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Phoenix BIOS Software Available for Crusoe
Titten writes "Computerworld reports that Phoenix BIOS software is available for Crusoe. Phoenix worked in secret with Transmeta for more than two years to prepare its PhoenixBIOS software for use with Transmeta's chips. Here's a release from Phoenix. I guess we'll be seeing computers with the Crusoe chip sometime soon now!"
Oh, I don't know. If nothing else, there's always the chance that it plays a good game of chess.
Its a name. Thats all. You know, not everything in this world is a hip shot at your ancestors. The name was chosen by a marketing research firm to decribe a mobile chip. I highly doubt they were thinking anything derogatory. the name was chosen in good faith, and didnt really deserve that. I sympathise with you, but when people in good faith get called racists it really starts wearing thin.
As for the confederate flag, I agree with you. The fact that we allow a confederate flag to fly patriotically in this country is sad, its as bad as a nazi flag, which is legal, but SHOULDNT BE CONDONED BY or own friggin government! What other country in this world would let a defeated revolutionary group raise their national flag on national soil? none. Even worse, its part of our OWN government raising it!
I advise you to choose your battles, Crusoe is a processor, not a bad word. The confederate flag is another issue. Boycotting South Carolina would be justified in my opinion, but boycotting Transmeta would just be malicious, as they have done absolutely nothing to you or anyone else, not even symbolically, and it would dilute perceptions of your cause.
South Carolina needs to get their Red Necks(tm) out of their asses. (oh shit, here come the tomatoes!)
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
Not for desktop machines my ass. Why do chip manufacturers say this? And why do some of us have ballsy 700mhz Athlons, or dual PIIs, when we were told that kind of setup is "not for desktop machines?"
Oh yeah, and why is the Debian, Transmeta, and Dreamcast logos all look surprisingly similar? Heheh.. Dreamcast II will probably have a Transmeta processor and be running Debian...
I can't let this continue. Robinson Crusoe Does not contain the N-word. you were trolled. h4w
It is perhaps less revolutionary than it sounds as every PII does something similar, but the amount of underlying software is. So the CPU itself, nothing spectecular in that respect that there are no changes of the circuits on the fly, as some speculated for instance.
Should it work out though, then it seems to a kind of prove that self modifying hardware really would be worth the effort and if so, then we can expect even less hardware in the future; perhaps one or two CPU types really could fit all.
It might be the only solution to push the performance barrier a bit further as improvments would not require huge investments in hardware, read new fabs and such. Same would be valid for fixing flaws of course.
>>> I'm sick of this liberal "black people had it good" bullshit. Slavery was oppression, racism is oppression, and "seperate but equal" is oppression. You can't rewrite history in your white, eurocentric view anymore. We won't stand for it. And I sure as hell am not going to stand for Linux Torvalds oppressing black folk with this "Crusoe" bullshit.
This man has ISSUES.
I dought Linus gives a shit about racism, I'll bet you money he just thinks about programming and his job. Or it could be a cover up, Linux might just be a way to opress black people, wasnt that in the MAN pages in the latest kernel release?
Seriously though, want to talk REPRESSION? It seems no one can do a god damned thing without being called a racist anymore. I give absolutely *NO* support for *YOUR* brand of racial sympathy. Its not everyone elses fault you feel your repressed when you're creating this animosity towards those who've done nothing to you. You are a troublemaker and a bigot. 'Linus torvalds oppressing black folk' Now I've heard it all.
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
Expect an anouncement soon ;) You will be surprized as to whom gets it out first!
"Robinson Crusoe" was written by Willem Dafoe, you unimaginable boob. Not Mark Twain!
>... spent upwards of $100M ...
Nah, I'd say they spent closer to 1 or 2 billion.
(5 years times 200 people times hardware
design and testing plus etc.)
Censorship is not a solution to any problem I am afraid.
That's why we don't let bleeding-heart wimps like you run for office.
As far as the meaning of using the word "Crusoe" - maybe you need to think about some of the things Robinson Crusoe stands for.
Like slavery? Man Friday was oppressed by Robinson Crusoe, whether you thinks so or not. He was a slave, and Crusoe gave thanks to his little white "god" that he had someone to abuse. Next time, skip the klan meeting and read the damn book instead.
Not everything is designed to be offensive to the African-american people. Don't be so paranoid. You're opressing yourself by even thinking about it
I'M oppressing MYSELF? Were the slaves opressing themselves? They should they be thankful that lily white assholes stole them from their homes, raped their women, and sold them?
I'm sick of this liberal "black people had it good" bullshit. Slavery was oppression, racism is oppression, and "seperate but equal" is oppression. You can't rewrite history in your white, eurocentric view anymore. We won't stand for it. And I sure as hell am not going to stand for Linux Torvalds oppressing black folk with this "Crusoe" bullshit.
Anonymous Coward: I'm with you, brother.
or PPC code. Or Alpha code. Or whatever.
Rather scarily, AlphaBIOS includes an x86 emulator so it can run initialisation code for video and other cards - which tend to be x86 on the card ROMs.
-t.
Both of the major "broadband" netowrking technologies (cable modem / xDSL) offered in the Austin area require the installation of an Ethernet card to connect to service. Granted, broadband isn't all that widespread now (maybe a couple of million subscribers, I think), but Fast Internet is something you can really sell to the average consumer. It's much much cooler than "fast hard drive" and at least as cool as "fast printer."
Now, what does this have to do with boot code and ethernet? Maybe not a whole lot; but point is that ethernet is probably going to become more standard as time goes on, and I'd certainly like to be able to use it as it's done on most large workstation boxes.
(On the other hand, there is considerable architectural support needed to get this level or interoperability up and running--most implementations seem to have some sort of imbedded Forth in them and a well-defined interface for storage and network controllers. It may well be "too late," at least for this generation of PC's. Let's face it--the new PC specifications from MS have a lot fo problems, but at least they're an attempt to ditch at least some of the 19-year-old baggage of the PC architecture)
-- Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
I have a similar recollection. I believe that Intel made a significant investment in Phoenix Technologies Ltd. some time more than 3 years ago. If you look at the Intel Capital web pages (which list various companies that Intel has invested in), you will see Phoenix listed there.
http://www.intel.com/capital/portfo lio/cspt.htm
Phoenix is definitely not everyone's favourite BIOS company in terms of setting things up and user interface but they are the de-facto standard for the BIOS programming interface.
If you take any BIOS programming guide you will find mostly two names: Phoenix and IBM. IBM is actually resposnsible mostly for the PS2 additions. Some of them have been adopted, some not.
So a BIOS design usually looks like - Phoenix starts, defines the interface spec and everyone else follows.
As a user I dislike phoenix as much as you do if not more, but as a programmer I have to admit that if you want your things to work you have to rely on their docs, standards and implementation. Se la vie...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Yes I agree we must allow them some time to let the ball roll so to speak. However, the fact of the matter is that Transmeta does have some good ideas but really no working prototype. I mean where is the laptop that is supposed to be running on this new chip?
