Slashdot Mirror
Transmeta Claims Five Year Lead Over Intel/AMD
safariman writes: "An article on Yahoo news reports that Transmeta is claiming a five year lead over Intel and AMD. Does anyone else think this claim is a bit excessive? After all, Transmeta itself is not five years old. Besides, once an idea is public, it is a lot easier to copy."
chipzilla and amd will be ripping off any ideas within months of it's final release as a product...
-s
---- noi non potemo aver perfetta vita senza amici -- Dante
If the strategy of the Transmeta chips is to emulate other CPUs, its kind of ironic that they will be using "5 year off technology" to emulate present CPUs?
;-)
Thats like using a Pentium III as basically a really fast 386.....er....um.....nevermind
Lets hope the CPU Software is not easily programmed from the OS, otherwise it opens the door for a virus that could take out the CPU itself.
--
Twivel
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Besides, once an idea is public, it is a lot easier to copy.
...and illegal if they hold patents. Course, I can forgive you if you weren't aware they had any :)
This is a luidicrous statement. No technology is that much ahead. that would be like the AMD having the athlon at the same time as Intel came out with the P200mmx. It is basically inconceivable that Transmeta would be that much ahead of industry leaders like Intel, and AMD. -wyn
Perhaps this is an effort to help build up their stock value, along with a general PR effort.
Transmeta now has a five year lead over Intel in the announcement of products that I cannot purchase yet
I thought M$ was the leader in this field.
At least other people around here are finally beginning to see through their bullshit hype.
Now that that's been accomplished, I think I'll focus my efforts on teaching Slashdotters how to READ THE FUCKING ARTICLES before they post. That way they could avoid completely making complete asses out of themselves like they did in that NTFS/Linux Kernel debacle or the Chris DiBona/Outlook fiasco. I'm not optimistic, but the results will be worth it!
Cheers,
Crusoe chips, from my understanding, basicly offload many of the previously on-chip architecture-specific routines in order to handle lower power output. If this is the only area in which crusoe is "advanced" (i.e. in that it handles multiple types of architectures with only one chip), I can only see a slight lead in that area, and little else. If a processor has to be an X86 type, and Crusoe isn't the *all around* best X86 type processor for the money, I can't even see where they'd have a slight advantage.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
'Besides, once an idea is public, it is a lot easier to copy'
It's all about direction. Transmeta's technology could give others new inspiration. It can be much easier to let inventor's invent, and then copy and improve upon later (Hey you, Microsoft!).
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator
Can someone explain to me the difference between the stocker symbols INTL and INTC? I thought INTC was for Intel Corporation, but then what does INTL stand for (more than plain 'Intel') and why are there two of them?
(this is a bit off-topic, sorry!)
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Anyone remember microcode? You could put your CPU control unit into a set of microinstructions in ROM that would tell your ALU what operations to take and you wouldn't have to design a complex controller. The above sounds similar. Is that, essentially, what Crusoe does? I know it is a lot more complex than the Mircocode of the 1970s and 1980s but one of the coolest aspects of Microcode is that you could emulate other instructions and so it made it easier to make a CPU compatible with earlier units.
It seems to me like Crusoe is a very advanced implementation of microcode, but purely in software. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't one of the primary features of Crusoe that it emulates the Instruction Set of different processors, such as x86, in Software?
How is that 5 years ahead?
In what vapor-ware? Transmeta hasn't even made a production chip (to my knowledge). As much as I want to see Transmeta chips do well, having a five year lead is worthless, if no one sees or uses it.
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5 years is a bit of a stretch, but on the other hand, they may have a significant lead. Of course, to admit that they have a lead is to concede that their technology is the right way to go. If you accept that, then, yes, it will take the other chip makers quite a while to switch to that type of processor design. Consider that it takes Intel several years to develop each chip generation, and that's when the fundamental design technology is similar.
So it could well take Intel or AMD 5 years to develop a processor that used the same technology as Transmeta has now. Of course, that's no reason to believe that Transmeta will succeed in making competitive processors.
This is about CPUs, just like this Transmeta article!
Quote:
I have yet to see a product out there that uses a processor from Transmeta. Aside from that, this is just good old FUD-spewing by the boys who made Crusoe. Both Intel (with their P6 core) and AMD (since the K6 days) have stopped executing x86 instructions directly. They do hardware realtime translation of x86 instructions. I'm going to guess that Crusoe does this as well, but partially in software (much like the first PPC-based Macs).
I have yet to see any benchmarks on battery life or processor performance either. I don't care if the battery on my Crusoe-based notebook lasts 1hr more than my Intel-based Thinkpad, if the bloody thing runs at 486-speeds. To substantiate the claim, I would at least like to see performance benchmarks!
