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Does Transmeta Live Up To The Hype?
onion2k writes: "In this article on VNUnet, Toshiba are saying that the Transmeta chip doesn't quite live up to its hype. Bit of a strange thing to do considering Toshiba were one of the original investors, but hey, thats corps for you ..." Talks mostly about the power consumption of the chips. If you're following Transmeta, this is worth a read.
8 hours? Bah. A MacPortable got 4-6. And it's carrying case would hold a second batterry.
And 2.2 lbs? so what. The batteries were 5 or 6 lbs--quite handy as a security measure: if someone tried to steal it from you, you pulled the battery out of the case, and let them run off. Cassually follow them until they tire from teh weight, and then hit them over the head with the spare battery.
:)
hawk
Would they? Given the Linus' standing, would we care as much about Transmeta if he wasn't involved? Is a lot of the interest in Transmeta because of Linus works there or is it because there's this huge demand for low power CPUs? The way I read Transmeta stories/postings/etc its as if we'd never seen a low-power CPU before and we were all running computers that needed two-phase 208v and air conditioning.
You'd think if it was just low power CPUs people would be into all kinds of StrongARM solutions (not that some aren't, mind you, but there's no Linus mystique). I know the emulation, which is only x86 as of yet anyway, part is cool but at the same time I can't help but think that its 50% cool tech, 50% Linus worship.
If I was to buy a K6-II+ notebook and a Transmeta notebook (assuming that the transmeta didn't cost twice as much which is likely will, from what I hear) which one would be faster? If I buy a Sony VAIO with a Celeron or P3 in it and a Transmeta notebook, which will be faster? Are these supposed to be Cadillac notebook chips? Or "working man's" notebook chips?
Next, if I was to treat the Transmeta part like an embedded chip. How cheap can a wireless webpad with Linux and mozilla on it be? How long do the batteries last? Can I plug my Nokia PCS phone in to it? Yeah, these are all product specific questions. The big one is "how cheap?" I'm not going to buy a $1000 web pad when I will be able to buy a $1000 K6-II notebook ($800-$1200 is what they are aiming for with the k6-II+.) The TM chips are supposed to cost in the $70 range in quantity so I'm guessing you're not going to see many $300 TM based products.
There is a fair amount of information on the processor but I still feel like the important real world information is missing. I also feel like TM has been kind of deceptive with it, if they had a cheaper, lower power process that delivers the same performance they would be banging that gong to no end. They don't, it's either more expensive or it's slow, or both. It also kind of feels like they are moving slow. I know it's a first rev of their part but since that first press conference it has almost been long enough for rev 2 to be nearing the end of the pipeline. Something else that they should be hyping, especially if their first rev is an underachiever, that's expected but it's what you follow up with that makes or breaks you.
It's all very cool none the less, I hope they do well. More competition is better.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
The big criticism seems to be performance. I see this as a complete non-issue, but then again I'm not a compulsive upgrader.
Just two years ago, I was doing serious day-job work with a 200MHz Pentium running Windows NT. I had no speed complaints whatsoever. I'm currently doing software development for a _large_ project using a 400MHz Pentium II. It's plenty fast for my needs (which includes lots of heavy compiling). I also have a 333MHz Pentium II at home, which I use for running Lisp, doing 3D modelling, compiling, and graphic arts work. No speed complaints from me. It's a very snappy system, even running Windows 95. (I'd switch to Linux if I could find a desktop environment that didn't drag performance down to sub-Windows levels. Even so, I still have a 2M Linux partition that gets the occasional use.)
Now, most of the Transmeta detractors are complaining because Intel and AMD are beating them in the raw speed department. But then I realize that even Transmeta's low-end chips are running at outrageous clock speeds, giving performance better than any machine I typically use. That's enough for me. More speed than I know what to do with. Very low power consumption. Please, get these into inexpensive notebooks ASAP.
Apple's G3 laptops, on the other hand, have battery lives that are two to three times longer than Wintel laptops. That suggests that Crusoe and the old G3 are similar in computation per unit power. Of course, Apple/Motorola has gone the other direction with G4. It has a huge die to accommodate the SIMD instructions in the Altivec. Power consumption has skyrocketed. Still, Apple's MPEG DVD playing demonstration with the G3 is a great benchmark for a computer.
It's clear that Transmeta began as an academic exercise in exploring a new kind of computer chip that converted the instructions on the fly. They were entranced with the possibilities of doing pre-processing of instructions at the time of execution. This gives them some neat benefits, but they're not huge ones. After a bit, the Transmeta folks gave up singing that their processor was going to go faster and started hyping the power consumption.
It's not clear to me that Transmeta hasn't used any techniques that can't be easily ported to the latest model of the Pentium. So we'll see what happens.
I would also take Toshiba's decision with a grain of salt. There are plenty of other big companies with good engineeer who are still behind Transmeta.