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Pix of The Crusoe Chips
A reader pointed us over to Transmetazone, a Transmeta Weblog, (Hey, why not!). They've got some cool pictures of the Crusoe chips - to scale. Take a gander at the TM5400 & the TM3120.
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It looks great, but, c'mon, it doesn't look as cool as a Pentium III, does it?
-Waldo
"Slightly difficult to make out are the 474 balls (small black dots) which enable its connections."
So I guess you could say that the Crusoe processor has a lot of balls.
(No, I'm not proud of this post. It's not my finest work. Post 2.0 will be better, I promise.)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I was getting 500 Server Errors all morning. :-)
Man, it can't be a pleasant morning around the old Slash compound today.
Production servers down. I think we've all been there. I wish slashdot kept a world accessable admin log. It would be an interesting read.
Cheers.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
all i have to say is sweet
roche
Bah Humbug!
NOT this is absolutely boring, nuffin new in town plz. moderate me down, i need this
The push-pin is a much better investment in computing power than a crusoe. For the price of the Crusoe you can buy several hundred push-pins which can be used to poke or stab your way into getting someone ELSE to buy you the Crusoe. Or two.
marotti.com
All I can say is wow. They are powerful, cool (tempurature) and look really nifty. And maybe they will kill Intel in the mobile market (which would make me very happy). Go Transmeta and make us proud!
On the website they said they didn't know what those four holes around the microprocessor were for. They're for mounting a heatsink. The slot one celerons use the same architecture for mounting their heatsinks.
it's freakin' small :P
...like Robinson Crusoe, its primitive as can be...the ships aground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle...with Gilligan, the skipper too...
So why exactly are they called "balls"? I don't remember reading anything about balls being used to connect the chips to things on the Transmeta site. Is it some kind of ball & socket joint, or just a way to create a smaller area to solder things to the chip?
They've gotta be the smallest chips I've ever seen. If I ever buy a machine with a Crusoe in it, I'll be sure never to open the case for fear of the chip dropping out and being lost between the fibers of my carpet.... Yeah, I know the chip would be held in pretty well, but that would just be my luck.
Eruantalon
Eruantalon
The Annals of Middle-earth
With it being this small do you all think I could build a decent Beowulf in a cigar box?
threadeds blog
Does anyone know if you can have two of these babies in a machine?
Um, this is my sig.
The Clueless weekly Award goes to the author of that page.
So microprocessors are small. Why do you think they are called "micro"? Does he think an AMD K6-2 is big as a pick-up truck? Or Pentiuns are the size of a brick?
Showing a processor without it's encapsulement (sp?) is a dirty marketing trick. Anyway, size does not matter.
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
A lot of hoopla seems to made of the (impressive seeming) tiny size of these dies. As I undersatnd it, these 1x1cm dies are the silicon hearts of the Crusoe chips, but a complete, socketed processor assembly can be much larger.
I wonder how big the corresponding part is on a 486, Pentium, PII, UltraSPARC, Alpha, etc... That would give me a better framework to be impressed.
Looks can be deceiving, but it's cooler than PIII (temperature-wise :)
Is the "typical Win9x application" running on those blank-screen laptops "reboot.exe"?
--
Here is the result of your Slashdot Purity Test.
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Well, the crusoe is indeed a very tiny looking chip in both of its forms. However, it should be remembered that these chips are only every this size as a bare unit that they are now; unless the unit is to be 'hard-wired' to the mobo (removing the possibility of future upgrade) the chip will have to be mounted on a 'plug'.
:)
It can be noticed that the PII/PIII and AMD K6 / Athlons all are mounted on 'plugs' which are then inserted into a socket on the mobo. Have you ever broken up an old CPU and discovered the size of the actual chip: typically no much more than 2x2cm. (I submit here that maybe the PIII 'plug' is a little on the gigantic side considering the chip within
Not to worry tho: if what you are looking for is a hugely powerful miniture PDA, a hard-wired crusoe is definately a top option, as for a laptop or even desktop; a plug option has to be the way to promote sales with the option of upgradability
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Anyone notice how many cookies that transmeta-zone site has you dl? Disgusting and really annoying. Almost as bad as abcnews.
