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Intel Pushes Low-Power Crusoe Challenger
axis-techno-geek writes: "It seems that Intel now is trying to fight back against Transmeta with their new chips. Intel plans to have their new speed-step Pentium III's out in about a year (which in computer time means about 18 months :)."
Great, so what this is really saying is that it took some upstart startup to come up with a really good idea AND bring it all the way to market before Intel would get off it's ass and admit that just MAYBE a more power-efficient mobile processor was something that their customers NEED?!? This is a perfect example of WHY monopolies are a "bad thing".
Personally, I don't see this as being any great news from Intel. As far as I'm concerned, the most impressive thing about Crusoe isn't the fact that it's much better for battery life (though that's certainly a good thing, and it's about time SOMEONE did something about it), it's the code-morphing abilities of the chip. This chip has the ability to emulate any processor that TransMeta puts its mind to emulate. And this can be accomplished with SOFT patches (no more difficult that upgrading your BIOS). For now they have chosen to stick the the x86 market, which makes perfect sense. But Apple and Sun better look out, once they get themselves firmly established...
Fight back against vaporware with more vaporware? Sounds like a fair fight to me.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
It would seem the above links aren't helpful at this time, so here's a few that might shed some light in this already ageing news piece:
/news/0-1003-200-3156114.html?tag=st.ne.1002.thed. ni
- http://www.pcworld.com/news/ar tic le.asp?aid=31482
Also next year, Intel will probably announce an ultralow-voltage 500-MHz chip for subnotebooks that should be extremely battery-friendly. The company demonstrated a processor running at 300-MHz.
- http://www.zdnet.c om/ zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2639424,00.html
When Intel Corp.'s Frank Spindler disclosed that the chip giant is fast tracking the production of a new ultra-low-power chip for notebooks, there was an interested eavesdropper nearby.
- http://cnet. com
SAN JOSE, Calif.--Intel said it will enhance energy-saving features in processors for laptops and begin shipping new mobile Pentium chips next year as competition intensifies.
It's clear that Crusoe's LongRun technology is a more elegant approach
to conserving power by reducing clock speed than Intel's Speedstep,
but how much difference does it make in practice? It's quite possible
that Intel's crufty hack might give 90% of the benefit. I'm waiting
for independent tests...
Intel recalls the 1.13 P3
AMD rolls out 1.1 and announces near term avail of 1.2 GHz Athlons.
Intel repurposes P4 systems after performance issues, show that tick for tick they run slower than P3, Athlon & Duron. (at least until they can shrink the die small enough to run at 2GHz which puts them on par with todays chips)
AMD announces SMP chip set with initial 2 way (this year) support for their Athlon line. And the SMP is higher bandwidth than current Intel systems...(Finally!!)
Micron's MAMBA DDR SDRAM chip set is announced for Athlon systems - with 8 MB built in cache!
Intel initial chipsets for the P4 will be RAMBUS ?
Now they are going after the Crusoe chipsets with more underclocking tech ?
No I have to admit my info may be flawed, as I have not been watching the processor news for the past 20 minutes, but it seems to me Intel is now fighting battles on all sides (in the CPU arena at least) and, at least right now, losing ground on most of the fronts. Of course if I were Intel I would be most concerned with Athlon SMP invading the traditional server and highend workstation market...but that's just me.
'twould be nice, but those static devices do take a lot more transistors (and die space) than dynamic devices. Which translates into either a bigger die (cost) or less functionality. I think an asynchronous processor would be a better solution, one which can turn down the clock on unused parts to the minimum level needed to keep state (where minimum could be zero is the part allows it). There are devices like this around, although I have yet to see a modern processor do this.
Posted from a nfs-booted iopener, progress in disguise...
//Frank
--frank[at]unternet.org
Wonder what their release schedule would have been pre-Transmeta?
It seems that Intel now is trying to fight back against Transmeta with their new chips. Intel plans to have their new speed-step Pentium III's out in about a year...
Yeah, but will they look like barf?.
--Jim
...but isn't competition a violation of the DMCA?
We must stop piracy at all costs... including freedom.
Intel calls it "Speedstep technology". I call it underclocking. This is nothing new. The *really* sad part about all this is that it's going to take another year for this *amazing new technology* to be available.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Ok, I found it... ht tp://www.lycos.com/cgi-bin/pursuit?query=288089&fs =docid&cat=zdnet&mtemp=zdnet
Mark Duell