--
Why are they always bragging about how they have software that does many of the things that hardware normally does? I like software and all, but like any engineer, I realize that hardware has the ability to do things faster and better in some cases. I know we all don't want to render Quake 3 with out our video cards!!!
Is there someting that I don't get here, have they made their software tools faster than their respective hardware tools??
This is like me claiming I have a three year lead in a computer engineering degree over a physics major... so what? Transmeta is just trolling, and I'm sure their competitors will continue to ignore them most of the time, as well they should.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Most PR stunts like this are done because:
a) They're looking for more funding from VC.
b) They're going to make an IPO soon, so they are trying to get their name out into the investment community.
c) They want to boost consumer opinion of their product (or non-product, as the case may be).
d) They are trying to intimidate another company (e.g., AMD) into working out some sort of deal behind the scenes (which we know nothing about)...
I'm still waiting to see a Crusoe chip; if it's everything they say it is, then Transmeta can crow all they want.
Lucas
--
Spindletop Blackbird, the GNU/Linux Cube.
Isnt transmeta 5 years old though. Didnt they spend that long developing the Crusoe technology?
Jeff Knox
Even if transmeta really were five years ahead of Intel and AMD (which I doubt), what would that have to do with Transmeta's chronological age?
Technoli
From their own homepage: Founded in 1995
2000-1995 = 5 years (okay, so maybe 4.5 or something), so what are you talking about? Maybe it's that Pentium rounding problem again...
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Sun rises with new generation of servers and introduces the UltraSPARC III Wednesday
Enjoy!
This article seems to assume that Intel and AMD would WANT to copy the Transmeta design. I don't really see it though. I can claim that I've created a peanut butter that's so sophisticated it would take Skippy and Jif 10 years to develop a peanut butter that is as sophisticated as mine. I mean, sure, it TASTES like regular peanut butter, looks like it, costs just as much to make but on the moleculer level my peanut butter is doing something so futuristic it'll take a decade to replicate it!!
The fact is, Crusoe and the rest of the Transmeta chips may or may not live up to their expectations. For Intel and AMD to try to close this "5 year gap" supposedly created, they would need a desire to try. Right now I don't see this happening.
"You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
On the other hand they have a chip design with a billion gated clocks - not something you can do to an existing design overnight (except at a very gross level) - so in the sense that it will take one design cycle for the big guys to be doing what they are
On the other hand all it takes is another small startup to get an async logic x86 clone to market - for those who don't know asynchronous logic has held a promise or lower power, faster design for years - but the CAD tools don't support it - a number of async designs have been done including Amulet (an async ARM).
Async CPUs are in effect clockless - everything internal is self timed, nets only switch when they need to saving power and, in effect self-clock-chipping :-)
5 years, and it's quite a lot,
my pc howls like a banshee,
it's got no fans to spare,
my case is like a warehouse,
there's just no room in there.
5 years, that's all they need
before my toaster starts talking
and my cellphone can read
5 years, that's all they've got
before I stop buying hardware
and start growing pot.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I got a chance to a play with a Sony picturebook with a Crusoe. You could switch between low watt 300mhz battery extended and 600mhz high performance. The utility for this was the same as the utility on Sony notebooks to switch between speed settings for the Intel Speedstep processors. At 300mhz some things were a bit sluggish (not that an Intel or AMD proc at 300 wouldn't be as well for video editing). At 600mhz it operated fine. We were taking pictures, hooking up through a IEEE1394 network interface and other fun stuff. It ran fine for more than two hours on battery. At that point it had about half a charge left by the software monitor and I wasn't aware of how much charge was there prior to our playing.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Once something has been done would it take you as the creator took to create it. It really depends. Would take Intel or AMD 5 years to create a "clean room" of transmeta's code morphing technology? I would think it would take them less time maybe 2 years most 3. But you never know. It could be so complicated that it will take 5 years to recreate.
Me: Ok, so you are 5 years ahead of Intel, right?
Transm: Yes, that's right. And AMD.
Me: But this technology, you've only been working on it for less than 5 years.
Transm: Correct. We were ahead even then.
Me: Ok, so Intel decided that want to be like you tommorow, it is still going to take then 5 years just to get to the point you are at right now?
Transm: yes.
Me: What makes you so great?
Transm: Linus Torvalds. He made linux in less than 5 years, too.
Me: No no no. Linus only makes you famous.
Transm: Well, I don't see Linux Torvalds working for Intel, do I??
Me: Or AMD. That's not the point. I don't see why Intel is going to take longer than you to do something when they are bigger.