Were you under a DoS attack? Or were your servers down while you played Quake deathmatch? I couldn't get on Slashdot last night for hours.
That's not the size of the "chip", but the size of the die. The actual size of the part in your computer will be much larger, since that die will be inside a much larger ceramic package with a ball grid array on the bottom.
Has anyone written a Linux kernel for Modulo-2? i.e. could this be done with some of the other EPROM type chips?
So, mount a heat sink hey ...
1) The versions shown were restricted in some way: when running flat out they need cooling?
2) The motherboard is for a different processor: so the pinouts match?
3) They put some holes in the board to give people with too much freetime something to think about.
threadeds blog
Not to sound sour but this Transmeta hype is beginning to get a bit galling, we've seen a lot of pictures of chips, we've seen suggestions of users, but in terms of cold hard reality its been a bit on the thin side. Every dribble from Transmeta is slapped onto Slashdot as if this is the defacto winner. Come on guys get a bit of perspective, they appear to be a great company with some great people, but many companies have failed even though their ideas seemed the coolest or the best.
I wish Transmeta all the success they can earn, but as with the ignoring of the Windows2000 launch, this is exactly the sort of attitude that
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Were you under a DoS attack? Or were your servers down while you played Quake deathmatch? I couldn't get on Slashdot last night for hours.
They were slashdotted by billions of geeks running Linux on their new Crusoe chips.
Look at all that info... geez... use a *real* server dammit, instead of that ColdFusion/NT crap.
Anonymous by choice
I think that if Linus made a machine which chopped off your dong, it would get an article here, and plenty of hype to go along with it. Sure, crusoe is kinda neat, but it wasn't all that slashdot made it out to be, there must be some news other than picture of a processor.
Dr Fgets Strikes again!
If the TMS5400 was to be used for laptops and the TMS3120 was to be used for handhelds... why is the TMS3120 smaller than the TMS5400? Does this make sense? Are they fabbed on the same process? If not, then OK, I understand, but if they are why would a better performing chip be smaller than a slower chip? I would think added complexity and increased performance would make a chip bigger. Either the sizes are wrong or they are fabbed at two separate feature sizes. (I dunno maybe .22 and .18, or .18 and .15?)
Also if one is bigger than the other there will probably lower yield associated and thus higher cost. So a slower chip would be more expensive than a faster one? Again, it doesn't make sense.
-
-alex-
lyx me.
How could someone _not_ know what the holes are for? A heatsink of course. Maybe not for this particular design but for future ones using the same pcb.
i just put in
(Anon L0ser said this too, but it bears repeating).
The picture is of the die (the little black thing in the middle of the actual chip). The die on your old 486 is about the same size.
Still, it makes for pretty imagery.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
Remember that Transmeta stated clearly that this would not be the fastest or most powerful chip around. It is made specifically for mobile applications, not for servers or power-hungry geeks.
I think the future Transmeta CPUs will allow some kind of multiprocessing - right now, it would serve no purpose but distracting the motherboard manufacturers from what they need to do - produce motherboards and chipsets for simple laptops.
function whine (excitement, disappointment, opinion) {
Ever since January 19th I've been waiting for a Crusoe-based product to be even announced as becoming available. And waiting.
Then there's this post on Slashdot which is truly disappointing: it's a rehash of Transmeta's site that is funded by the silly "find the ball under the cup" ads. Maybe it also has the "punch the &*^@%# monkey" ads, but I didn't wait around for them. No products, just bare chips. (Prototypes and mockup machines don't count since they're not for sale.)
*Sigh*
I'm starting to believe Transmeta didn't wait too long to announce its intentions (as some said initially) but rather announced way too soon.
It's not that I wasn't impressed by the technology but it's that I want to buy a product.
} // end of function whine()
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Am I the only hardware nerd on slashdot?? once these puppies are soldered on to the PCB they are one tough deal to remove. So has anyone developed an inexpensive technique (i.g. metcal) for removing them (even if there are solder bridges underneath) without damaging the board or chip? Without putting them through an SMT oven again and removing there?
rats - too many layers of metal to see what's really on there :-) but that's life for modern chips - Now days with 4-5 layers of metal we put the power on the top thicker layers which occludes the core that we're used to seeing in pretty die photos. This also makes microprobing during debug a royal pain :-(
Ah, the old days, when my VAX 7000 drew 30 amps and consumed considerably more watts than a battery of electric ovens. Now that's *REAL* power consumption. Not the wimpy 1 watt this CPU consumes... Bah...