I have to admit though that their marketing strategy is a stroke of genius. Bring in one of the most respected techies in the world (Linus Torvalds) and combine that with a cloke of secrecy for a few years and you have a winner. Or at least a very curious public. I have to admit that the hype may be slightly over-inflated and artificual considering that most of it is riding on Linus's laurels, but only time will tell.
As mentioned above, Transmeta has some heavy duty backers, so we can expect them to be around for awhile. It never hurts to have "Big Blue" on your side. What will really be interesting is to see how the other chip manufactures like Intel and AMD will respond. It's almost a given that they will try to create a similar product which will directly compete with the Crusoe processor. Essentially, Transmeta will have to either specialize or diversify to keep afloat in the "crazy" computer world. Anyhow it will be interesting...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
It's actually pretty cool.
Well, as of 1998 AWARD IS PHOENIX. Or a subsidiary of. Go read http://www.award.com/
Hell yeah.. my sentaments excatly. If Crusoe is going to be such a good processor, why would they take a step back and use BIOS? Its crap, and even the Open Firmware in my mac (which is kinda buggy) can do more than any implementation of bios I have ever seen. And the Sun and SGI stuff can realy kick some ass. I don't understand Transmeta on this one.
When was the last time you saw BIOS that you could write programs in (if you know forth), or could connect to the network with? Also in some of the implementations you can even telnet.
-----
Can I Play With Madness?
Everyone say hi to Frank
Frank T. Clark
230 East 9th Street #3C
New York, NY 10029
212-831-0882
http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/delindex.htm
http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/index.htm
delchi@dorsai.org
> I am quite fond of award myself. Award and Phoenix have merged in september 1998. See http://www.award.com/ That's some work for judge Jackson.
> I am quite fond of award myself. Award and Phoenix have merged in september 1998. See http://www.award.com/ That's some work for judge Jackson.
The instruction set is x86, yes.
The chip is not pin compatable, and requires it's own unique blend of support chips, I would imagine (as any processor does).
The function of BIOS is like a mini HAL(Hardware Abstraction Layer)to deal with firing up the motherboard components in the right order, setting interrupts, and providing boot code to the CPU. This process is different for every brand of motherboard, and every chip out there. BIOS presents a standard interface to the OS itself.
Yes, the code morphing software loads before the BIOS. IT has to.. the BIOS is written in x86. But then the BIOS has to take care of the rest of the motherboard.
while this may be great for Crusoe - it'll encourage more rapid adoption of their chips.. I can't help but wonder what this will do to Phoenix in the long run. They've basically dropped their pants and mooned Intel in front of the entire industry.. do 'ya think if Crusoe fails they might not be.. umm... irritated?
Down with the PC BIOS! Sheesh. We've been stuck with crappy busses, broken PICs, lame DMAs, and hokey BIOS ROMs for the past twenty years! It's time to posthumously get with the nineties! We want programmable PROMs in FORTH! We want 256 interrupts! We want FAST DMA!
At least we have PCI. That at least doesn't suck.
--
I noticed
--
I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
I think Linus does add some "marketability" to Transmeta as a company, but that doesn't mean the new Crusoe chips might be that "box filled with shit".
You've made no useful comment about the Crusoe chip, and have done your best to insult "slashdotters" as a group (as if people that read slashdot are easily categorized). Congrats to you... I just don't know why moderators raise scores on posts that have no useful point.
Honestly, I am sure that your "insult against slashdotters" made several moderators squeel with glee and moderate to "intesting". *sigh* people, stop encouraging CRAP messages like this.
Thank you...
Geez this is the kind of stuff you should EXPECT on slashdot
Sadly, you're right. This is what I've come expect on Slashdot. Not that I have anything against Mr. Torvalds or the company that he works for, but over-exposure tends to make people sick.
As it is, I really read Slashdot for the comments (and browse at -1, the sensible way), and the articles themselves are secondary (and yes, I actually *do* following the links and read the articles on stories that I post to). I really think that is the comments that make Slashdot worthwhile.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
I suppose that would explain why I hadn't seen a plain Phoenix BIOS in years. I didn't realize Award was actually Phoenix, and I was starting to think they had gone out of business.
First, Robinson Crusoe was written by Daniel Defoe (No, I didn't know it off the top of my head; I checked Amazon.), but other people have mentioned that here. Second, the story you're describing is Huckleberry Finn. I'm a lot less startled by the troll than the fact that no one recognised that.
I guess you'd mean something like OpenBIOS, eh?
From the web page:
PCs have had BIOSes since the dawn of time. And since the beginning, they have been DOS-specific, 16-bit, real-mode, etc. -- not something that a modern OS such as Linux, Hurd, or BSD can use. The OpenBIOS group intends to create a free BIOS for PCs. So far we have little code, but we are working on it
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
I believe the SGI's Visual Workstation 320/540 was designed with W2K ( the horror, the horror )in mind hence the USB and FireWire. They needed to create a custom HAL to get Windoze NT4 to boot and custom drivers so that USB mice and keyboards could be used. I don't believe you could run Windoze 9[5|8] on those boxes.
Yes, but Linux is a Real Operating System (tm)
I'd be very happy to see an Intel-based server that had a real PROM monitor. One like SGI's that makes it trivial to do network booting and use a text terminal as a console. It would also eliminate the need for VGA, mouse and keyboard ports. Real servers are headless! Unfortunately, COTS hardware is designed for Windoze, so if you want the advantages of cheap/fast hardware, you usually get stuck with crap like the BIOS.
"Yeah well
look at this url:
http://www.dorsai.org/citizens/staff/index.html
Frank, that email address gives you away.
I like that he took his resume offline, though, and now you can't page him. I guess maybe payback's a bitch. If you waste a little bit of a lot of people's time, it adds up and you go it coming, Frankie boy.
"Robinson Crusoe" was written by Willem Dafoe, you unimaginable boob.
That's Daniel Defoe. Not William Dafoe. Willem Dafoe is a modern-day actor. He was in Platoon and Speed 2. You were saying something about an unimaginable boob?
All I can say is thank you to the computer gods that it has not wormed its putrid way into any system that I have to use. I am getting ready to buy a new system...now there are two things I have to ask NOT be put on my system: Windows and Pheonix!
There is another solution...I could turn off my monitor or even just close my eyes until I hear the hard drives thrashing the lovely tune of the Penguin waking. Only then, when Linux is starting, can I open my eyes and know that everything will be all right.
-- soldack
I have a vague recollection of seeing an article on SlashDot about 18 months ago heralding Intel's investment in Phoenix. That would be an interesting situation, if my recollection is accurate.
being called slashdot would lead mem to believe that its web oriented more than any certain OS. Especially since syntax could also be used on dos and cp/m
Hmm... well then, I disliked the old Pheonix. Perhaps I may need to rethink my predjudaces.