Transm: Ok, five years is a long time. Doesn't that impress you??
Me: No! It doesn't matter if you are lying!
Transm: What?? We really do have Linux Torvalds! That is not a lie!
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Transmeta seems to be succumbing to the same thing AMD succumbs to: marketing arrogance. Remember those claims by AMD that the Athlon was faster? And remember how they were shot down when it was found that a similarly clocked P3 could perform better in high-demand applications? Sure was a wake-up call to AMD's marketing team; they couldn't use faster performance in their ads 'cause it just wasn't true.
Also, who the hell names these add-on instruction sets? At least Intel uses some variety in names, but "3d-Now!" and "Power-Now!" just seem to reflect the "instant gratification, damnit!" mentality of the general AMD user base. These names sound more like ransom demands from a terrorist faction, which I'm starting to believe is what AMD is quickly becoming.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Yeah but sun sells closed hardware and software therefor making it evil to the zealot community. Notice how they skipped right over the story about hotmail switching to win2k.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We all know the marketing strategy before an IPO:
Everything is about to generate buzzes and keep up the momentum.
So, are you ready to buy machines with Crusoe chip, and throw in your money to invest in the company?
No? How come?
To anyone that doesn't think a company can have a 5 year lead look at the amiga.. Crazy technology before anyone else about 5 years ahead of the pc(wintel) world... But this also shows that if u can't market it u can make money with it! SO LEADS DON'T MATTER!
- Random Note
Just remember whoever thought up the idea of selling sunglasses to the blind was a freakin marketing GOD!
Given that Transmeta was founded in 1995, by what logic do you deduce that they're less than 5 years old?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The quote this whole thing's based on says, ``For them to catch up, they would also need a software based approach. That means they would have to start from scratch and from my 20 years of experience, it would take at least five years to get a new microprocessor out the door."
Is anybody here seriously suggesting he is wrong to say that it would take five years to start from scratch designing a chip - especially when that's how long it took Transmeta? That's where the five years come from and I would have thought that's accurate. People have had decades to copy Intels X86 architecture (and several years for the Pentium and most of its guises) so if it was that easy there would be more alternatives.
Which means the question is the first point: do Intel/AMD/ARM etc have to use a design which implements software? Well, that I don't know. But considering the problems and delays Intel has had bringing the Pentium 4 to market there is evidence to say he might be right.
In the context of promoting his own company he's not making unreasonable assumptions.
On the other hand, it would be nice to market a "student version" of Crusoe.
Students could design their own architecture, up to the instruction set, including a MyArch -> Crusoe instruction translator, and then let Crusoe execute their code.
Also interesting would be a console emulator (SNES!) designed to run into Crusoe.
--Pazu
...that they feel their technology is that far ahead of their competitor's technology...
They aren't saying they know what the technology will be in five years...
BlackNova Traders
They don't see an upper MHz limit for Crusoe. The aim is to go for a simple architecture which produces little heat for the performance, and then up the performance. If they stay in business, Moore should be on their side. Right now they cannot get the performance they want though.
I think SMP would be hard. But I could be wrong.
They can do other instruction sets. Eventually they would like to do multiple instruction sets in parallel. (Think moving the JVM into the machine.) However they will likely have a harder time squeezing performance out of RISC than CISC.
I don't know the status of 64-bit. Internally their chip is 128 bit though, so it should be doable. But I think they prefer AMD's approach. (I think that Microsoft will discover the hard way that AMD left them an upgrade path they can live with while Intel did not - the barrier to entry that Microsoft erected is working against IA64 now.)
I believe that Transmeta will do something extreme. If they can hang on, they have enormous potential. But if they cannot survive this critical period, they will leave a hole in the ground.
Oh, the one technical detail everyone seems to ignore. There have been many micro-controller architectures. But x86 was not intended to be one and is rather difficult to emulate. They claim to have real breakthroughs and I believe them.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Fujitsu and Sony are already on, Hitachi and NEC are expected...but this chip only has an edge in a limited market (laptops and assorted PDAs). Plus they outsource the manufacture of the chips to IBM. The cynic in me would say this is another case of CEO's buffing the company image before their IPO...
"Transmeta, which filed in mid-August for an initial public offering, is gaining in stature within the industry and on Wall Street..."
They do have Linus Torvalds onboard and Paul Allen's cash behind them, but that doesn't mean you have half a decade lead time over Intel or AMD. Bottom line: the market for PDAs and laptops is small. Their production set up is small. If the Suits at Intel or AMD decide to throw money at the problem, they could play catch-up faster than you might think.
