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Crusoe To Be Used By Netwinder, IBM, NEC, Others
theGEEK writes "Rebel.com will be making Netwinders with the crusoe chip from Transmeta. In related news, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM and NEC will all be showing off notebooks using the Crusoe today."
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> Do you feel that the Linux community has
> fallen victim to Transmeta's brilliant
> public relations? Since Linus Torvalds
> has joined Transmeta, everyone has
> become aware of Transmeta's entire
> product line...
Yes and no.
I was just as excited about the PowerPC chips when they were new on the market and hoped for affordable PowerPC hardware that could replace the vanilla Wintel box on my desktop. And the PowerPC chip wasn't tied to "one famous person", at least not for me.
I remember discussions years ago with my co-students during computer science classes about how great this chip would be and how it would be a *true* alternative to the Intel product line.
However, Apple killed off the clones and PRPC (or whatever the non-Apple Power PC hardware setup was called) was stomped before it really took off.
So here I sit now, waiting for the next contestant. The iMac is interesting, but then again, Transmeta looks like the better idea to me now. See my other post in this thread about that...
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Which is good of course. Maybe Intel might stop being so sluggish all these years. It's amazing to think that they have spent so many years getting away with regurgitating the pentium pro core, without any solid competition.
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This is a kind twisty story. Buuuut.
Back in the day, Windows and Mac were real competitors. When Mac introduced a new line, with a new processor, they would allow new instruction sets. The old instruction sets would be emulated in software. They figured the new processor was faster, and that eventually everything would get recoded anyway. Worked pretty well for them.
Well, not so in Redmond. Microsoft would not recode X86 instruction sets for other processors. If a chip manufacturer wanted to capture the Windows market, they had to do X86. So, we see efforts like those at AMD in the Athlon to do hardware translation, and at Transmeta to do software emulation.
Meanwhile, Mac already has a G4 that is comparable to the Crusoe for power consumption, and per CPU cycle as fast as X86 processors get. The bottom line is that it is really dumb to stick to old inefficient instruction sets just because your monopolistic OS company refuses to do a little work to earn its tens of billions.
I hope Crusoe is REALLY successful. AMD and Intel will NEVER create a chip as low on power as a G4 and as fast. Or even a Crusoe. X86 instruction sets simply require a LOT of transistors to work.
The real questions are whether
1) Crusoe with linux can use x86 linux binaries
2) Crusoe linux laptops are faster than G4 linux laptops (once those actually run)
Hopefully, the Crusoe Netwinder will be as fully-functional as the current Netwinder family, and not "just" the "gateway" product mentioned in the article. After all, it could be used as more than just a gateway/firewall/router type of box; I'd love to use one as a small file server networked to my current AMD box. All I need is for it to have a PCI slot capable of using a Promise IDE RAID card; it would free up a PCI slot and a couple drive bays from my current computer, and I'd be very happy with it--serving files to a local box isn't so processor-intensive that the Crusoe would be overwhelmed.
I've been hoping that the Crusoe would make it into some desktop products like the Netwinder, since notebook products are inevitably too bloody expensive (and fairly useless to me, anyway--drive bays! I need more drive bays! not a hobbled travelling PC). After all, not everyone wants/needs the screaming-fast performance of an 800MHz Athlon; some of us want a Crusoe desktop machine for both the "wow factor" and to support the company, but given the nature of the new processor and its chipset DIY commodity mobos and retail processors aren't realistic for any time soon.