Why did they have to use Phoenix. I think they are my least favorite bios company.
BIOS sucks. We need a real command line firmware that knows what things like SCSI disks and ethernet cards are!
On any Sun, SGI, Apple Mac, you can bring up a command line in firmware at boot time and truly control the boot process.
On my Sun, I can boot off of any partition on any disk. I can also *really* boot from CD-ROMs (not cheesy El Torito CD's that work by emulating a piece of crap floppy disk).
Well, not that anyone's going to read this, since it's posted so late, but I can boot from any SCSI device in my system, even a SCSI CD-ROM changer with multiple LUNs. I can boot from an external magneto-optical (MO) drive. I can even boot from the slave hard drive on the secondary EIDE port of my motherboard or from my ethernet card. If I really wanted to, I could hook up a modem to one of my comm ports and force my PC into a remote reboot by just dialing the modem's phone number.
All I have to do is type "boot cdrom" to boot from CD, "boot net" to boot off of a network boot/install server. I can even create aliases so that I can say "boot linux" to boot off of a Linux partition - even if it's on my sixth SCSI disk in the chain.
I don't have to type anything.
I don't need to waste time/money installing stupid tools like System Commander to get the same functionality
Isn't that Windows software or something? I've never used anything like that. All I have installed on my computer is LILO, plus the operating systems that I wish LILO to boot (it varies, depending on my mood).
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Sun's OpenBoot/OpenFirmware provides many mini-miracles.
The PC BIOS is rather useless. But then again, I don't really use the PC BIOS for anything but the POST (power on self test) and PCI/PNP init. After that, the PC BIOS pretty much disappears. I use a decent PCI U2W SCSI card with its own firmware. I don't need a PC BIOS to boot my computer, unless I want to boot from an EIDE disk.
I can't do miracles with a small SCSI firmware, but it does what it's supposed to do - boot my computer.
Having a PC firmware that has access to my Ethernet card and a TCP/IP stack would be a novelty, and potentially very useful in an emergency, but of no use to the average consumer, who can't even figure out how to enter his PC BIOS setup program, much less use a SPARCstation firmware.
Would it be better to have SPARCstation firmware in our PC workstations? Yes. Would it give incredible amounts of new features? No. Just some bells and whistles. PCs aren't really known for their security, scalability, or flexability. Transmeta isn't marketing a server chip here. It's just for low-power PCs.
Why not write your own open source BIOS if your so unhappy with the current situation? (isn't that what you're supposed to say to people who run linux?)
Consumers don't, of course. But in addition to real firmware being fun for the technically savvy, it's also very useful in embedded systems such as these. Why? Because it's nice to put simple drivers for simple hardware in 1 or 2 MB of ROM rather than wasting scarce RAM on more complicated os-level drivers. Because it's nice to be able to boot from a network. Because it's nice to have hardware diagnostics built in, especially for machines that aren't likely to have lots of flashing lights, beeps, and other traditional failure indicators. In embedded systems, good firmware can make the difference. Now, I realize these aren't strictly embedded systems, but it's easy to see (at least for me) that they would greatly benefit from a nice OF implementation.
Naturally, Transmeta's business plan revolves (for now) around x86 compatibility, and that means top-to-bottom peecee "emulation." I personally think that's a terrible idea that will condemn them to hang in the past while most everyone else rockets into the future, but in context, partnering with Phoenix makes perfect sense. And real firmware really just doesn't.
ObFirmwareAnecdote: The ultralinux project once mocked Sun's motto as "The PROM is the computer" in appreciation of real firmware and its benefits.
Does anyone know when we are going to see a production laptop using a crusoe processor? Any rough guesses at a roll-out schedule?
I've just searched IBM, Compaq, Toshiba and Siemens web sites and there isn't so much as a word about how they are planning to use crusoe.
Anybody out there with a snip of information willing to post anonymously and put us all out of our suspense?
I've got to buy a new laptop and I sure as hell don't want to buy one and then find 6 weeks later I could have bought a laptop with a crusoe processor in it.
JSC
I believe you are correct in the areas you cover. However, there are developers, systems administrators, and "average users" out there who don't want "more Intel-compatable." There are people sick of the cruft and crap inherent in being compatable with everything Intel has created since 1980. This crap makes life worse for everyone.
Operating system developers work around old architectural problems--there because to remove them would be to break some DOS application from 1983. Users get poorly-designed, ambiguous, and conflicting peripheral interfaces. Which way does the IDE connector go, pin 1 towards power connector? Which one is pin 1? This cable doesn't have a red stripe. I only get _two_ drives on this channel?
Ever connect a 50-pin Centronics, 50-pin dense, or 68-pin dense SCSI connector to its cable? It only goes one way, if it's made correctly.
Remember when microprocessors were _small_? Intel has doubled the volume of each of their processor housings since the 386, all the while requiring complicated cooling solutions to keep them within operating temperature ranges. This isn't progress, this is regress. They're faster, but they're so sloppy and loud. I'm convinced with the technology we have today (not tomorrow), we should be able to build a machine with performance on-par with that of a Pentium II with no fans. In fact, I'm typing on such a machine, it's a G3 laptop made by Apple, and it runs a multi-user, multi-tasking Unix clone. These machines are expensive because they're expensive to produce. Its components will continue to be produced in small quantities until people demand similar performance from the computers they use every day.
PC board BIOS sets get hacked up every time someone makes a larger IDE disk. I believe that the only reason IDE is popular is because it's cheap, and the only reason IDE is cheap is because profit was the only thing clone-makers were looking at ten years ago. Ever take a look at LILO's source code? Why should anyone have to go through such contortions to boot an operating system? There are decent two-stage bootloaders (I use GRUB, FreeBSD's loader works well, I'm sure there are others), but the PC architecture is just so braindamaged when compared with something like the Alpha, or OpenFirmware on a SPARC or a PowerPC. I don't imply the latter are examples of perfect implementations, but they beat the spotted trousers off the PC. Every time I boot my Alpha, I'm impressed by the sheer usefullness of its SRM firmware. I can boot directly a kernel bootstrap program, initialize the PAL code in the processor, and be off, with none of that 640K silliness. I can boot MILO (or even flash it into firmware!), and "ls" my devices, before choosing what to boot.
Crusoe could have changed this. All of this. Transmeta could have implemented a new, clean instruction set. They could have worked hard to provide top-quality documentation, reference material, and developer resources to a bunch of people looking for something new. They have my favorite "specially-abled alien" (or whatever INS wants to call him) to lead the port of an excellent operating system to this new architecture. They could have implemented a 64-bit memory addressing scheme. I have only read the PDF whitepaper, but it seems to me they could have easily used a 64-bit instruction set. Crusoe runs cool--very cool. I want my desktop to be fanless. That the hard drive makes noise implies that it moves, which it does by design. Only electrons need to move in a microprocessor. Transmeta's Code Morphing (TM) allows an excellent abstraction of the ISA from the hardware below it, and we need this.