Intel is INTC, not INTL. Here's the corrected link: INTC
// zyqqh
TROLL
There are two reasons why Slashdot writes about this crap:
1) It is kinda neat how they solved the heat issues of such an old legacy design as the x86. This only needs to be reported ONCE.
2) Linus works for them. How many times has Slashdot run an article with the words Linux, Transmeta, and Embedded mentioned?
Also, I find it ironic that Slashdot, whose bias towards towards Linux is well known, has the follow to say about Transmetas claim:
"once an idea is public, it is a lot easier to copy."
Finally explains, once and for all, exactly why Slashdot is against software patents.
Draw your own conclusions.
Burn Hollywood Burn
--
the slashdot killah
Since the rate of development of technology is so rapid, its very difficult to tell where it'll be in 5 years. Having a mystical, magical chip that doubles battery duration and what not may very well not be 5 years away, rather one, or it may be 10 (though unlikely) The point I am trying to make is they may have well have said 'We're a bagillion years ahead.' --- its all still meaningless... and until I see numerous OTHER companies (its very easy to gloat about your own product) say it... [or see it for myself] --- then I will just ignore their boasts as just that. Thats just my opinion, I could be wrong...
~- Llah -~
Transmeta's design, while not revolutionary (IBM has been doing microcode on their mainframe processors for decades) is something new in the microcomputer space. However, consumers typically don't buy CPU's for their design -- they buy strictly on price/performance. This is why AMD is currently slaughtering Intel at the low end: even though their chips are just imitations of Intel's, their process and scale are set up so that they can deliver large yields at low prices.
Transmeta can win on price/performance if it can get good production yields.
The real test will be on 64-bit, though: when Intel finally releases the Itanium, how fast will Transmeta be able to re-code its magical morpho-chip to the IA-64 instruction set? If they can do it quickly, they'll have a production Itanium-compatible chip on the market with a significantly lower R&D cost, because the hardware part of the chip is already paid for. Intel will have to charge a super-premium for Itanium, because of all the zillions they spent building it. If Transmeta can do a software-only upgrade to the Crusoe to make it Itanium-compatible, they'll be able to sell it at less than half of what Intel will be charging. If they can do that, they've got it made -- and they will indeed be five years ahead of Intel.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
God forbid you should mention CPUs in a CPU-oriented thread!
As Microsoft, Oracle and many other very, very rich companies have proved, being first does not exactly guarantee success. In fact, it's usually the second or third entries into a market that end up with the motherlode of the market share. Should be fun to watch though....
--Mid
I have to agree with you on this one Lucas, looks
more like a PR move than anything.
My big problem with it is that they chose such a
stupid time frame to claim that they were ahead
by and provided nothing but their own word
as evidence that they were ahead.
Perhaps if I really felt motivated to find out
about them beyond that single article, I might
just find that, but their initial statement has
turned me off toward them in general.
Anyone who would make outrageous claims to bolster
business should've gotten into disk jockeying
or rock stardom, because that's where
that sort of PR belongs.
I'm just mean today, I guess... oh well!
~- Llah -~
Commie Slashmeat bastards!
Really, I know some people have been dissing Transmeta (TMTA in October, when they IPO) for:
1. running slower than Intel
2. doing PR prior to the IPO
But. It doesn't matter.
Yes, you read that correctly. Noone gives a frog's hind quarters about the speed anymore, it's HOW LONG IS THE BATTERY LIFE. And they can deliver substantial gains on battery life for laptops and webpads, so they are 5 years ahead.
And they're not that slow either, pretty close in speed and they are shipping in quantity to a large number of disparate vendors.
Besides, most of us just care about Bandwidth, Batteries, Butting Up Against Bill And Beating Him Silly. And on all three they win round one - better than the US Govt, that's for sure!
Will in Seattle
Transmeta has chips that are kinda slow. But if their burn rate doesn't exceed the speed at which VCs throw money at them, their CPUs will get faster.
SMP's hard, but then I'm an idiot, so what do I know.
Transmeta might try other instruction sets. But they might not work very well.
I have no idea what I'm talking about now, but I'll throw in the term "64-bit" 'cause it makes me look 1337. Oh, BTW, Intel and AMD don't get along. MS will probably make an OS compatible with at least one of them. But I might be wrong and MS might start selling bedwarmers for elderly people. Mmm... bedwarmers.
I believe that Transmeta might make lots of money, but not if they go bankrupt.
Guess what? x86 wasn't a MPU architecture - it was a recipe for lasagna. That makes it hard for Transmeta to emulate. But hey, they say they've got their act together, know where their towels are, and are going to make some insanely great lasagna.