Personally, my old 400MHz K6-2 is still fast enough for everything I do on a daily basis--the occasional video clip rendering notwithstanding (just leave the box alone for a few hours, and...), and I bought the thing over a year ago to support AMD even though the Inetl Celeron 366 was faster for the same price. I can't in good conscience buy five-year-old tech from Intel, I have to support competition in the market--and now with Thunderbird and Duron it looks like AMD is finally tromping Intel on all fronts, hooray for supporting the underdog. Look at all the good we who have supported AMD through the dark ages have now brought about: AMD chips that whomp Intel, but just as significant, lower Intel prices and higher Intel clockspeeds. How can self-respecting geeks buy Intel, knowing that Intel's own roadmap had us all still using processors in the 400-600MHz range right now, with AMD's Athlon being the only thing which picked up the pace? And now, because of AMD, Willamette is going to be released not just for servers, but as a replacement for the ancient-cored P!!! with the P!!! Coppermine becoming their new low-end processor to compete against Duron. Intel had been planning to shove that integrated bullshit Timna (think Cyrix MediaGX) down our throats as a Celeron replacement, with the P!!! for higher-end consumers, and the Willamette for high-end workstations and servers only. That's what their roadmaps said before AMD put the Athlon squeeze on. Folks, unless you need a dual- or quad-processor box *right now*, don't support Intel--they don't deserve it. AMD is now the real innovator, even though they're still the little guy. And Transmeta, support Transmeta as well--they're innovating in different and commendable ways. But there's no excuse for supporting Intel, the company which was going to move us at a snail's pace until AMD stepped it up.
Anyway, I was planning to turn my old 400MHz box into a fileserver at the end of the year/early next year when I can get my hands on a dual Athlon motherboard, but I'd gladly buy a Crusoe desktop to do that fileserving. Thank you, Rebel.com, if you follow through and make it good.
So, am I the only one who wants a Crusoe desktop, or are there other technogeeks out there who'll buy a Crusoe desktop system aither in its Netwinder incarnation or otherwise?
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Do you feel that the Linux community has fallen victim to Transmeta's brilliant public relations? Since Linus Torvalds has joined Transmeta, everyone has become aware of Transmeta's entire product line... and not only that, most of you are crazy about it! Don't get me wrong; Transmeta really does have a great product with Crusoe. However, I am curious as to how differently Crusoe would have been accepted had Torvalds not helped in its development.
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Kinda sad how the upshot of all the nifty news technology is the rather boring (though admittedly valuable) goal of low power consumption. The original press conference read sort of like the Cheese Shop Sketch.
"The crusoe can emulate any chip at all."
"Like a PowerPC?"
"Theoretically."
"Or an Alpha?"
"Technically."
"Or a Dragonball?"
"Probably."
"So what can it actually emulate?"
"Any chip at all, so long as it's an x86."
(1) The fact that Crusoe doesn't require a whole lot of power doesn't mean that it will automatically be thrown into notebooks with standard Li-Ion batteries and get 1000 hours of battery life. The idea is that if you're more efficient, you need less physical battery. That means smaller system. That means ultralight, which is everything with notebooks these days. I know plenty of folks who would give up a very fast and loaded desktop-equivalent notebook for a VAIO that is light, decent, and looks good.
(2) Less Heat eliminates need for a processor cooling fan. eliminating the need for a fan makes the package smaller. see also #1.
(3) Companies, especially Big Blue, are tired of forking over notebook profits to Intel. period. Crusoe is very affordable, and that will bring prices for notebooks down all over the place. Intel will still dominate, but at least you won't have to pay a premium price just because you want a PIII-600 in your notebook.
(4) Being able to alter the emulation processes at the software level means that this is a chip that will grow and improve with time. Intel's coming out with more SSE multimedia extensions? Patch crusoe. Boom. Upgraded Crusoe. No hardware swap required.
(5) Yes, being able to theoretically emulate anything is pretty lame. Alpha and Dragonball, while potential, are not likely to get emulated with this. What will? PowerPC. I guarantee that Transmeta has a team trying to get down the instruction set for the G4. I know many a web designer who would run out and buy a system if they could run both Windoze and MacOS on the same hardware without something like Virtual PC. It's not as appealing to the market, but it may eventually be part of Transmeta's value proposition. I'd expect to see it within the next 12 months, and expect to see companies like Dell and NEC making notebooks that have full G4 support and Apple jumping on the bandwagon.
Bottom Line: Crusoe is revolutionary. It will take a while for the waves to be made, but we'll all be using faster, cheaper, lighter, cooler, better computers as a result. Intel needed some additional competition.
Here is the official press release. http://www.rebel.com/corporate/press/20000627.html
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