And no fans needed either, that's crazy, a computer *MUST* have a fan. The noise can clearly indicate to you that your computer is turned *ON*. Oh, and I fall asleep to the humming of the fans in my precious computers, wanna make me an insomniac??!?? Damn you!
I half expected on a page reload to see an animated GIF of some pr0n star's head bobbing up and down on a fat chubby... Click HERE for the hotest LINUX IPO Pr0n!
*sigh*
Speak truth to power.
...but it appears that we all know about this Windows 2000 thing already. So why bother?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Actually there's two sets of balls in question. (btw -many chips are that well equipped)
The first is the solder bumps (~200um diameter) that connect the chip to the carrier. As was previously mentioned, this technique was developed at IBM probably in the 60's/70's but wirebonding (~30um gold wire stiched a la sewing machine) sufficed until signal requirement growth outpaced the density that could be packed on the edge of the chip. This "flip chip" or C4 (Controlled-Collapse-Chip-Connect -trademark etc IBM) spreads the I/O + power connections out over the entire surface of the chip.
FYI- there are two primary methods of applying these solder bumps, neither of which involve liquid solder. One is to place the whole wafer in a liquid bath and plate solder onto the conductive spots on the chip. The second is to put the wafer in a vacuum chamber with a mask on it leaving holes where solder is to be applied. Then the metals to be deposited are evaporated, filling the holes in the mask, which is eventually removed.
The second set of balls are the ~1mm dia. solder balls that attach the carrier to the circuit board. These are actually pre-formed (like BB's) and are sifted into the correct spots in a tray before being melted to the carrier.
naturally you might ask- why not just mount the chip straight to the board? Well, there's many reasons, but the main two are: 1-board building is cheapest at ~1mm dimensions, and 2-the thermal expansion of the chip/board are quite mismatched, which eventually causes something to flex and break. (the carrier mitigates this somewhat)
I know that money isn't a big topic around here, but everyone wants to know when Transmeta is going to IPO.. I was looking at the names of the top people in Transmeta and the Chief Financial Officer would be the most likely to have the details and plans for an IPO. So I decided to research the dude...
"Dan E. Steimle"
Went to google and the first thing that came up was a lawsuit against the guy buy stock holders of a company called "Hybrid Networks". They are charging him and others with Securities fraud. The defendents demanded a trial by jury.
This makes me nervous about Transmeta. Why would Dave Ditzel hire someone like this (with a grey background, and possibly pending litigation for SEC fraud)????
Scarry... Anyone have any thoughts?
That has to be the largest thumbtack/pushpin I have ever seen! This company has something with there processor, but they should manufacture those 7 inch pushpins as novelties.
BGAs are pretty much permanent installations. I believe that there are clamshell sockets available for this kind of thing though. Bigger and bulkier, but you can just open up the socket and replace the chip if you need to.
Overall, BGAs aren't all they are cracked up to be. The production processes are very finicky. It's hard to get all the solder balls to form acceptable welds, and the welds aren't particularly durable in any case. Flexing a board with a BGA chip can very easily loosen or break a solder connection, causing intermittent or permanent failure, respectively.
If you want to get rid of the bathwater, you've got to throw out a few babies.
Related to all of this: does anyone have any idea when the source to the new "Mobile Linux" code that Linux developed will be released?
Because its based on Linux, the GPL says they do need to release it right?
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Or Pentiuns are the size of a brick?
Um, looking under the hood of my desktop, I can see that my Pentium II is just about the size of a brick, give or take a few inches around, when its heatsink is on. Of course it's all casing, but nonetheless, it is a brick.
Kagenin
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
Transmetta ripping off my beloved Dreamcast symbol got me thinking:
As we all know Rambus inc is sueing Hitachi the company that makes the dreamcast's CPU (SH something).
This could have dire consequences for Sega if the Rambus yahoo's actually win.
