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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."
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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?
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.
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 :-)
No, hardware is only faster than software at doing simple things. CPUs are built (mostly) out of transistors and the more raw output you can produce with the least transistors, the better off you are (usually). That said, RISC systems were designed because some smart engineers realised that they could pull off higher CPU speeds if they simplified CPU design and put the onus on the compiler to generate complex code, instead of using a complex chip.
... and the move to software is a good idea, but can be emulated quite quickly with enough programmers. That is, AMD or Intel just has to take their translation hardware and write code that does the same thing (if they wanted to do it).
Transmeta has just done something similar -- put the onus on the translation software to optimise a given program in a given instruction set for their CPU.
The problem is that the big guys (Intel and AMD) are already doing this in hardware
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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.
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?
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.
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 a luidicrous statement. No technology is that much ahead.
How about garbage collected languages? It took thirty years before they became mainstream (Java). What about Smalltalk? It was developed in the mid 1970s, and is still ahead of C++ in some ways. What about vector processing (i.e. SIMD)? It was a supercomputer feature over twenty years ago, and yet it only starting showing up in commodity CPUs in the mid 1990s. What about concurrent object-oriented languages? Even C++ doesn't have native concurrency, yet Simula did in the 60s. And so on and so on. If you are simply a fanboy of whatever is marketed as current tech, then you have a narrow view.