But then, I might be wrong.
How come when I'm Trolling, I get moderated down, but when Transmeta is Trolling, they get a headline. It's just unfair!
Burn Hollywood Burn
Um, in case it escaped your attention, Digital is now spelt C-O-M-P-A-Q.
Or here.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Now to understand the context, keep in mind that Transmeta does not see itself as a head to head competitor with Intel or AMD in the x86 market. Transmeta is really going after the embedded space and the mobile computing space. While notebook manufacturers are intending to implement Crusoe, Transmeta is really targeting the Palm sized computers, the mobile phones, etc.
What Ditzel is saying then is that Transmeta has a Quantum leap on AMD and Intel in this area. Transmeta's technology allows them to shave off 1/4 to 1/3 of the transistors needed for a CPU. If, and this is a big if, Transmeta's technology scales down (not up) they have the potential to be the embedded king of the processor because, in theory, the chips of the competition will always be more complicated.
Now, I don't know if Ditzel is right on this. Intel's StrongARM looks mighty fine in comparrison. I'm still waiting for Rebel (formerly Corel) to come out with a poratable Netwinder around the StrongARM. The Netwinder desktop runs a nice little Linux desktop class machine on 15 Watts. That's less juice than some x86 CPUs alone (let alone the hard drive, the fan, etc.). And of course if Palm does move to the StrongARM as they are rumored to be doing, it will get very interesting....
I'm not counting Transmeta out, just not holding my breath for them to achieve world domination. It seems like they've got a decent product and given the slow acceptance of non x86 CPU's, they might have a good shot at gaining enough marketshare to make some money.
have a day,
-l
This is all under the assumption that AMD and Intel haven't got any secret dark projects that they are hiding from the media. Just because Transmeta has been whored around by the techworld (primarily slashdot) doesn't mean that the bigger companies (the man) are doing nothing new and unique. This is to be expected from slashdot, though, because if you follow the money, you'll probably find out a lot of the higher ups in VA are going to invest in Transmeta.
:) It's about money. If you still think it's about freedom, leave the 90's, and join us in 2000. (or support Debian)
Oh, freedom and software? I'm sorry, it's not about that anymore
It's an arrogant statement. Especially to say it so early in their development.
It may be true, and they might have such forward thinking that they truly are ahead of the concepts of Intel and AMD. In fact, it's very probable, considering they have tradition and concrete methods to follow. But, if they want to truly get anywhere in this industry (or any industry), they shouldn't play off a reputation they may never actually gain.
After all, if a goal isn't achieved, you might as well never have set it.
I could have sworn that as part of the Intel vs. Digital lawsuit that Digital sold their fab to Intel. Perhaps, Compaq is now fabless, but I don't believe Samsung is.
have a day,
-l
I agree with the other reply - this is the only post here that clarifies the article.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Folks, I have not been following Transmeta, but does anyone one know how Crusoe compares price-wise? I do understand the hype...but obviously for so many people to have adopted it Hitachi/Sony/NEC/Fujitsu... it must be good. How much more do I have to shell out, for a crusoe laptop? or how much less? -Kutti
Easy.
We can't mod down stories here like on some other sites I know *cough*kuro5hin*cough*.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
This post is five years ahead of the rest of you. This means that by the time you will be replying or modding this, it will already have lost my interest. Have a nice life.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Me see 'um possible problem with this.
Joe Blow runs Windows.
Joe has Crusoe based laptop.
Joe can presumably update his CodeMorphing(some other schmucks TM) at any time.
Windows is stable and secure. I know 'cause it tells me that as I install it.
Me really see 'um potential for problems with this. =)
-Lanir
Disclaimer: FUD is bad. Be informed. Look up the info and make up your own mind. I'm not a shepherd and I sure as hell hope you're not sheep. =)
Async does have major promise, especially for low-power. However, if you just sprinkle magic async dust over an existing chip design, you get a processor that is only as fast as its poorest transistor. Transmeta, which has a fraction of the transistors (and a head start on the software which could adapt more intelligently to the vagiaries of a clockless chip), would benefit far more from this transition than traditional x86 designs.
In effect, you have parallel advances. There's fabrication technology, where the big guys have the advantage, but that's just a matter of money. There's sync/async, which hasn't been opened up yet. And there's software, where Transmeta does indeed have a head start of 5 years... minus however long intel/AMD have been running secret initiatives to do Transmeta-like tricks in software.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
On the other hand, Intel/AMD didn't hire the Rather Bright group of engineers of whom Linus Torvalds is merely one in a cast of dozens.