Would it be possible for Transmeta to emulate the hitachi chip, power the dreamcast, and give Transmeta justification for stealing the dreamcast logo.
Pipe dreams on a wednesday afternoon....
I don't think you understood what I was saying, and BTW Intel didn't necessarily play fair either (IIRC they wanted NT for the Alpha killed, prior to acquiring the chip themselves. They've also played games with support chipsets for the higher speed CPUs. Also, IIRC the big flap was over Intel doing video things and M$ trying or succeeding in killing it). The point is, Intel knew exactly what Microsoft was doing, but sat on their hands anyway, because in their corporate mind set, the best way to sell CPU's was to sell Windows. And M$ would write software and test in in ways nice to Intel, and not test so much on the other chips. So then Intel could self-righteously claim that Winxx worked better on Pentiums than on x86 clone chips.
But even without those things, Intel could have broken the Windows monopoly without exercising monopoly power because there is no law that says I as company 'A' have to sell you as company 'B' a blessed thing unless there is a contractual agreement to do so.
So if a forward -thinking management team had said essentially "look, we need to diversify from Microsoft, and we can look like heroes to the techies and the public by doing so", they could have simply negotiated contracts favoring freedom, because without the CPU, Windows can't be sold on a new machine. This would have given the computer vendors backing because they would have been able to in turn use their contracts with Intel to force Microsoft to adopt non-monopolistic policies in relation to the pre-installed OS, browsers, etc.
Instead Intel did nothing, here we are, and I for one favor Transmeta, AMD, Linux, etc. because they do in turn tend to be for the little guys.
When do we get to play with these?
;)
All this does is make me more impatient. *And* I'll have to decide between this and an Athlon. Aww man!
(If Tom's Hardwre manages to get a multiprocessor Crusoe system up and running, I might be stupid enough to try it too, for better price / performance. Otherwise, I guess we'll just have to build that Beowulf cluster instead, eh, guys?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
On my browser, at least, the image of the test rig was not there. Not that this is truly important or anything, but the image appears to be at:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleima ges/test_rig.jpg
-herd
Thank you sir, may I have another?
see topic :
OK, so the 700MHz version is less than a centimeter squared? Sweet (gargling due to drool here). Think about this, the chip is ultra cheap and ultra small, so why not do a Crusoe-based SMP system? C'mon, you know you want a PDA with quad processors. What about a laptop with 16?
If you're reading TM, I encourage you to develop SMP-enabled crusoes. There may be a bigger market for them than you think.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Would that be to scale on my 14 inch monitor at 1024x768 or my full wall projector at 640x480?
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
> To put the size of the die into a more
> understandable relationship, consider the
> potential computing power in the TM5400, with
> that of a push pin.
Not necessarily... New pushpin technologies, including a new ergonomic design for the plastic "pusher", as well as a revolutionary Cork Board Insertion Array (CBIA) design, may give pushpins the "edge" in bulletin board applications for many more years. Intel's rumored 2.3 Gigahertz pushpin is slated for manufacture in spring 2001, and AMD is close behind, with a proposed pin that uses less than 2 milliwatts. Both of these are expected to be ready for inclusion in imbedded devices, such as corkboards attached to whiteboards.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
interesting material, but why do html authors insist on doing stupid stuff like font size=2? I had to bump up the font size 8 times to read the fine print on that page. I'm really getting sick of that kinda bad design.
I've seen all the talk about manufacturing 'n all (from the folks who mentioned that IBM created the BGA process), but has anyone noticed that the one picture (http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/TM5400_mount ed.jpg) of a Crusoe CPU has a whack of serial numbers, and the word "CANADA" emblazoned upon it? Being a canuck myself, I'm trying to think of any companies that have production facilties - all I can think of are Matrox, ATI, and Nortel. Any thoughts on who is partnered with Transmeta wrt production?
When a link for "Pix of The Crusoe Chips" showed up in my email I thought it might be the mispelling of chocolate chips--the one that seems to be getting people into trouble... and I didn't want to see those pix!
Hey, for anyone still reading this thread, I have 2 questions: Will Crusoe by SMP capable? and How does the chip react to software cooling programs like RAIN or CpuIDLE?