But I think I'm too idealistic. Transmeta couldn't have pulled that off. Transmeta is a business, and they want to money by selling a product to people that want it. People think they want Intel because they don't know anything else, and getting funding to fight Intel is probably harder than running a new chip from design to fabrication.
I guess I'm disappointed because Transmeta failed to change the world.
--
who DIDN'T work secretly with Transmeta? It seems like such a joke; there must be all of fifteen developers that haven't been in from the get-go. It's a wonder the release surprised ANYONE. Of course we've decided to play the secrecy card because a) it's fun and b) we grew up with James Bond movies.
Because of this, my own involvement with Transmeta and Crusoe cannot be revealed, but expect it soon (St. Valentines Day, but you didn't hear it from me!!!). However, I can leak a little info. Expect to see some APPLIANCES with fully OPEN SOURCED components dealing with DAIRY products . . . *wink*
ever notice Crusoe and Cheese begin with the same letter? Of course you did; you're all developing apps for our syste....I've said too much already.
You shouldn't be paranoid about "another Intel". You should hope they become another Intel. How nice
would it be to have Intel, AMD, and Transmeta become the "Big Three" of CPU design and have them
push each other to produce better, faster, and cheaper CPUs.
And cooler (pun intended)
Colleen:Its a black-hole.
Hunter:Is that a good thing?
C:It is if you want to be compressed into oblivion.
H:Oh.. coooool.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Oh well, I presume there will be subnotebooks/whatever we end up calling them based on the 700 mhz crusoe that will actually run Mobile Linux, and that the dichotomy is merely a marketing split to show the two "different" market sectors Transmeta is attacking with their products (handhelds vs. notebooks-of-the-future). I just am not entirely comfortable with the idea that Linux is boxed in as the embedded platform / handheld platform, at least from a marketing perspective.
Um, there is an icon for Intel, maybe even for Cyrix.
But not for Motorola. And you dont know how much it turns my stomach to see the %^&#%$ APPLE icon displayed when a PowerPC story is run that is not explicitly specific to Apple.
I've asked the slashdot crew to add a Moto icon, to no avail.
I don't know where you get your information from but we run our web server on dual PIII's with FreeBSD as the OS and it's rock solid. AMD and Intel chips are great for desktop or server applications just not the mobile environment where heat, power consumption and bulky packaging is a concern.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Is it just me or does anybody think that Transmeta is using Linux+Linus as a way to sell their chips?
/. already has its own ICON for news regarding it -- odd there aren't special icons for say intel or cyrix ?
/. and the rest of the rabid Linux users will think its caviar.
I mean think about it, for a start-up chip company,
Call this Trolling, or Flamebait or whatever, but it seems that if Linus put his 'Thumbs Up' in a box filled with shit,
Yadda yadda yadda, no I'm not pro-MS, and I have nothing against the crusoe cpu, just think at how easily you folks are manipulated.
Try OpenDK. It works great.
Thank you.
It's been said a million times: ENOUGH WITH TRANSMETA! Their product is not the super meta-CPU we thought it would be. In fact, it's pretty boring.
BUT, because Linus is in the company, we hear everything about it. The CEO had a flat tire? Good enough! Linus spills his coffee? RobLimo, get right on it!
If Torvalds wasn't working there, would this be news? No, because no one would care. But the Church of Linus keeps everyone interested.
Why don't we just stick a live webcam on his head, so we can track his every move? Make 'LinusCam' a Slashbox, and get it over with.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
Just imagine..... 4 700mhz crusoe processors in 1 computer for under $1300!!!! A 4 700mhz processor desktop would cost a grand total of around $2500 even though the emulation would only make them feel like 500-550mhz processors just think what you could do 6 monthes to a year from now when they have crusoes running over 1ghz!
better hope you dont have to hit reset a hundred times to get it to turn on or reset
The Transmeta Crusoe processor is supposed to run at much lower power consumption levels than normal CPUs. As a result, the heat generated by one of these processors is significantly lower than its competition. To use the Phoenix BIOS defeats this significant advantage.
I've been to Phoenix, in July mind you, and I can safely say that Phoenix is way too hot to allow adequate operating temperatures for the Transmeta Crusoe processor.
Sorry guys, I think you need to choose your business partners with a lot more forethought.
---
MoooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!
Linus has "bitched" about how stupid most bioses are in regards to Linux and how things get done. What do you think are the chances that we'll see a bios that is almost perfect??? Can you imagine.. the Kernel drivers re-written so that bios work-arounds are removed... the speed increases would be cool!
but then... why hasn't someone written an open source bios?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why can't you create you own bios/compile it like linux. I know, some nasty bios company threated to sue for leaked inhouse utils that were on its web EPA logo drama. I seriously doubt money would be lost here. so why does phoenix not open source its bios tree for older 386/486/586 chipsets ???
OK, so it doesnt understand scsi, but you can configure the RLL hdd, and floppy drive. It also has a debugger in ROM, so you can do debuggy things. Seeing as SCSI cards extend the bios, quite nicely in some cases, it must be possible to make an ISA/PCI card with an extended bios.
If you've got a flash bios you may know that they're modular. Trouble is, if you flash it incorrectly and it breaks, the backup bios generally can't handle PCI vid cards, so you'll have to get an old ISA video card to reflash.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
And even if Transmeta turns out to be just another processor company, it's still funding college educations for Linus's daughters. So I still wanna give Transmeta my $$. Also Linus seems like such a sweetheart ...[transmission interrupted as this poster is avalanched by his stuffed penguin collection]
Microsoft is afraid of real firmware. Think about it - the Sun boot PROM (for example) has more features and functionality than windows, and fewer bugs! (that little floppy boot thing notwithstanding...)
Here's the correct one.
Back in the XT days I remember the old IBM Technical manuals had the assembler source code for the BIOS printed out.
(And I can still remember the excitement of getting a full 5.25" high hard drive and DOS 3)
The Mac is proof that consumers don't need to worry about Firmware. Experts can just type a keyboard sequence to enter the firmware prompt.
If you think there is a problem, then be part of the solution:
OpenBIOS!
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
IBM's fabbing for 'em. What do you think their
nifty new wearables are gonna be running?
Motorola has no excuse though, I have to concur.
Complain to Frank's mother here.
All the Netware people would care. You still need to boot DOS before you can get Netware running.
I rather like how they use DOS.. a big fat boot loader.
"Please don't sigh like that, maam"
FYI, Transmeta's web page has some information about the Phoenix bios. It looks like it will let you connect to the net to download CPU fixes. That's a hell of a lot better than Intel does.