On the gripping hand, Transmeta has obtained patents on many of the more interesting technologies that they developed in the process, thus meaning that Intel/AMD would need to work around them, which I expect is an underlying assumption in the assertion that it would take some years to replicate it all...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
That seems to suggest that they don't have great raw speed, but they do execute code rather cheaply.
But others already do the same thing. Mac laptops do a great job with MPEG decoding in software. They can play an entire DVD without a recharge. I mentioned this to a Transmeta engineeer and he said, "Yeah, that's a great demo." But he wouldn't say more.
I think they can beat some of the fat power hogs like the Pentium chips, but they have trouble with the RISC chips like the G3 or the StrongARM. (The G4 is another story.) I just find it hard to believe that a compiler optimized binary for a RISC chip is ever going to take more power to execute than an old x86 binary that needs to be massaged extensively by a pre-processor. The pre-processing has to take power and I doubt it will yield enough savings later to pay for it.
My bet is that Transmeta can beat the Pentiums, but not the RISC chips.
When I worked with IBM 4081 mainframes, we would boot the systems by doing an IML, an IPL and THEN booting the operating system.
The IML stood for `Initial Microcode Load', which installed the instruction set for the mainframes CPU's. With this technique, it is possible to upgrade your CPU's instructions to a different CPU's instructions - exactly what Transmeta can do.
IBM had Motorola re-wire the MC68000 to run IBM 370 machine language, to allow the creation of the IBM RT-370, a desktop machine that could run mainframe code. This was IBM's attempt at creating a microprocessor that could do most of what Transmeta claims to do (although what the mainframes do is what Transmeta appears to be doing).
Perhaps someone out there can precisely determine when IBM started using this technique.
Shannon Mann
A comment overheard in a corn field `If you have better ideas, lets hear them. I am all ears.'
VLIW is pretty close to software based CPU functions. It essentially pumps out the out-of-order execution and completion units to software.
Sure, Transmeta pushes out some more things out of CPU, but it's hard to argue it's a 5 year lead.
sigs are a waste of space
Transmeta can reduce the power their chips use all they want, but honestly, it doesn't make much of a difference in battery life. It's the DISPLAY (backlit displays, at least) that eats battery power, not the CPU.
Sure, in a non-backlit display, you may get significant battery life gains by using a Transmeta processor, but, non-backlit displays suck, and any device that uses one probably isn't doing any kind of processor intensive stuff anyway.
Also, can anyone confirm that Transmeta started working on Crusoe *after* the company was actually formed? Who's to say that they haven't been working on this chip for 5+ years?
Well, if one were to describe the approach Transmeta took, what would be the most logical description: CISC! Soooooo, Transmeta is indeed using an old idea and although they are dusting it off and all, the past has learned that it just doesn't work. Of course there's a lot of difference between CISC processors and the Crusoe, but the essence is the same.
RISC has obliterated CISC, so technically Transmeta shouldn't stand a chance.
Ok, 5 years does sound a bit crazy, and probably just hype. But you should really think about all of this, and don't comment if you really don't understand what your talking about. The thing is that although their chip isn't the fastest it has many other advantages.
First off it has lots of room for improvement.
Also think about the problems with todays processors, handheld devices, laptops, etc. Heat, power consumption, size, and others. If this new processor does what they say it will do then it may be the best one for handhelds laptops, and even information appliances. Just think abou it.
Their claim of being 5 years ahead doesn't mean they have a processor thats faster by 5 years, they didn't specify speed , they are talking about overall time for companies such as Intel and AMD to catch up. If Intel or AMD wanted to create a new processor to produce as little or less heat as the new Crusoe chip, they would need to develop a whole new chip, which by Transmeta's calculations is 5 years.
Although Transmeta has its claims, just remember that until we see it for ourselves, don't always buy the hype. But please do listen and learn. The responses I see are sometimes quite ignorant, especially considering this is supposed to be a News for Nerds site. So before you post a comment please think about what your going to say.
Question everything.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.microproc essor.sscc.ru/Merced/+merced+intel+1996& hl=en
HP and INTEL began joint intial R&D for 64 bit computing in 1994.
in 1997 INTEL announced they had the merced (itanium) running via software simulation.
Do you think we will see IA-64 itaniums this year?
LOL, maybe transmeta was being generous.
jim
Look, the market right now for technology is getting weaker and weaker. IPOs are shaky business... some are venturing out (such as AvantGo), but others, such as say transmeta, which are plan nin g an IPO really need to bolster how they look to investors. By claiming a potentially false lead over other chip makers in technology, you try to put in the minds of potential investors that transmeta is a long-term investment.
