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BigBragger writes: "Upside has an article declaring that ViA will begin using the Crusoe chip in the wearable computers it currently designs for the US Army. Crusoe will debut in the next version. There's hope for a Transmeta PC yet, but will I have to enlist to get one?"
WillSeattle points to C|Net's story on the same thing and adds harshly:
"Soldier, when was the last time you compiled this kernel! You are a disgrace to the uniform! Give me 10,000 lines of code, pronto!"
While it would be cool to have linux running natively on curusoe, this would be very bad. If we can compile linux naviely, we can compile any other random program natively, and tmta ends up in the same situation that intel may get themselves into with merced^H^H^H^H^H^Hitanium, where they cant make large changes to their chips without breaking every program compiled for it.
Dave Ditzel [sic] discussed this at the press confrence in Jan. and he said that there is and there will never be a way for anything but the code morphing software to run natively
--
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
ViA lost out on the Land Warrior contract. Short story: their version had a fan, the current one doesn't---no moving parts, in fact. Runs off a flash disk, everything's solid state. Your information is at least a year out of date. The complete Land Warrior package, everything the infantryman carries, weighs a pound or so less than an infantryman carries now, and was a tremendous success at the JCF/AWE this summer. Read what the soldiers say about it at: http://www.monroe.army.mil/pao/awe/BoxLive.html http://www.fayettevillenc.com/foto/news/content/20 00/tx00jul/n20land.htm
Please see my real-world experience - I have provided office-type tech support to infantry officers, it is not fun.
Now, these are bold strides that the military is trying to make in advancing thier state of technology. But technology alone is no *magic bullet* which will enable soldiers on the ground to be more lethal, if they can't move or don't have the intelligence to work the equipment they have been issued. We've barely got enough time to get people to be really effective as regular infantrymen and can't even afford enough fuel and bullets to have soldiers learn their basic jobs. So, now were going to buy all this neato technology that goes beyond the current (and future) warfighting need?
The fundamental questions of modern land warfare are: where are they? Where are we? Whoever has more success in answering these questions will probably win.
The US forces in the Gulf War would have been lost in the desert without their GPSes. The Iraqis assumed that the coalition forces would be unable to maneuver in the desert - everything looks the same, all that terrain association crap they teach you becomes useless. Probably a good assumption. But GPSes allowed midwesterners to run circles around arabs in their own desert.
Also, soldiers still move from point a to point b by pointing a compass the direction they want to go and counting their paces. This is a very crude system, and if you're not very good at it (like me) you neve end up in the right spot. While I'm not an infantryman, the spatially-uninclined ones will probably be much more lethal with a HUD that tells them where they are.
A test of this stuff indicated the time needed to consolidate an airborne unit after the drop was reduced significatntly (no URL in my head, sorry.)
We're talking like 45 extra pounds of technology, a heavier, albiet, more capable weapon system with things like rangefinders, Laser Target Designators and thermal sights all built into a rifle, with a grenade launcher and 5.56 round capablity, all in a single system.
The good thing about this new toy is that it will make suppressive fire much more lethal, assuming it ever gets light enough to be practical. Supposedly, it'll let suppresive fire create a burst effect and kill people. Right now, most bullets are fired not to hit someone, but instead to keep them from moving quickly. Watch saving private ryan and notice how much complicated it is to move 5 feet under fire. This gizmo is supposed to make suppresive rounds explode, which means that most shots will now actually have the chance to hurt somebody.
Of course, anything that or gives the Signal Corps more $ or makes the Signal Corps seem more important is a good thing from my perspective...
All these comments so far and not one Borg reference!
Amazes me that you call yourselves geeks!
Are YOU listed?
I think it's illegal to order soldiers to use Windows. From the Uniform Code of Military Justice:
893. ART. 93. CRUELTY AND MALTREATMENT
Any person subject to this chapter who is guilty of cruelty toward, or oppression or maltreatment of, any person subject to his orders shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
Clear maltreatment. Enough said.
It's not a 33% across the board raise, it's more like 2% to 33%. If you're a GS-5 (that's pretty low level, like 20k a year or so) in San Francisco, you get the 33%.
When I started my current job in Seattle three years ago while still in college, I was a Computer Specialist, grade 7. These guys are getting something like 20% raises. Now I'm a Computer Scientist, grade 11 and I'll get something like 4%. If I were a Computer Engineer, which would require nothing more than having a degree in comp E instead of comp sci, I'd have been getting the extra pay all along.
Battery life improvement: 10% to 20%
Relative performance: equivalent to a Pentium II
Notice that just which Pentium II was not specified. It could've been the lowly 266 or the 450, the last one made for the laptop. What matters that the Crusoe just doesn't stand up to the P3's performance, MHz for MHz.