You're right! Boycott Crusoe! That'll teach them damn kikes a lesson! Them and their damn chink chip-building lackeys...
You mean BOCKS I think.
Damn Bill Gates!
Curse him for giving the unwashed masses what they want!
Tech Tip:Hold down the power button for a few seconds and, according to the ATX spec, the thing will turn off regardless of software.
But of course Bill Gates doesn't want you to know that so he hides that information in the manual instead of tattooing it on the inside of your eyelid.
They seem to be a simplification of the @ sign which have been popular in some circles, but less obstrusive, and way cooler.
Though one can easily be dragged into the symbols, like water running out of a bathtub.
In naivistic art one often sees the sun as a spiral, quickly drawn.
Just my first thoughts on that matter.
The Speedy Viking
The northbridge is in the cpu. No word on the rest of it though. At least that i've heard.
Well, though this makes sense, why is there a lack of announcements about the support chipset(s)? If they are using something completely new, it would explain the 2-year dev cycle for the BIOS, but would not excplain the lack of announcement; however, if they are using some sort of existing (or something similar to an existing) support chipset, it should not have taken that length of time to produce a BIOS.
Of course, they do not specifically say that there was a 2-year long development, just a 2-year partnership. So take it all with a grain of salt. It does seem that there is a missing piece of the puzzle, though.
VIA Press release about Joshua
Socket 370 pinout on P6 bus interface
Integrated 64 Kb L1 cache
Integrated mutually exclusive 256 Kb L2 cache
133 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) support
3DNow! (TM) Technology
Enhanced dual pipelined MMX (TM) and FPU
Utilized advanced 0.18 fabrication process
I have Pentium II LX mb I wanted to upgrade. I was going to replace the P2 233Mhz with a Celeron 466 or 500 ppga but think I will hold off to see what happens. It's my fourth computer anyway. I use it for R&D.
Why did Transmeta harp on this over and over in their press release? The idea of a equiv-P3-500MHz machine that runs cool and requires no fan is a dream come true to us desert dwelling geeks who have trouble keeping machines cool in ambient 30C-40C air.
First off, if the CPU is going to slide up and down on it's voltage, instead of just stepping down once (like the Intel) then new chipset support is needed. If you can put power management on the chip, great, but you've still got the rest of the system sucking juice. If your BIOS can manage power this way for the whole computer, even better.
Then there's integrating wireless communication, support for low and no power storage, maybe firewire... All the things that would be really nice to have now.
Then again, and I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it so far...
SOMEBODY has to burn those mobile-Linux in ROM chips.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
What was that url again? :)
I have an Award bios that was before pheniox bought them it seems to work ok, But if there are better bios out there what are they?
Just pour hot grits on it a few times and reboot.
Warning: Please reply carefully. Otherwise, you just feed the troll ;)
To say that the BIOS is worthless is to imply fundamental problems in the code that makes up the Basic Input Output System. I think that you are probably talking about the BIOS setup program - the interface that most users see after pressing (pick one: F1, F2, DEL) during POST. It allows you to set the various options and parameters that the BIOS will use.
After working as an OEM hardware tech for numerous years, I'd have to say that what goes in the BIOS setup program is up to the OEM. I have seen prototyped motherboards with really nifty options in the BIOS setup program, only to see those options stripped out for the production boards. Consumers are too stupid to understand all those options, you see, and they might mess things up, so the "unnecessary" options are all stripped out.
Bad link. Here's the right one: advertisement?
The northbridge is in the cpu. No word on the rest of it though. At least that i've heard
Perl 6.0 alpha is out
The issue is not why IDE is cheap but why SCSI is expensive. Maybe the controller chips and cable cost a little more, but the disks dont. I recently went to a SIG talk by a designer from Adaptec. He was asked why SCSI drives cost so much more when they are so similar to IDE. He answered that they often wonder that themselves, and privately the disk manufacturers told him that a SCSI disk costs about $1 more to make. It is just simply a matter of getting away with charging a higher price for a better product, whatever it costs to make. Sux!!
I heard rumors that Intel was working on a new BIOS spec that included stuff like built-in TCP/IP support. I can't seem to find any information about this on their website, so either it's secret or they canned it. I suspect it's the latter, since I seriously doubt the PC BIOS programmers will sign up for the work unless they have to.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Setup 'windows' wrong?
um, actually, im not using windows at all..
but my father is, and he had the problem you describe how to fix , so I'll try it.
lots of the time, though, when i want to press the power button, it is becasue windows has microsofted out, and there is no chance it is going to respond to anything, let alone 'automatically shutdown', im afraid.
Juln
I would imagine that the price would be relativly reasonable, judging by what i've read their target market is going to be. No one is going to pay 1500$ for a TransPalm MMXVI. I would like to see this in smaller computers that can take the beating of being mounted under the seat in my truck. Possibly with a ultra-shock-resistant-40seconds-ESP DVD-ROM and one of those nifty flat/touch screen monitors... Road trips would suddenly seem fun, and it would be a way to shut the kids up :) (Imagine, Half-life TFC/CS over your wireless inet connection, assuming they can fine tune that tech also)
Eraser_
Do any of you dumbasses know what a troll is?
Geez. Given, it's well written, but the premise is pretty freaking weak.
Thanks for the link. I was trying to locate info about the investment in Intel's SEC filings, but I couldn't find anything. Since the link between the companies is real, I wonder if Intel used their contacts at Phoenix to review Transmeta's research and apply it to EPIC [or vice versa]? Since it's very likely that both companies had strict NDAs in place, any information "sharing" via Phoenix would probably be illegal. Hmmm, maybe I'd better shut up before the P3 in my workstation notifies Intel of my whereabouts.
if im not mistaken didn't bochs (www.bochs.com) do just what transmeta did except bochs ran on any cpu?
Last time I checked was only 3 months ago. No one has figured out how to boot a remote Solaris Install CD over a network. If you do, let me know.
homonyms give you trouble?
That's one of the warning signs of Alhzheimers you know.
I sure would like to drop a few bucks on stocks for this company :) keep an eye out for Caldera too. They just filed their S-1. $$$$$$$
I am wondering about the actual price of this thing. I would really like to see a cheap computer that could attract people in my boat and not just high end people with thousands of dollars. Will this just be another toy of the ecconomic elite?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Hey, no fair, this processor is too new. I want to be able to buy a POP (Generic G4 PPC) motherboard before I start hearing out Transmeta motherboards!
Sheesh, did Motorola and IBM drop the ball, or what?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
butt thank you for playing
Thank you
It would be a whole lot cooler if you just ate shit and killed yourself.
I have some shit you could eat, you know. If you eat it all, I can produce more. Fuck you. Ass. Bitch. Hell. Damn.
Didnt they say they had designed their own BIOS so they could be free of the tyranny of the large sotfware houses?
