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Crusoe: new benchmarks
C'T has published some new TM5600 benchmarks. Sony's new Vaio notebook uses 10W per hour to power 128 Mb of RAM (112 Mb useable), a 12 Gb Hard-drive, an ATI Rage Mobility Gfx controller and a 9 inch display (resolution: 1024 x 480). This compares with 15-22W for a normal notebook with a bigger display. Intel's Pentium III was usually 50 percent faster at a given frequency, but sometimes virtually no faster and sometimes twice as fast. Code-morphing's impact was measurable: some programs (Quake III and pov run on desk.pov) ran 10-20 percent faster the second time they were run.
this is not a real 9" display with the 4:3 aspect ratio we are used to. this display is 1/2 the size of a real 9" display at 4:3.
i want to see power specs on a real laptop with a real display, not a palmtop with a 9" x 3" display.
Crusoe: Not the fastest one, but economically
[ 11,10,2000 17:13 ]
For some days the c't laboratory measures the efficiency of the TM5600-Prozessor von Transmeta[1 ] . After the first results to the Speicher-Performance[2 ] now further results of bench mark are certain.
The Crusoe is 12 GByte fixed disk, ATI in the Sony Notebook Vaio PCG-C1VE[3 ] with 128 MByte primary storages, rises up Mobility and a 9-Zoll-Display with 1024 x 480 points dissolution. The processor runs alternatively with 300 mc/s with 1.2 V of core voltage or 600 mc/s with 1.6 V and can be switched during operation between both frequencies. It does not have 128 KByte Level-1 and 256 KByte Level-2-Cache. x86-Code can it execute directly, but translates it beforehand into its internal VLIW instruction set (very long INSTRUCTION word). In order not to repeat this process continuously, the Crusoe stores the translated code in a code Morphing memory. In addition it zwackt itself 16 MByte from the primary storage, so that for the operating system and applications only 112 MByte remain remaining.
In the case of 300 mc/s the c't Akkubenchmark results in a run time of approximately two hours. Sony indicates the Akku capacity as approximately 20 Wh. Therefore the Notebook takes up altogether only about 10 Watts of performance - quite considerably, most Notebooks between 15 and 22 Watts goennen itself nevertheless. In the efficiency comparison the Crusoe remains certainly behind one fast clocked mobile Pentium III clearly:
Processor
Clock
[ mc/s ] BAPCo
SYSMark 2000 PovRay 3.1
chess2.pov 3DMark 2000
CCU Marks UT
[ fps ] Cinema
4d
Crusoe 300 31 124 PPS 33 8,4 1,8
Crusoe 600 50 257 PPS 56 11,8 3,7
Pentium III 500 86 347 PPS 78 14,9 5,5
Pentium III 600 92 417 PPS 81 15,4 6,6
Comparative measurements on Acer TravelMate 522 TXV with Pentium III-600 (with speed steps), 128 MByte primary storages and likewise the ATI rise up Mobility.
Some bench mark we let run several times consecutively, in order to observe the influence code of the Morphing (translate of x86-Maschinencode into Crusoe instruction). In the theory a bench mark should run with the second time faster, since the processor can fall back to the Morphing memory and again not translate the code must. In practice this effect actually shows up with some bench mark: Thus the Frame rate of Quake III of 13,5 rose fps by 10 per cent to 14,9 fps in the second run. PovRay calculated " desk.pov " in the first passage in 20 seconds and needed with the repetitions only 16 seconds. (both measured with 300 mc/s.)
However the results remained by the 3DMark 2000, unreal Tournament or the " chess2.pov"-Berechnung von PovRay constantly and also most individual values of the BAPCo Suite varied only around the two per cent usual with all systems. This bench mark execute obviously most program sections anyway already several times, so that the rate advantage enters with the repeated passing through of a code paragraph bench mark result also. For example the BAPCo Einzeltest " Elastic Reality " consists mainly of calculating 150 frames. According to the first picture the code should be situated completely in the Morphing memory, so that the Crusoe can calculate the further 149 pictures with max. rate. Code the Morphing would have to go already extremely slowly, in order to measure an influence here.
Further results follow in the c't output 22/00 (starting from 23 October in the trade). ( jow[4 ] / c't)
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Lithium polymer batteries have started hitting the market--the iPaq uses them, for one, and my new cell phone does as well. With their significantly higher energy density and the Crusoe's power-saving, we'll be seeing laptops with a running time of 6-8 hours--or to put it another way, laptops with a running time of 4 hours that have virtually no battery. This still isn't enough, and definitely isn't worth the 50% performance hit reported on some applications.
In my experience, the biggest power drains on a mobile system are (of course) the display and the CD-ROM/DVD drive. I'm waiting for a new display technology (light-emitting polymer, for example) that will make more difference than the Crusoe or lithium polymer combined.
So, the chip is much slower than the p3, and extrapolating from the provided numbers, if you fit it with a real screen (not the ridiculous PDA size this benchmark has been run with) it sucks almost as much power as the aforementioned vanilla p3 notebook, and probably more or less the same as a p3 notebook at half of the Crusoe's clock speed (since that's a comparable speed given its performance).
/. community is much more forgiving.
Can anybody explain me what's the point of all the hoopla that has been going on about this ? If Intel or AMD created a processor like this they would be fried and grilled here, but since it's Linus' employer I have the feeling that the
Don't get me wrong, from a company that has never produced CPUs the Crusoe is an excellent first product, but I fail to see why this should be hailed as the second coming or something.
Am I being too cynical ?
-- the cake is a lie
How do you use 10W per hour? Considering that is a rating of power (energy per unit time), not energy.
Somehow, testing this processor in a system with a tiny display doesn't seem like a very good way to compare it to a realistic real world notebook. (Sure, some people may buy this, but the display seems too small for many real world applications.)
OK, we're dealing with laptops and webpads.
Based on batteries coming out of B.C. right now, I'd say Transmeta can cut the power on a system with color video screens and CD to about 80-90% of current usage. If you beef up the RAM to the gills, probably 70-85% power usage.
Main drain is monitor power for most people - fastest method to cut this is better screen technology. Time to market of useable low-power high-res screen is probably 2002-2003 product cycle. This will still leave you at 50-60%.
Not a lot of hope on the CD power usage.
On the other hand, a non-CD Ethernet laptop, with honking big RAM and improved hard drive could probably cut power consumption down to 25-30% of current usage. This is with a total redesign. Expect to see these babies in late 2002. Price mark will be high until early 2004.
[Note - I am expecting to put in an indication of interest for TMTA IPO shares - I am biased]
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Half the display size (vertically), half the processor speed, half the power consumption... I think they should ship OS/2 with that thing, just for the bad pun.
Stop asking: My Karma is nowhere near -100 and will never get there with a default score of -1. I lost.