Furthermore, the battery life improvement was a measly 20%. What happened to that doubled battery life promise?
Either way, the Crusoe just doesn't stack up well against the mobile P3. Intel will be releasing a new mobile P3 which uses even less power, so Transmeta might be given a real challenge now.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
This has nothing to do with the laws of physics, more the laws of economics which describe why certain technologies are chosen and used. Pure performance is only one factor considered by those that make intelligent commercial choices about technology - though I could conceed to you that there are many non-intelligent choices being made.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
Is anyone besides me saddened by the continuting trend of new and promising technology being immediately conscripted for use in war? I realize a lot of money stands to be made by selling to the military, but it seems as though the computing field as a whole is drifting slowly towards being less a tool for creation and more a tool for destruction, which raises ethical questions.
Precisely because of the versatility of computers which has made them such a success, nearly any work done in many areas of the field such as hardware, security, or even graphics could easily be adapted for military use without the knowledge of the engineers or programmers who did the work. While a machinist can refuse to work in a shop which manufactures guns, it's not so easy for an principled engineer to avoid developing hardware with military applications. Worse still, any GPL software which the military of any country finds useful might easily be adapted into a tool of destruction, completely against the wishes of the people who developed it.
I'm probably taking the issue a bit far, but it is something to think about as you're writing that clone of Scorched Earth.
if you're an enemy, will you have an easier time figuring out software running on a Linux OS running using an x86 variant or a completely closed system?
For the last time, obscurity is not security! The enemy military can probably crack an instruction set real fast.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The *interface* may or may not be a variant of X (an embedded graphics toolkit such as Qt/embedded would probably be more appropriate), and you're certainly not going to bother with a full posix environment, let alone KDE or GNOME, but why reinvent the wheel and write your own kernel? I'm not saying that Linux is the only or even the best choice, but it would probably be a quite viable one.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Oh, there was a "toilet seat" bru-ha-ha a few years back. Which ignored that it was "toilet seat" for a combat aircraft; a Home Depot toilet seat wouldn't have fit. And it was a prototype; when production was set up, each was of course much cheaper than the the first hand-tooled one.
Similarly, there was a "hammer" controversey. To be used on reactive metals. Using an ordinary steel hammer from a Home Depot would have been a very good way of causing thousands of dollars of damage to high-performance aircraft and risking serious injury to the person using the hammer.
So, ignorant deficit-reduction organizations horrified by the Reagan defense buildup did an outside examination of a military procurement bugdet and found those items, and then sent press releases about these "$$$$ for hammers and toilet seats" to ignorant reporters who contacted ignorant PR people in the DoD PR offices who couldn't explain things. So the reporters ran their stories without having talked to anyone who knew what they were talking about, and Americans were told that the military pays hundreds of dollars for toilet seats.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
Well I don't know about the US army, but this Brit civilian sure likes his Crusoe (Sony Vaio C1VE)
I don't see why some people are saying "what use is a computer for every grunt in the field".
Surely they have heard the maxim "knowlege is power" and surely the more powerful your armed force is the better.
The amount of information that could be transmitted to them, along with tracking prediction (ie digital camera with motion prediction and rangefinding) - allowing cross hairs to be shown where the target will be, not just where he is.
Who cares what OS it would use/not use, recognise the technology for what it is - the 600Mhz Crusoe will quite happily play-back MP4/DivX movies, play Quake 3 and various other functions, and hive a battery life of 2.5 hours or greater, and only weighs 2.2Kg.
I am looking forwards to getting a quad battery and being able to use my Vaio from London to Osaka without having to worry about the battery going flat.
In short -
Transmeta Crusoe = GOOD
Low Heat = GOOD
Reduced loss of life in combat situations due to increased battlefield intelligence = VERY GOOD
Well thats my tuppence (2 cents ) worth
NiteHaqr
I can see it now, distro wars between the services.
Navy: Windows. Yeah, unfair, but it's huge, it's a battleship, it's slow as hell.
Army: Embedded Linux. Clean, mean, and green, stripped down and ready to fight.
Marines: Embedded BSD. Secure but limber. Fewer apps.
Air Force: Windows 2000. They crash and burn.
Green Berets: Since they're fazed out, Windows 98. Buggy as hell, but it usually works when it's not drunk.
Will in Seattle
Look out... with the new hardware the army etc will be sporting. during a time of war they may be more likely to come to us first and issue a draft notice =/
A related question... What is Transmeta's MIPS-per-Watt rating?
This was the metric used by Psion to select the StrongARM processor for the Series 5 and successor PDAs. A rather enlightened means of guesstimating which architecture to tie oneself into, I thought...