Hmm...well....there's alot of people saying things kinda like this about various stories on Slashdot lately. I have to disagree with you though...in a big way.
Just because you, as a nerd, don't find this to be news, does not mean that me, as a nerd, share your feelings. I am really interested in what Transmeta is doing. I AM interested in this, and I am pretty sure I am not the only one. (I am soon in the market for a new portable...) Linus's involvement only makes it a bit more interesting...he's an interesting guy. If it's not interesting to you, why come in and even read it? (And then make a post like this to boot?)
I am a nerd...and it was news to me.
Uh, these are to be consumer devices? What makes you think that consumers are concerned that their BIOS knows what an ethernet card is?
-BrentWell, I guess that's one strike against transmeta. My laptop has a Phoenix bios. It occasionally switches off without warning while on battery. It also writes out save-to-disk information when that feature is specifically disabled. (At least it trashes the windows partition, not linux). And loads of other nice foopas that this rubbish bios supports. Oh well, I guess it's not really phoenix's fault. They'd just blame it on the people who made the laptop in the first place. Anyhow, RUMOR has it that several groups are working to be the first ones to have GCC compiling native code for the transmeta. That will get Phoenix out of the loop! And crappy x86 too!
I would have to agree with you here. The Alpha's was pretty damn cool, too. But I suspect that Transmeta is trying to be as backward compatible as possible. They could avoid that by either not supporting Windows (can't do that, need to make money) or by getting MS to upgrade (won't happen). So the only result could be an upgraded transmeta chip that runs a special firmware and linux combo. This means another different chip and linux to support. Ug.
All this leaves back under the hot Pheonix sun.
-- soldack
I would have to agree with you here. The Alpha's was pretty damn cool, too. But I suspect that Transmeta is trying to be as backward compatible as possible. They could avoid that by either not supporting Windows (can't do that, need to make money) or by getting MS to upgrade (won't happen). So the only result could be an upgraded transmeta chip that runs a special firmware and linux combo. This means another different chip and linux to support. Ug.
All this leaves us back under the hot Pheonix sun.
-- soldack
Will we see Code Morphing Viruses? (ie. viruses written either to attack the Code morphing software, or else, which attempt to either alter the code morphing software, or else run their own code directly against the processor in an attempt to circumvent the Code Morphing layer?)
According to the Transmeta presentation, no. The code morphing will be loaded (from ROM?) at boot time and will not be accessible after that. Native Crusoe code only interprets the instruction sets it's been programmed to emulate. You can't stuff it native Crusoe code.
Hmmm, will native Crusoe code be called Friday?
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Check out:
http://www.ptltd.com/about/pr990621f.html
and also
http://www.ptltd.com/about/pr990621e.html and http://www.ptltd.com/about/pr990621d.html
Good thing Linux doesn't need rebooting very often!
Look around, and choose your own ground. -PF
Hey, am I the only one who noticed that he was just trying to say something funny
umm..windows already boots from a PROM system - SGIs new line of PCs have no BIOS. BTW, Linux boots from that ok too.
mount it as a bootp partition on your network server and use boot net.
just for searching on in the future. time to mailbomb the idiot.,
oh fuck off nigga scum
Then go to the client and type "-;boot net" at the OpenBoot prompt. Like magic, the installer will start. And you can easily do it simultaneously on multiple machines. No floppies or boot CD's needed on the clients!
So far, the processing power race has only had one thing in mind: more mips from a single processor, nothing else matters, not size, not heat, well, maybe cost matters, but *not that much*. I've always thought that the way forward is to maximize processing through per transistor, and that's exactly where Transmeta is going. This directly affects me in two ways: first, my laptop, which is a bleeding wound as far as battery life is concerned. Second: my desktop 2 years from now. I want it to be 16-way or better, yet I don't want to be able to fry eggs on it, and I don't want it to have enough fans to achieve liftoff. Or a refrigerator. The only way to get there is with more energy-efficient processors. Fewer transistors == less heat, other things being equal. Did I say I hate fans? I hate fans.
One thing about Linus being involved in Transmeta is it suggests the tantalizing possiblity that the code morphing software may ultimately wind up being open-sourced. I couldn't think of anyone who could make a more powerful argument for it. Plus, I'd love to be able to program a machine like this directly in its "microcode" (a relative term as far as crusoe is concerned). Again, with LInus in there, I'd see it as a distinct possibility. Did you ever hear of anyone programming the PPro in microcode? It's possible, but nobody does it because Intel keeps that info locked up tighter than a... well, darn tight. Transmeta might not be so anal about it.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Natalie Portman naked and petrified with hot grits down her pants and a SMARGLE on her head is a dream come true to use desert dwelling geeks who have trouble keeping machine cool in ambient 30C-40C air.
Warning: Please reply carefully. Otherwise, you just feed the troll ;)
Most things that are important to our culture are things that are pretty boring. Yet, this is exciting because it opens up the market for regular, unknowledgable consumers to have access to wonderful, quality, common, wireless and mobile computing devices.
Sure, it may be boring, but it will change the lives of probably most Americans and most likely a lot of people all over the world. Especially high-tech Asia.
That's why it's news. Okay, so Linux is interesting too. That's life.
-BrentOh wait, this is /., if the moderators don't like your opinion you're moderated down. ;-)
> not cheesy El Torito CD's that work by emulating a piece of crap floppy disk
I'm curious, what makes you say that ?
> other bogus limitations of Wintel PeeCee's.
I'll say. Assumptions always hold the progress of computers back. Nobody can plan ahead.
i.e. stupid 8+3 filename syste, 64K segments, 640K, 1 Meg, 32-bit color, etc.
Cheers
Yes, Transmeta has been very secretive. There is nothing wrong with that. The extreme level of secrecy actually ended up being a brilliant PR move. The difference between "closed door CPU design" and "dirty closed source software" is that anyone with a compiler and source code can roll thier own software. If everyone on Slashdot got copies of the Crusoe design, then every one of us with access to a .18 micron fab facility could make our own processors and maybe contribute to the design process.
Sarcasm aside, CPU development and software development are completely different. The "open source" model of distributed collaboration just does not work with CPUs.
We also have to remember that people (like them or not) spent upwards of $100M over 4 years, with zero return on investments, to make this new CPU happen. They are entitled to make some money off of a very risky undertaking. They were envisioning 700 MHz mobile CPUs when Intel was selling top of the line 120 MHz chips for workstations.
You shouldn't be paranoid about "another Intel". You should hope they become another Intel. How nice would it be to have Intel, AMD, and Transmeta become the "Big Three" of CPU design and have them push each other to produce better, faster, and cheaper CPUs.
-B
"BIOS" is really a misnomer today. "Boot ROM" would be more appropriate. Not much of what's in ROM is used once any modern OS is running. The legacy underlayer of DOS that's still in the ROMs could be removed without much loss, like the old BASIC interpreter was. (You'd lose the ability to boot DOS, assuming anybody still cares.)