Most strategists are done with the dot-coms. Stocks need to have some semblence of real world value in order to survive. Without much technology to speak of other than "we are another AMD", which has not been a wall street killer until this year, they need to project the image of a long term strategy.
Its all about business. This is just one facet of it. Keep in mind who is publicly traded and who wants to be
--jay
You don't? One word: Linus.
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"Rock over London... Rock on Chicago..." -Wesley Willis
Now I've seen it all!
Appended to the end of comments I post? 120 chars?!
IBM has been doing research pretty much in parallel with Transmeta. They even designed a VLIW processor with a PowerPC translation front end...
Strongarm gives more work per Watt for sure, and theres plenty of other high-end embedded chips which do likewise... but they cant run Windows :) Its all about legacy support, not about Linux. Which can easily be ported after all, rather ironic that Linux works for a company who's main focus is making chips for Microsofts desktop OS.
Nuff Said
Translation costs are usually minimal, speeding them up in hardware in parallel is not efficient compared to doing it in software. So yes software is better than hardware, not faster... but better.
Well, at least Intel doesn't make insipid commercials just to appeal to the morons of society. Real computer users know to stay away from AMD and their "92.813% x86 compatibility" goal. In the computer world, you get what you pay for. If you seem to have struck a deal, you always end up paying for it because of some bug that the AMD designers could've avoided in the first place.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
That's a very strange perspective.
Intel has already developed a next-generation architecture-- IA64 -- so any statement that they can't develop a next-generation architecture is just plain wrong.
Yes, I'm aware that Intel is having a horrible time delivering IA64-- but you can't question their commitment to IA-64, which I would have to call a "radical shift" from their previous approach.
That's what those lovely patents are for. chip/chimp zilla can ogle thru the gates all they like, but they'll be more than likely locked out.
The issues that I think would be there with SMP would involve synchronizing locks etc. They are trying to do a lot of out of order operations, falling back on careful code when their optimizations fail. That keeps their pipeline full. But to get to a safe lock they need to flush that to get to a state where they can. Which will lose performance.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
One of the biggest barriers everyone is facing right now is having the chip melt. It is a constant battle.
Transmeta is not facing that particular barrier. Plus their chip is simpler hence easier to iterate through generations.
Therefore over time the performance gap should narrow and reverse, if only they can stay alive.
Cheers,
Ben
PS This opinion is based on a co-worker's conversation with some key people at Transmeta last Feb.
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Maybe I'm just not looking around enough, but it seems like any time that I hear about Trasmeta, they're shooting their mouth off about "Mine's bigger than intel's & AMD's, combined" but they never really tell that much to back it up. I keep getting bad grades on my english essays because I have that kind of cocky "I'm so cool I don't need proof" attitude, but of course, I'm just a punk kid, can't *they* do better? I thought that they were supposed to hire professionals to handle that stuff... I'll be more than happy to give transmeta a realistic chance... if they'll ever show me some hard evidence, you know? They're in this to make money, so I'm gonna need more than their word that they have a better product before I jump on it. Is that too much to ask for? Or have they already done this and I've been to busy writing my crappy english papers to see the real proof on the matter?
The real beauty of TM, which few seem to get in this discussion, is not that they bring RISC to CISC. Intel and AMD have already done that hardwarewise, and it has improved performance tremendously. But they faced new problems with pipeline performance (miss penalties for deep pipelines) and heat dissipation. Classic processor construction could only take them this far. At this stage TM chose to rethink once more the concepts of processor construction. Just like old times' RISC developers saw the flaws and limitations of CISC processors, TM pinpointed the problems of post-RISC processors.
So the TM processors definitely stand a chance. But what are they? What catchy term could we coin to ignite the modern version of the RISC<->CISC wars?
PS :) )
It seems RISC never obliterated CISC, but merged with it instead. (Any dialectic historians out there?
DS
and I suppose you thought the "flat police" commercial was tactful? How about that stupid Athlon commercial which had their claim of being faster? This is the claim which I challenge.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
*sigh* you dumbarse. suns debut of its 700+ MHz US-iii's was reported on /. nearly THREE MONTHS AGO. when it was relevant and sun was pushing alpha copies out to customers. not now when theyre announcing it to the rest of the planet. go back to reading cnet or whatever crap you read.
You're just too afraid to face the fact that the Athlon was outperformed by a lesser-clocked Intel chip. Did you read any of the other pages of that review? You were probably too afraid to do so, since you couldn't stand seeing a hardware review site trash talking der Fuhrer AMD GmbH. Take those blinders off your eyes, and rip that green swastika armband off of your khaki shirt.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Go on, go...
If Transmeta can do a software-only upgrade to the Crusoe to make it Itanium-compatible, they'll be able to sell it at less than half of what Intel will be charging.
Not.
The Code Morphing(TM) emulation technology used in Crusoe(TM) processors is designed to emulate CISC (complex instruction set computing) machines such as x86, 68k, and JVM. It's much harder to emulate RISC machines such as MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC, let alone machines that are already VLIW like ia64.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ooooh, that's scary and proprietary!
info on crusoe chip:
/.
Technology used
A whitepaper. The Technology Behind Crusoe(TM) Processors (pdf)
The processor's
from this info on transmeta's website the crusoe chip don't look too bad. it appears as if they've simply created a pretty good chip not based on x86 and then use the software as an interface between software and hardware.
they say:
The Code Morphing software can evolve separately from hardware. This means that upgrades to the software portion of the microprocessor can be rolled out independently of hardware chip revisions
and:
Crusoe processors provide speeds of up to 700MHz in mobile platforms
Not a bad idea really... so long as it works.
tahpot
on
You can bash transmetta all you want but what they're ideas are pretty neat. I can't wait for my PC box to be small, compact and quiet!
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
I can see why they do that tho... If they were to unveil all the details of their chip, it's instruction-set, etc... They would be attacked by the vultures in no time. Keeping things proprietry for the time being ensures they don't have Intel and AMD stealing their ideas...It's a lot harder to copy something if you don't know how it does what it does. It's a smart move IMHO, and I hope they succeed.
...this is getting out of hand
I think transmeta may be onto something but, 5 years ahead, i don't think so. they're in a whole different ball game than Intel and AMD! I've gotta support Transmeta though cause linus is Da Man! Peace, Kevin Young ytech@ytech.net http://ytech.net
When my Palm III (to take a nice cache-less example) wants to read a word from RAM it asks for the address and then waits (I think) 3 clock cycles. If it read it any sooner, the memory chip might not be ready yet - the 0's don't change to 1's in a nice ideal square wave, they relax there exponentially, and if the processor reads something that's halfway from 0 to 1 who knows what it will think.
Why 3 clock cycles? Because that's the worst case - if I have a relatively crappy RAM chip, and my battery is close to dead, and it happens to be a really hot day, that's how long it will take. But what if my processor watched the voltage carefully enough to know when the memory was ready? After all, if the voltage reaches 1 after two clock cycles, you know that's where it's supposed to be.
And once you start thinking that way, why do you need a clock at all? You ask the memory for a value, and wait only long enough until it's ready; ask the addition ciruitry to add that number to register n, and wait only long enough until it's ready; ask the pipeline for your next instruction, etc. If async were a factory, instead of having some fixed-speed conveyer belt running through it, you just have individuals handing each other tasks, and a very careful setup so nobody starts to do anything until all the materials they need arrive at their station.
This obviously takes some high-level wizardry to design. Instead of just doing the next step on the next digital tick of the clock, each part of the chip must make sophisticated analog judgements about when its input is ready and when it's possibly still just a glitch. But what you get is a chip that overclocks itself to exactly its own limits. You'd sell computers rated to "greater than xxx Mhz" instead of just "xxx Mhz", and cooling your computer would give you immediate speed improvements.
Probably the first use for async is for extremely low power devices. If you just have a teeny little solar cell which delivers fluctuating power (or a heat-engine running off of daily temperature differences or body heat, or whatever), well, the chip will take as much power as it gets and just operate slower when the power drops. I am sure your sci-fi imagination can come up with possible applications.
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
For the record, the Linux Kernel Compilation Benchmark being 'the only test that matters' was a tongue in cheek remark. Next time I'll remember the smiley for the humor impaired; as for the rest of your 'argument':
You invoked a fascist reference; you automatically lose. Go away Troll.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
The difference between software and hardware:
Software is what you configure.
Hardware is what you get someone else to configure.
CPUs are software to cpu engineers, but hardware to most other people.
They're getting ready for an IPO. What did you expect?
Hmm, if I were taking my company public, I'd go around and tell reporters that the incumbent operators in my market actually knew what they were doing and that our own product was actually not that great.
:-/ the real skinny comes _after_ the IPO.
This has nothing to do with the poor marks you've been getting on your english essays. Stop reading ./ and go read a book or something.
I think Crusoe's gonna kick butt. I think all the world will have little Crusoe/Linux handhelds with color LCDs and wireless net in 2 years.
And they will sell for 200 bux a pop.
And Nintendo will port Pokemon to it.
And thus will start a chain of events resulting in a total refacing of the consumer electronics market.
All This I Know In My Perfect Foreknowledge.