply as possible (i.e. FREE) and Hit 'em for the after sales support.

Hope that clears the air.

Lollypop_man (I'ts just a handle, click user info above for my details, I'm no coward!)

Quote:- If programmers are inherently lazy, then I must be the greatest programmer that ever lived!

http://www.transmeta.com/ -- I could smell you, but then I'd have to kill you

http://www.hemp-sisters.com/ -- Let's just say it's a pretty strong smell.

http://www.house.gov/ -- the smell that comes out the back of a bull, covered by a strong perfumed masking smell

http://www.microsoft.com/ -- anxious sweat, money, the smell that comes out the back of a bull, the smell of a deisel engine (you know, like the ones that power steamrollers and bulldozers)...

http://www.getyoursoftware.com/ -- spiced ham

http://www.loc.gov/ -- very musty

http://www.as400.ibm.com/ -- very musty

http://www.slashdot.org/ -- jolt cola, fried silicon, solder, sweat, ozone...

There's a very interesting paper on the Crusoe and the Very Long Instruction Set processor it uses hereIt's in .pdf. The coolest bit is it's IR pictures of both a PIII and a Crusoe playing a DVD with software. The PIII is operating at a max of 105.5 Celsius, the Crusoe at 48.2.

BeNews has receive reports from trusted sources who claim to have seen a CNBC report demonstrating BeOS running on TransMeta's new Crusoe chip.

Umm, I'm not sure why it's an "interesting rumor" that BeOS is running on systems built with a chip that, as Transmeta says, is "Fully x86 compatible" and "is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems", given that BeOS comes in a version that's "x86-based".

BeNews has receive reports from trusted sources who claim to have seen a CNBC report demonstrating BeOS running on TransMeta's new Crusoe chip.

Umm, I'm not sure why it's an "interesting rumor" that BeOS is running on systems built with a chip that, as Transmeta says, is "Fully x86 compatible" and "is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems", given that BeOS comes in a version that's "x86-based".

transmeta stated themselves in their crusoe-introduction how important it is to be 100% compatible and to be able to display the "cool website of the day" (page 17) every plugin which needs some SIMD-extension (single instruction, multiple data) like 3d-now or MMX will reduce those 100% from crusoe.

cool stuff.

http://www2adm.transmeta.com/crusoe/download/pdf/T M3120_DataSheet_1-18-00.pdf

and

http://www2adm.transmeta.com/crusoe/download/pdf/T M5400_DataSheet_1-18-00.pdf

and the chips are impressive. But the data sheets are very incomplete (the TM3120 data sheet is only 6 pages !!). No pinout, no electrical specifications, no programming info, no absolute maximum ratings, etc. They need an additional 1000 pages of documentation before you actually can design anything with it.

http://www2adm.transmeta.com/crusoe/download/pdf/T M3120_DataSheet_1-18-00.pdf

and

http://www2adm.transmeta.com/crusoe/download/pdf/T M5400_DataSheet_1-18-00.pdf

and the chips are impressive. But the data sheets are very incomplete (the TM3120 data sheet is only 6 pages !!). No pinout, no electrical specifications, no programming info, no absolute maximum ratings, etc. They need an additional 1000 pages of documentation before you actually can design anything with it.

Please stop using the Crusoe logo to represent Transmeta. The Transmeta logo is a downward pointing blue triangle with a wavy line crossing it.

While I have to admit that Transmeta does use the Crusoe logo on every page of its website, and only rarely uses the Transmeta logo, they only use the Crusoe logo with the Crusoe name.

Please stop using the Crusoe logo to represent Transmeta. The Transmeta logo is a downward pointing blue triangle with a wavy line crossing it.

While I have to admit that Transmeta does use the Crusoe logo on every page of its website, and only rarely uses the Transmeta logo, they only use the Crusoe logo with the Crusoe name.

Please stop using the Crusoe logo to represent Transmeta. The Transmeta logo is a downward pointing blue triangle with a wavy line crossing it.

While I have to admit that Transmeta does use the Crusoe logo on every page of its website, and only rarely uses the Transmeta logo, they only use the Crusoe logo with the Crusoe name.

If you check Transmeta's FAQ, it will state that:
26. Is Transmeta a public company? Transmeta is a privately funded company.

Since they have managed to stay this way for 5 years, I hope
- and think - they still got the funds to keep it rolling until
the first product-line is out and the big bucks start coming in.

Without filing for an IPO they will IMO be able to keep the focus
on long-term R&D, without having to get to terms with eager stock-
holders out for fast results and a quick buck.

• nope. from what i gather this just goes to sleep and back up again at full speed with noops/hlt for power saving. variable speed asynchronous machines cant be handled by linux due to its bogomips setting..

I think you got it wrong. They claim their LongRun Technology actually reduces both clock speed and processor voltage on the fly, rather than taking this on/off approach.

-------------------------

Transmeta has benchmarks on its website.

-AC

Full x86 compatibility, with two different models. The more expensive, faster chip will support all x86 apps including 16 bit ones, the less expensive one dumps the 16 bit because (as Transmeta made clear) there really isn't a set of legacy apps out there.

If it dumps support for the 16-bit instructions, it doesn't offer "full x86 compatibility".

However, the Crusoe processor family page says that the TM3120 does offer full x86 compatibility:

The TM3120 is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems, including those offered by Microsoft and Linux suppliers. Transmeta expects that Linux will be the primary operating system for mobile Internet devices.

so they don't "dump" the 16-bit instructions in the less-expensive chip. It may not handle 16-bit code as efficiently the more-expensive chip, just as a product from another maker of x86-compatible chips punted on handling 16-bit code efficiently (but said maker had to fix that in the Pentium II because the P6 was to be used in PC's, not in appliances without the problem of legacy apps; the PPro might have been able to get away with it as it was primarily intended for high-end machines running NT and Win32 apps).

run FreeBSD?

FreeBSD runs on x86-compatible processors, does it not?

The Crusoe processor family page on the Transmeta Web site says of the lower-speed processor:

The TM3120 is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems, including those offered by Microsoft and Linux suppliers. Transmeta expects that Linux will be the primary operating system for mobile Internet devices.

and says of the higher-speed processor:

The TM5400 is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems. This includes all versions of Linux, as well as Microsoft's popular Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 operating systems.

They don't explicitly mention FreeBSD - or NetBSD, or OpenBSD, or BSD/OS, or SCO UNIX, or SCO Unixware, or SCO Xenix, or OS/2, or BeOS, or Solaris, or Coherent, or... - but those are all part of the "complete range of x86-based operating systems".

As far as the BIOS/PROM monitor, the OS, the applications, etc. are concerned, it's just another x86 processor.

Isn't Paul Allen mixed up in this somehow?

Yes, he's one of the investors. The mere fact that one of the founders of Microsoft invested in them doesn't ipso facto mean that they will make one of their processors incapable of running OSes not from Microsoft; given that the chip presents an x86-compatible interface to non-Transmeta code running on it, the TM5400, as Transmeta said on their Web site, "...is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems. This includes all versions of Linux, as well as Microsoft's popular Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 operating systems."

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but one point was the ability to upgrade the instruction set w/ a software upgrade. This means that all the opcodes and whatnot are not stored on the chip so what would stop anyone from just taking the instruction set from the tm3120 and load them up to the tm5400.

You're wrong about what that ability means.

The native instruction set of the processor is hard-wired.

However, the only code in that instruction set is

1. the binary-to-binary translation code;
2. code generated by that binary-to-binary translation code

"Upgrading the instruction set" would change the instruction set for OSes, applications, etc. that the machine would be willing to run - and that instruction set is the same for both chips; it's x86.

So Linux on a 700mhz sounds very possible.

Of course it is - Linux does exist for x86 processors. :-) They quite explicitly say that Linux will run on the TM5400 (the faster of the two machines, that being the "700 MHz version" - the Crusoe processor family page says quite explicitly:

The TM5400 is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems. This includes all versions of Linux, as well as Microsoft's popular Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 operating systems.

it was mentioned near the end that the vliw instructions AND the code morphing software on the two chips are different and NOT binary compatible.

The instruction sets are different - and the binary-to-binary translation software would then be different because it has to translate to a different instruction set.

However, as the Compatibility page on the Transmeta web site says:

All Crusoe processors are:

• Fully x86 compatible: they run x86 applications just like conventional x86 microprocessors.
• PC compatible: Crusoe processors already include portions of the traditional PC support chipset, and they run all popular PC operating systems.

so they're "binary-compatible" to the extent that they can both run x86 code.

So possibly no Linux on the 700Mhz version?

Umm, Linux is a "popular PC operating system", is it not? Given that, the above indicates that Crusoe processors, plural, can run Linux.

For that matter, the Crusoe processor family page says quite explictly of the TM 5400 (that being the chip to which you're referring):

The TM5400 is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems. This includes all versions of Linux, as well as Microsoft's popular Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 operating systems.

it was mentioned near the end that the vliw instructions AND the code morphing software on the two chips are different and NOT binary compatible.

The instruction sets are different - and the binary-to-binary translation software would then be different because it has to translate to a different instruction set.

However, as the Compatibility page on the Transmeta web site says:

All Crusoe processors are:

• Fully x86 compatible: they run x86 applications just like conventional x86 microprocessors.
• PC compatible: Crusoe processors already include portions of the traditional PC support chipset, and they run all popular PC operating systems.

so they're "binary-compatible" to the extent that they can both run x86 code.

So possibly no Linux on the 700Mhz version?

Umm, Linux is a "popular PC operating system", is it not? Given that, the above indicates that Crusoe processors, plural, can run Linux.

For that matter, the Crusoe processor family page says quite explictly of the TM 5400 (that being the chip to which you're referring):

The TM5400 is compatible with the complete range of x86-based operating systems. This includes all versions of Linux, as well as Microsoft's popular Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 operating systems.