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Maybe TMTA can get toilet seat prices for the device, limit up at that point :)
The use of Crusoe pieces in a military (or any government) contract is a guarantee of not only of millions of orders for the product, but also repeat business for years to come. This should go a long way on Wall Street.
because these Crusoe chips have enough horsepower to run minesweeper.
that soldiers recompile the kernel of their battlefield computer. I think the version number pissing match has gone much too far.
this is my transmetta. there are many like it...but this one is mine.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Sargent: This is the chip for me and you.
Troops: This is the chip for me and you.
Sargent: And its software is GNU.
Troops: And its software is GNU.
Sargent: And if the OS code should crash.
Troops: And if the OS code should crash.
Sargent: Recompile and kick some ass.
Troops: Recompile and kick some ass.
Sargent: We all code for Uncle Sam.
Troops: We all code for Uncle Sam.
Sargent: And our army runs a WAN.
Troops: And our army runs a WAN.
Sargent: Sound off.
Troops: Zero, One.
Sargent: Sound off.
Troops: Two, Three.
--GrouchoMarx
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Excellent post, but just to nitpick: The only code that runs natively on curusoe is the code morphing software. Linux is compiled normally for the i386 ISA, and doesnt know that its running on a vliw chip.
So, whenever transmeta develops a new chip, they have to rebuild their code morphing software, but thats all.
--
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
Wearable computers are also useful for such things as forward observers (linking the GPS and the laser range finder), more reliable comms links (digital data is more resilient to noise than ananlogue voice) and overlaying tactical information on the soldier's FOV.
Overlays could include waypoint diamonds for nearest friendlies and spotted enemies. Don't you think that would help the poor Grunt and her squad mates stay alive for just a few more minutes?
From a risk management perspective, the Crusoe is very important - it provides a bridge from the old world to the new world, and eventually, in the history of computing will be seen as such.
What Crusoe does is add an intermediate layer, that can adapt to various upper layers and therefore emulate different types of chips. Also, this intermediate layer, can be optimised and adapted to different firmware implementations that sit underneath - and as the marketing blurb tells you, in such a way to reduce power consumption as well.
In an age where computing is moving to a distributed, connected, more homogeneous type of environment, this is brilliant.
What I could expect to see is various different forms of firmware, with tight multiprocessing, and other custom features - and VLIW layers that can adapt. Also, VLIW adaption for intel, motorola and other processors which would be excellent as a migration path for existing software. Perhaps also, custom VLIW instructions can be useful for high performance applications.
It would be good to see Crusoe as the end for Intel, Motorola and others. I think the ARM may still have a price/benefit advantage in embedded systems, what many people don't remember is that ARM is often used as a ASIC core within silicon next to other functionality (e.g. RF, in communications chips) - I don't expect to see Transmetta offering Crusoe as an ASIC core in the immediate future, but who knows! ARM has a different market segment to Crusoe, and designers will know that.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
The pay raise is for civil federal employees. All military personnel are paid based on rank and time in service. Pilots, lawyers, and doctors are paid extra. IT professionals are not paid extra, at least not yet. This will prob have to change, see below.
Needless to say, the Army has a tough time hanging on to techies. The Signal Corps (archaic Army-speak for IT) has a serious problem retaining soldiers, and an even more serious problem retaining officers. The whole army is currently critically short on captains, and so I would assume the SC is insanely short on captains. (English translation: a captain is a college graduate w/ 4-10 years of service.)
Additionally, the Army still does suck sometimes. As I write this, I am polishing my combat boots for this weekend, no kidding. Like any non-standard occupation(or part-time job) it has pros and cons that you won't find in a cube (or a computer lab...). For example, in the Army, you get to learn a whole new set of acronyms, which no geek will understand. If you ever need to sound like you're smart, you just tell somebody you executed a PCI on your LBE this weekend and it was succesful. This will impress any geek and he will be too embarassed to ask what the hell it means. (Translation - I made sure my canteens were full of water. I also managed to not lose my compass)
I'm a part-timer, believe me, I don't do it for the money. I like being something more than a regular techie. If you have a degree and are willing to take some off to go to Officer Candidate School and Officer Basic Course you can get a pretty good setup. I believe the OCS folks would sell their soul for a CS major right now.
rm -rf enemies
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Spooks and spies. Right now, there is no real reason (or technological application) for the average soldier to have a small, wearable battle computer for his preservation of that of his mates. The only use is spying on other computer users, most of which will be civilians. To whom else will a soldier come so close in modern warfare? Yes, other armies have computers or satellites but we dont need a mobile, wearable computer to spy on that. Why should this be encouraged? A technology that frees us in our own hands enslaves us in other hands.
Goat sex free since 2001
They have already beaten the VLIW problem.
:)
That the transmeta chip has some vliwish elements in it is merely an implementation detail. 95% of software will use the code morphing layer, and not know what chip is underneath.
This is 1) good 2) important.
When you compile natively to a VLIW, you completely lose all binary compatability. If a pipeline length changes, if the number of EU's change, if _anything_ about the implementation of the processor changes - your binaries break. All of them.
Once intel moves to a VLIW architecture, evolutionary changes from 486->pentium, pentium->ppro are no longer possible. Each of these represented new EUs being added or pipeline changes.
The transmeta approach is different. Instead of breaking all the software for a new transmeta chip, you just change hte code morphing layer for the underlying physical processor. THe user-level (and emulated OS level) stuff never really knows the difference - it just runs (presumably) faster.
Of course, stuff running natively against transmeta chips will break, but it is expected this will be a small amount of software. If its just the linux kernel, it wont even matter - people tend to build kernels alot more often than transmeta releases chips
It will be a shame if transmeta doesn't make it in the market. They've got a lot more big names and big brains than linus, and for reasons i mentioned above, they do actually have a solid advantage over intel's strategy going forward.
Time will tell.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I'd much rather get ahold of a wearable. Does anyone know of any such plans? I've seen the PC104 based wearble that Charmed Technolgies makes but it's still a bit clunky. Maybe someday I can get a Microoptical display and set of datagloves, attached to a Transmeta wearable. Check out weracam for some really cool uses of wearables. Steve Mann has a system that let's you take notes on people and if the mounted camera recognizes them it automatically pops up the notes in overlay. He also has a high speed camera that lets him read the writing off the sides of tires on moving cars.
Now, as far as what these chips will be used for, there is a project called the "Land Warrior" project. The goal of this project seems to be to try and load a soldier up with almost every ungodly amount of sensory equipment as one can pack onto an individual human. We're talking like 45 extra pounds of technology, a heavier, albiet, more capable weapon system with things like rangefinders, Laser Target Designators and thermal sights all built into a rifle, with a grenade launcher and 5.56 round capablity, all in a single system.
The soldiers will have to also contend with sensory equipment integrated to thier helmet and a head's up display that can communicate terrain and other types of intel. The commander will be able to see what each soldier sees and intel can be shared from any one element on the battlefield to almost any other point.
This program assumes, in my view as an *infantryman* that the average soldier, who they just lowered the entrance standard (ASVAB - GT score) on so that they could get recruitment numbers up, will have a clue as to operating all this crap while still maintaining eyes on that critical 40-65 feet in front of them in an urban environment.
Uh, just a minute Bob, I have to reboot. Or "my head's up display got smudged from my camoflauge, and while I'm cleaning it so I can see what the heck might be around the next corner, I get whacked from some 3rd world irregular who leaned out the window across the street.
Now, these are bold strides that the military is trying to make in advancing thier state of technology. But technology alone is no *magic bullet* which will enable soldiers on the ground to be more lethal, if they can't move or don't have the intelligence to work the equipment they have been issued. We've barely got enough time to get people to be really effective as regular infantrymen and can't even afford enough fuel and bullets to have soldiers learn their basic jobs. So, now were going to buy all this neato technology that goes beyond the current (and future) warfighting need?
But hey, I hear they sure are going to be wearing neat hats pretty soon. Goes to show you, when someone was thinking "Can we do this", someone else forgot to ask "should we"?
But hey, good for Transmeta and all that. I'm sure those who got in at the IPO will be happy. As for the everyday soldier who has to content with all this stuff and doesn't even have the resources to maintain basic proficencies it won't mean a damn, not now, and surely not after they get loaded up with a lot more crap that their units will let them use about once a quarter.
The machines will almost certainly not run Linux or another other current OS. In a combat situation, it simply doesn't make sense for the computers the troops are using to have more than basic functionality, as the more complicated it is, the more attention will have to be put into using it.
I would imagine the basic idea of a wearable military computer would be to transmit terrain data and specific messages from commanding officers, and as such would be built to do just that with a minimum of user interaction. The machine will probably run a custom bare bones OS/application combination and will function more like an advanced GPS device than a desktop machine.
After all, do we really need our soldiers to be checking their email, buying stocks or talking to their buddies on AIM in the middle of a fight?
Palm: Low cost, low power, low heat, passable speed, huge user and programmer base.
I wonder what would happen if Transmeta and Palm ever hooked up? Could Transmeta's code-morphing answer the question that Palm users have been asking for months about Palm's eventual move to StrongARM chips? (Specifically: How to do it without locking out the millions of existing users and 100,000 existing developers.)
--GrouchoMarx
My other account is CmdrTaco
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?