The Chip design *is* revolutionary, and no one *cares* about your opinion.
If you beg to differ, please show us a previous chip that was low powered, for long battery life in mobile markets, and did code morphing. Hehe, that's 2 for me and I didn't think more then 20 seconds.
I'm waiting...
-BrentIntel may be mad about being mooned but Phoenix is the king of the BIOS world and has been working with Intel (and Microsoft) for years. Through APM to ACPI, lots of BIOS changes had to be made. In fact, without a proper ACPI compliant BIOS, Win2k will either not work or have problems with some of the power managment features. New systems can not be certified by MS without a fully ACPI BIOS. Intel needs Win2k to be a success to help build momentum for the coming Itanium push into the server scene.
Besides chips and what not, Intel makes complete systems. They had one of those systems at the MS PlugFest for Win2k/Millenium (I tested my company's fibre channel board with them) and they had several problems with their hardware that they needed their Pheonix buddies to create a work around for. Intel needs Pheonix, just like the whole PC market does.
-- soldack
I doubt it would take all that much to get Windows to boot from OpenFirmware. Because from the open firmware on my machine (Beige G3 Mac) it is possible to boot MacOS, MacOS X, Linux, and NetBSD.
-----
Can I Play With Madness?
I am a middle-aged African-American man, and like most of the readers of Slashdot, I'm very interested in technology. That's why I'm excited about the idea behind Transmeta's latest creation. I must admit, however, that I am a bit upset about their choice of a name. I would like to think that we, as a society, would be able to gradually migrate away from symbols of slavery and racism. But as we've seen with South Carolina's refusal to take down the Confederate flag, there is still a way to go. Same thing goes for Crusoe.
Lots of people complain about libraries taking Mark Twain's Robinson Crusoe out of circulation because of its use of the horrid "N-word" epithet. "It's just a story of a young boy and a slave on a boat," they say. "The N-word is just indicative of the culture at that time," they reassure us. Well, guess what. Most of the people that make that reassurance are white as bedsheets, and would not know the first thing about the hurtful nature of that awful word. Robinson Crusoe might be an otherwise good book, but Twain's classic contains too many old war wounds, and it should be removed from decent society.
This is why I'm disturbed by Transmeta's decision to use "Crusoe" as the name of their new processor. Why use that name, when it is well-known that the book that inspired it is being pulled out of our libraries (and for good reason?) Is it possible that Torvalds and company simply are unaware of the underlying meaning in their processor name? I'd like to think that this is the case (in fact, I'm morally certain that it is.) Still, a name is still a name, and you can't wish away the hurtful interpretations of that name. I'd like to take this opportunity to invite Transmeta to reconsider.
Until then, I will not (personally) be buying any Crusoe-based devices. Like I said, I'm a big technology buff, but there are some things that are worth standing up for. This is one of them.
Seeing as carls bought hardees. (Even though hardees was 3 times bigger.) And is slowly converting the hardees menu/restaurants over to Carl's Jr. Eventually you should be able to try the best damn fast food chain burger around.
The Double-Western Bacon Cheeseburger.
The best damn burger after partying all night.
This may be in there but there doesn't seem to be too many details on what it really does (besides be your ISP and give you a pretty start up screen). Any idea what else it does?
It does seem to connect to the internet before you boot. Why don't they just throw in a web browser, e-mail, news group reader, irc, and AIM? Now THAT would be an Internet-BIOS!
-- soldack
Prove it and I'll give you $100. That's a year's salary in Moscow these days, isn't it? Gee, I wonder how low the salary would be if the U.S. weren't propping up the Russian government, Space Program and Military with billions and billions of 'stinking Amerikkkan' dollars.
And nary a whisper has been said on /. ...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I can't believe how many people are naysaying the future of Transmeta and its processors. Just because OEMs weren't present at the press conference on the 19th and there aren't an 700mhz Crusoe laptops on the shelves doesn't mean Transmeta is about to exit stage left. It's been what, about a week now? Yes, we're all impatient for them to really roll this stuff out, but give it a little time. It's very unrealistic to write off a company after only ten days of inactivity when it has friends like IBM, S3, and a good bios company like Phoenix.
See! From the Phonex press-release, now everyone knows that Transmeta only has ONE processor!!! The big secret is out!
it's in my head
Anyone know what happened to Elbrus, the Russian company working on a 'Merced Killer' that did some stuff with Transmeta? Haven't heard anything from them in a while. I guess some things are too good too be true.
On any Sun, SGI, Apple Mac, you can bring up a command line in firmware at boot time and truly control the boot process.
On my Sun, I can boot off of any partition on any disk. I can also *really* boot from CD-ROMs (not cheesy El Torito CD's that work by emulating a piece of crap floppy disk).
All I have to do is type "boot cdrom" to boot from CD, "boot net" to boot off of a network boot/install server. I can even create aliases so that I can say "boot linux" to boot off of a Linux partition - even if it's on my sixth SCSI disk in the chain.
I don't need to waste time/money installing stupid tools like System Commander to get the same functionality.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Sun's OpenBoot/OpenFirmware provides many mini-miracles.
SGI (which uses their own firmware) actually built Pentium III computers using a real firmware. And by doing that they were able to defeat the stupid 1024 cylinder limit and other bogus limitations of Wintel PeeCee's.
Angels of course...
Phoenix recently recieved a terse E-Mail from Intel, the complete body of which read "Phoenix, you bitch, have you been seeing another hardware company on the side?"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I find it rather intersesting that a company known predominantly by it's employing of an open-source god does it's business in such a closed-source, back-room way. It would be nice if they allowed at least some aspects to be under the control of the public. I'm just slightly paranoid when it comes to the prospect of another intel (especially since Vulcan Ventures (Allens Co.) owns a large chunk).
Basically, they intend to insert banner-ads into the boot up process. Nothing actually useful, and if they fsck up the networking code, well, I don't even want to know what kind of security holes this could present. Ugh.
Jeff
It is the price we pay for freedom of speech.
P.S.
Note to microsoft employees: Spend your time and energy inproving windows, (or scrap the monster and start over) not complaining about consumer alternatives on slashdot.
Transmeta gives me some reasons to be wary. This marketing strategy of hyping a company with a human mascot and hyping a product without substance is not a technique that makes me have any confidence in this crusoe chip. Putting Phoenix and Paul Allen in the mix doesn't do wonders for it either. I think that perhaps we want the idea of the crusoe chip so badly that we're willing to overlook too much in a company just to get it. Maybe there's another possiblity out there. (An Elbrus in the wings so to speak) I could be wrong, but at this point, I don't think so. On the subject of Linus, I don't know what to think about him being in the middle of all of this, so I can't really comment on it.
The symbol of the Phoenix is perfect for Transmeta, since what other creature could emerge in its full brilliant splendor from the fiery death that is an overheating pentium? I submit to you, the answer is none.
Conspiracy theory for the day: the Kottler Caldera Group of Phoenix was a finalist in the design contest for Phoenix, AZ's official symbol. What could this mean?!?!?!
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I've never seen a standard PC BIOS I've liked. In this day and age, machines should have real firmware, like Sun boxen, SGIs, IBMs ... even Apple is getting into the act by using OpenFirmware. PC BIOSes are so incredibly limited, and, at this stage in the game, really don't need to support DOS. You should be able to netboot a Intel- or Transmeta- based machine as easily as you can a Sun.
There's more to this story...
Phoenix has been working on putting some kind of internet service called Phoenixnet built into the BIOS. It seems like the kind of thing you'd want in a dedicated web appliance, but I don't know if the two are related.
http://www.phoenix.com/phoenixnet/phoenixnet.html
I think they're not open-sourcing it because there would be nothing to gain. It's at most a few K of assembler code. Their dev team can handle that, it would be more work to coordinate a public effort.
So long as people can fiddle around with the layer (replacing it, etc.) to write their own emulators or whatever, I don't think anything's lost.
Where is my mind?
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
Why is a BIOS running specifically on Crusoe such a big achievement? I thought it was supposed to run x86 native code with no modification?
What is a BIOS other than some relatively compact x86 code, tightly coupled to the motherboard?
Or is the Phoenix acchievment really more related to the interfaces with the peripherals and system board in a Crusoe system, which presumably are not the same as a Wintel system?
Presumably the Processor related sections of the BIOS can run un-touched, right? Or is code-morphing not all it's cracked up to be?
...they're going to put embedded ads in the Crusoe bios, like they planned for the regular ones.
Anyone know what happened to this *bright* idea of theirs?
Consumers are too stupid to understand all those options, you see, and they might mess things up, so the "unnecessary" options are all stripped out.
;-)
No, Bill Gates just makes everyone feel that the rest of the computer consumer world is stupid. He wants to make everything so "idiot-proof" that you can't do anything.
I really hate the fact that most PC's now won't turn off when you push the power button. When I want the god damn machine to turn off, I don't expect to have to pull the cord from the back. Obviously this was for the "idiots" who kept mistaking their power key for the Zip disk eject button.
After working as a tech for numerous years, I'd have to say that the vast majority of Phoenix BIOSes are really worthless. (Esp those in Packard Bells... but that goes without saying) Fewer controls for PnP/IRQ settings, cache settings, DRAM settings, AGP settings, etc. that can come in handy in a wide variety of instances, especially IRQ conflicts in Linux systems. Oh well, the most popular BIOS in the world can't be bad, right?
i hope sony starts using them..i would live a Vio with a Crusoe in it......
Now all we need is a mini-motherboard complete with Phoenix Bios, Crusoe processor, and integrated video and sound. Perfect for a do-it-yourself wearable computer.
Hosting for Creators: http://rpg-works.net
Say something controversial that has been said over and over before, but dare the moderators to put you down. I guess you kind of proved your "easily manipulated" statement.
/. is because Linus works at Transmeta... typical Linux users..." I guess you didn't even read anything about it either.
Think of it this way: If you're developing in secrecy, why not hire the developer of an OS to make one for you so you have something solid on release. Perhaps they believed more in Linux than in WinCE or other mobile OS choices. Are you just gonna say "Well, we just made a chip, and that's all really, its x86 compatible, so it should run good with most OSes out there...."
I doubt Linus was hired purely for hype, that was just a beneficial by-product. Before the release, it seemed like it, and many people said so, but now, you can see why they hired him.
Crusoe is cool. A low power, software based CPU that can be changed easily? Maybe not totally new, but there are many possibilities for it.
Do you see anyone saying "Oh Linus works there it must be good."? No. They go "Wow, this is a cool chip."
I suppose this seemed like an original thought in your head "Oh the only reason Crusoe gets so much attention on
Why are you reading Slashdot then? Do you go to porn sites and complain they have too many naked women on the site? Geez this is the kind of stuff you should EXPECT on slashdot, Computer Science. and being called "slashdot", dont you think it will be linux slanted?
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
These anti-Transmeta, "oh just because Linus is there" crap posts are getting on my nerves. Somebody needs to shut these idiots up.
Or, as they called it "buzz", which means it was all the watchers guessing on what it could be. Transmeta had almost complete secrecy.
Crusoe processors are cool, and systems based on them are probably gonna be pretty neat as well.
This is a new approach to CPU design in the _x86 arena_ which is what most of us are using. Don't you think getting enhanced instructions in your CPU with just a software upgrade is neat? One day, Intel comes out with some new 3d instructions like AMD 3dnow. Next day, you download some software from Transmeta and you have them too. I'd say that's pretty damn cool.
I would care even if Linus wasn't working there. These are cool chips.
But, I bet you are just a troll who hasn't even read about the CPUs(though I could be wrong).
get it at skinz.org, named Half
That's ok he can't play Quake either.
Go Transmeta for the half time ads at SuperBowl XXXV! $2M shouldn't be too much for
a company that's made both Psion and Palm's stocks take a dive on its press release.
I think that's why one could say that Phoenixs' Award BIOSes are the "Power User" BIOS, whereas the Generic Phoenix BIOS is the "General User" BIOS.
Which is why, coincidentally, you see Award most commonly in Abit, ASUS, and other motherboards, but most frequently see AMI or Phoenix in most preassembled computers (Dell, Gateway, Compaq). The people who buy the motherboard want the flexibility, so Phoenix gives it to them. Otherwise they get the standard Phoenix, which is good for protecting the user from themselves...
It really suprises me that people still seem to think that coding around the "code-morphing" will actually improve the speed of a program on this chip. Keep in mind, this chip has no OO execution or branch-prediction, and relies on the software above to figure that out as best as possible.
If you even _could_ code (or better yet they _allowed_ your to code) in the native format, it still would suffer, because the things that the silcon doesn't have is exactly what makes stuff run fast.
At least last time I looked.
Provided I don't have to look at a stupid advertisement for transmeta instead of the bios post screen.
:)
And no, it's really a slashdot link.
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
I think Ted Turner is involved too. CNN Entertainment coverage
From Phoenix's press release:
The Crusoe processor family consists of two solutions, the TM5400 and the TM5400, for the Mobile Internet Computing market.
Only two chips? And both with the same model number? Geez! Intel and AMD each gotta put of zillions of chips.
If the Crusoe appears X86 compatible to the outside world anyway?
;)
It was said at the Transmeta presentation that the code morphing software is loaded up before the BIOS.
I presume this would mean that the BIOS sees a normal x86 when it loads itself up.
I suspect the BIOS modifications mainly consist in a giant Pinguin replacing the normal POST screen
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds