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Fiva: Transmeta Sub-Sub-Notebook
An anonymous reader writes "The Tech Report has an article on Crusoe-powered devices. Plenty of pictures, with details on offerings from Casio, NEC and Sony, among others. These things are really tiny and the batteries last forever! I want one." The fiva is especially sharp. Extremely small: could be very useful.
Probably not. The Motorolla Dragonball (used in Palm Pilots) and the StrongARM (used in iPAQs, IIRC) still kick the Crusoe's ass for low-power computation. Crusoe's advantage is that it can run x86 instructions -- something that so far hasn't mattered in the PDA market.
I guess your world must not include places like Japan where both have been/are quite popular.
Very happy with my picturebook's 1024x480 screen and 90% keyboard, fwiw.
--
see shy jo
Miniaturization has happened quite nicely without the Crusoe, and manufacturers have discovered that people don't want laptops much below 10"x7"x1" or below about 3.5 pounds.
I do own and use a Libretto. It's amazingly portable (roughly the size of a VHS tape), and it turns a lot of heads, but I can't say I'm a fan of 60%-size keyboards or 640x480 screens.
The primary benefit of the Crusoe is its power savings, which has little or nothing to do with miniaturization. Why not put Crusoes in real laptops, which people actually use, and realize the power savings there?
Why can't the hardware vendors make what we are all looking for... /.re. But really I think most net appliance vendors are really missing half their possible audience. On one hand you have potential customers such as your aunt Sally who really doesn't need a computer but wants access to the internet and email. They might buy one of these devices (with the ubiquitous MSN rebate). On the other hand you have much more knowlegable home network people that want some cheap cool devices that they can put in their kitchens or living room that give them access to the Internet and other machines on their network. So no, i'm not J. Random consumer but I am a person that is more likely to buy a cheap Internet appliance if i can work it into my world, and I am much more likely to buy one than your average consumer, and I'll bet there are a lot more people like me than you think.
It was meant to jokingly mean your average
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Actually, Fivas have been available in the U.S. for a while. I bought my -102 from Mobile Planet several months ago.
It should be know that the Fiva has been around for a while now, though only available in Europe and Japan -- Version previous to this one used the Cyrix MediaGX/NS Geode -- therefor it's battery life won't increase much becuase the Geode used before is low power -- though performance should get a big jump.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
I've been trying to find out what the reflective TFT screen on the NEC with the obscene battery life is like. Has anyone got any comments after extended use or, failing that, a decent play?
...at $3400 for the DVD model I'll leave it on the store shelf, thank you very much. Machines with that kind of functionality need to come down a HELL of a lot more in price before they become really appealing.
Shoulder pains from carrying around 8 lbs? Man, you definitely are a computing professional!
I challenge you to carry an 8 lbs laptop plus the necessairy gear (ac adapter, mouse, etc.) in a normal should-strap laptop-bag, all day long, for a week. You *will* have problems.
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You may like my a cappella music
For those who might still be complaining that we can't buy these things yet.... we can.
The Fujitsu Crusoe model (called the Loox), can be bought from here.
Remember this baby comes with an option for a built in DVD drive....I'll take two, anyone care to buy me one? *grin*
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Its great to finally see some hard proof of real Crusoe-powered devices.
They all look very impressive, I personally am taking a bit of a liking to the NEC device. It looks to fit a fairly decent ultraslim formfactor, and has a reflective screen, which would quench my thirst for a laptop I could use in bright light, such as outside. The fact that it has an 11 hour battery life definitely doesn't hurt either.
I can't wait to see these make their way to retail.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
3. Compatibility. Maybe your company is using a system other than 802.11 -- or a different flavor.
About 20 years ago someone pointed out it is easy to detect and distinguish between a high-pitched and a lower-pitched tone. You could talk to a robot with a code made of a high and a low tone. You could use whistling, humming, or whichever sound-making method you wanted to use as long as the tones were regular enough and different enough to be recognized and distinguished from each other. I believe this concept was published before R2-D2's more advanced example of robotic speech...
Actually, you don't need 4 lines of CPUs. You can have one CPU do all of those, They can have an option where you configure the CPU at the bios. and set the CPU type, optimize for this function or that function. etc etc. Load this architecture and boot this OS. I can't wait till I can have x86, sparc and mips all on the same chip. Mmmm
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
The Crusoe's not really aimed at the PDA market. It's way too overpowered and as energy stingy as it is, it doesn't come anywhere near todays PDA processors.
The Crusoe TM 3200 - 333mhz (Transmeta's most "mobile" processor) consumes ~15mW of power in it's most power conservative state (deep sleep idle) and averages 1.4W (mp3 playback) (both of these figures include the Northbridge chipset power consumption as well).
By comparison, an entire Palm Pilot Pro (using a 16mhz Dragonball eats ~26mW in it's idle state and consumes ~160mW when running CPU intensive applications.
While you could leave your Crusoe on the shelf and outlast a Palm, It wouldnt take very long for 1.4W to drain a pair of AAA batteries once you start doing something with the unit.
<rant mode="intemperate"> I am continuously amazed about the number of MacOS users who think there is anything interesting or innovative about their operating system. Guess what? Earlier this week I needed to remap my keyboard, so I pulled off the shelf a copy of the X Window System User's Guide and read the xmodmap documentation. I bought that user guide in 1988 (eighty-eight), but my memory is that xmodmap goes back a lot further than that.
MacOS is not interesting; it's not clever; it's not cool. It's the operating system for people who prefer glitz to function, image to substance -- the operating system for poseurs, advertising account executives and 'web designers'; the identifying badge of the know-nothings and contribute-nothings of the electronic age.
Go out. Buy yourself a copy of In The Beginning Was The Command Line. Become enlightened.</rant>
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
int posttroll(string articlesubject){
if articlesubject="transmeta" return true;
if articlesubject="Linux" || "Linus" return true;
if article="Microsoft" && "conspiracy" return true;
return 0;
}
Let's go over this again. If you don't want to read it, don't read it. If you don't want to see an article on a subject, adjust your preferences!
Have a nice day.
____
So where's the substantial amount of expansion ports, as mentioned in the caption?
Um, yeah. Most current cell phones available here (Sweden) are equipped with a piece of software called T9 (by Tegic), which does right about that. It's not smart enough to be history-sensitive in the way you describe, but rather works against a fixed (but extensible) dictionary. It works fairly well in practice, and helps you write SMS messages using only 11 or so keys...
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I've been lately going to my local CompUSA to drool over the itty bitty Crusoe-powered VAIO notbook (the one with the built-in camera.)
I'm elated that there's multiple vendors out there planning to ship Crusoe laptops. The only thing keeping me from purchasing the VAIO (besides lack of money) is the proprietary sony memory-stick bullshit that I refuse to support.
Can't wait to play with one of these.
not that it impacts your point any, but the statement "...equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM)..." isn't quite true. Hitachi's SH-3 and SH-4 line has good market share, especially in WinCE (er, whatever it's called today) devices. MIPS chips have some embeded market share, too. but the winner, by virtue of its inclusion in the Palm series devices, are the Motorola 68K series chips. these are relatively low power consuming chips, but are slow (the same arch powered the pre-PPC macs and per-SPARC Suns). but IIRC, all these are smaller than the Crusoe chips i've seen described.
incidently, i really like the StrongARM chips, and would like to see them gain lots of ground. but they're not there yet.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Great googaly moogaly!!! People are already dumping Windows on the beloved Crusoe!
WHY GOD WHY???
Seriously though, it does amaze me the way Casio demos the Fiva running Windows. What a total waste of quality...
Current PDAs are equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM) line of processors, the fastest of which runs at only 233mhz
The old StrongARM processors (talking about 2-3yrs ago) ran easily overclocked at 280MHz, but you cannot compare the clock speed of a StrongARM with the clock speed of a x86 chip. My 8MHz ARM machine easily outstripped a 66MHz x86 all those years ago, and the intelligent elegant ARM architecture still retains that advantage today. The 200MHz RISC chip can easily play full screen video, what more do you need in terms of power from a laptop?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Offhand, I really don't know how big StrongARM processors are physically
144-TQFP if i remember correctly. as you probably know, that's a hell of a lot smaller than a 474-PGA. do PGAs even come in 474 pins? i thought you could only get that many pins in a BGA.
anyhow yeah, the StrongARM is much better suited to Palm-sized applications. what has surprised me however, is how very few devices with MIPS processors have been on Slashdot. i guess MIPS isn't as "cool" as Crusoe, but MIPS already has plenty of market share in the embedded market, and you've be suprised to see how many "Internet Appliances" are built around the MIPS processor (usually with Embedded Linux as well) such as the ATI Set-top Wonder reference design.
- j
Voice input on a PDA would be anoying at best.
Most of the situations I find myself using my Palm in I wouldn't want to be talking to myself. Either I'm trying to be quiet, or Its too noisy to speak in a normal tone. And frankly, I don't want everyone around me to have to hear my appointments and TODOs.
Also, everytime I hear this idea I get the distinct vision of a bunch of business people standing around. One of them says "Ok, So it's agreed. We'll meet at Three O'clock." Then they all whip out thier PDAs and say "New!...Apointment!...Friday!...Three!...Oclock!.. .PM!....Save!" in turn.
If the PDA was smart enough to listen in to thier previous conversation it would already know what time the meeting was. This would be extremly cool. But otherwise Voice-PDAs would be anoying for everybody but the blind. Who would love them.
Why not more advanced hand-writing recognition? It's be less proccessor-intensive and it'd work better with the current note-pad metaphore.
Or Morse Code? You could do an entire user interface with a single button!
-Andy
If/When I ever get around to buying a Palm, I'm seriously going to consider getting FITALY software for it. FITALY -- which was mentioned here once, I believe -- is a keyboard layout designed for one-finger typing. It's laid out based on what letters you'll most commonly need, by analyzing the English language. The most commonly typed six letters are in the center, for example, and much of the time, the next letter you need to type is right next to the one you just typed. Seems like a very viable solution to me. No voice-control to make you sound like lunatic on the subway, no chording to make you feel like a Borg.
Do domain names matter?
I'm with you on this - I want my sub-notebook, but I want it running *nix, I could care less about windoze.
As I understand it, the crusoe 3k series is fully 32bit. It doesn't work well with Win9x because of all the legacy 16 bit code that survives in that line of software. The 5k series has extra hardware to handle the 16bit code, making it more complicated and expensive. Bad news is that all the notebooks are using the 5ks, because they generally ship with win9x (ME in this case, same junk.) These chips should run *nix fine - they just have extra stuff that isn't needed for any true 32 bit OS.
This is why things like the AOL device are Good Things [TM] - if those things take off production on the 3k series should ramp up, and the speeds should improve, and that could conceivably lead to 3k based notebooks with better cost/performance ratios for those of us that don't need 16bit code support. I know, I'm dreaming ;^), but without the 3k based appliances this is impossible - with them it's merely improbable. The 3k may be objectively less expensive in every way, but economies of scale will destroy that advantage if they can't sell them in quantity.
I spent about half an hour a couple days ago looking for notebook vendors that are Linux-friendly - Emperor Linux sells a variety of laptop/notebook sized 'puters, with optimised Linux install (choice of Redhat Slack or Debian IIRC, custom kernel and X install, all hardware set up and working) and they have the Sony/Crusoe model available. Anyone know anyone else doing this?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The pictures of the keyboards for the devices featured in this story show double (at least!) key assignments on most keycaps. Are these the "AZERTY" keyboard layout you refer to? I never heard of this arrangement before, although I once tried the "dvorak" keyboard arrangement.
The most exciting aspect of these devices, for me, is that manufacturers are finally returning to well-laid-out (and properly tinted, except Sony) keyboards! At least, I think they are... It's nice to see they're about the size of someone's hand, but I would have preferred to be able to see where the Ins/Del & Backspace keys were.
Just a writer's two cents' worth....
It had two buttons: one black, one white, that - I swear to god - you had to use to navigate through a complicated set of menus, which it would print out on the printer. Configuring the thing for one use took roughly ten sheets of paper, if you printed on both sides. And if it got unplugged, well, you had to do it all over again.
The next time we wanted barcodes we had an OLE component developed in-house (the office was all Microsquash). As it stood, the one year we used it we had to develop a DOS-based application to get Access to talk to the thing correctly.
--sjd;
this is a sig.
until people understand why they need a different keyboard, they will not want one. that's the main interface, that's your fallback - what are you going to do if you don't understand how to make it do your bidding?
[|]
Before I go on with the actual reply, I just though I would trow in the Transmeta Reality Check. Here it comes :
The Transmeta Reality Check : Any processor can run any other processor's machine code.
Any processor (ie. not just the Crusoe). Case in point: one can run SNES rips of cardrige on any pc no problem. All is that needed is an interpretor or a JIT. Now, JIT's are not that hard to understand : think of them as second generation interpretor that don't suffert from a x10 speed hit. Quickly put, they work as on-the-fly optimizing compilers. The catch is they are even harder to write. So please people, stop expecting that Transmeta will write dozens of them in the upcomming year, it's not happening.
We've all seen the reviews of the P4's lackluster performance, until apps are recompiled... well, Transmeta CPUs, in theory, doesn't suffer from that problem!
It doesn't suffer that problem because it suffers a greater `problem` : JITing is not exactly free (performance-wise). Otherwise you could think of Intel writing a JIT to convert from P3 code to P4 code on the fly and distribute it along with the chip.
Remember, the rationale behind the Crusoe is to save transitors by delagating to a software module the task of breaking-down the ridiculously complex x86 machine code.
And of course less transitors means less power used, less heat produced, less pricey chip, no need for a blow fan, and some silicon-space left available to embeed a pci bus chipset. All very good things for a sub-sub-portable processor.
Yes, one could argue that the extra transistors could be used to boost the speed of the chip, ultimatly compensate for the cost of the JITing and pull ahead of the speed race. I wonder weither some back-lab at Transmeta isn't trying to do just this.
-
This post was compiled with `% gec -O`. email me if you need the sources
How useful are these things? Tiny keyboards, very very small screen sizes, Windows ME.
I guess these are great for showing off, beautiful for long airplane flights since you can put use them to play games such as freecel, chess or minesweeper. You could defenetely use them for email, but how expensive does it get to be wirelessly connected all the time? (I guess you would not be able to connect wirelessly from a plane, since your network card may interfere with the plane's navigation systems. Reading your email on your way to work while using public transportation may work for some, but if you take subway you still can not use the wireless network. Using these to browse the web and read email while you are driving should defenetely be considered a felony and be punished with the full accordance of all the applicable laws! (as if using cell phones while driving is not enough!)
To do anything more usefull than play games and read email you need larger input/output devices. Of course I knew a guy who could use his calculator to browse the web, but the hell with those people.
How expensive are these things?
You can't handle the truth.
You need help getting that hook out of your mou
th?
I don't get it. Cause he is a fish? or he is fishy?
It sounds like a flame, please explain.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Perhaps the posting should have read: "The fiva is especially sharp. Extremely small: could be very difficult to type on."
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Of course it runs Windows. They want to sell to 90% of the population, not 10%. It will be a while before the general population is ready to deal with the Logon prompt of our favorite OS. They want instant on use. There is little concern for security (untill after it's stolen). Other OS'es have a learning curve for most people. Palm for a long time only sold well by word of mouth. Someone showed someone else how easy it is to use without a keyboard. Most people are too afraid to spend a few hundred bucks to see if the UI will work properly without being shown first. Showing a product that you can take on the airplane that isn't too heavy and works just like your desktop is a selling point for most people.
The truth shall set you free!
I've been lately going to my local CompUSA to drool over the itty bitty Crusoe-powered VAIO notbook (the one with the built-in camera.) I'm elated that there's multiple vendors out there planning to ship Crusoe laptops. The only thing keeping me from purchasing the VAIO (besides lack of money) is the proprietary sony memory-stick bullshit that I refuse to support. Can't wait to play with one of these.
QWERTY hqs the qdvqntqge thqt it's instqntly understood
Oh no it doesn't. I spent just one week in Frqnce writing HTML using AZERTY insteqd, and now I'm spending qll dqy long switching A's qnd Q's qnd the likes. You know whqt the worst thing is? AZERTY is qctuqlly better thqn QWERTY, especially for writing HTML. So when is someone going to release keyboqrds specificqlly written for certqin jobs? I wouldn't mind hqving one with q reqlly big < qnd > on it...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I looked at this thing on the weekend, it looks ok if a little flimsy. The screen is pretty small and the gateway guy that I was talking to was unable to answer any of my techical questions. The UI was pretty and obviously there was no sign that the underlying O/S is Linux. Why can't the hardware vendors make what we are all looking for, which is a slick, cheap Linux based device that can run your standard internet applications locally and is extenisible through both Java and as an X terminal on your home network!
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Are the Tranmeta style chips going to show up in portable devices, such as Palm Pilots? Why or Why not?
John S. Rhodes
Industrial Strength Usability -- WebWord.com
How to Download YouTube Videos
take a look at the vaio GT1 - 600mhz crusoe built into a DV camera - 2.42 lbs, 17 hours battery, 6.4" 1024x768 display.
no I dont work the people selling it, and its probably completely impractical, but its got my geek factor going (and it would be a perfect base for a wearable). If only it didnt cost 4000 dollars :(
http://www.dynamism.com/gt1/index.shtml
--
Lauren Child, lauren@laurenchild.net
> We'll meet at Three O'clock." Then they all whip out thier PDAs and say. .PM!....Save!" in turn.
> "New!...Apointment!...Friday!...Three!...Oclock!.
Or even better, imagine a room of students working on projects, muttering into microphones. Then, from nowhere, a naked pledge runs across the room shouting "Shutdown! Quit without Save! Shutdown!"
My fingers are not the fattest I've ever seen (I knew a chap once who had difficulty on a full size keyboard[*]), but the getting a full qwerty keyboard in an area the size of my hand doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Few input devices are as fast or familiar as a full sized keyboard, but when you get below a certain size, other methods must be considered. Graffiti is cool, but I have difficulty forming the characters with consistency (it requires more loopiness than my normal handwriting), and after a while my hand starts to ache. Voice input has potential, and it looks like these devices have the horsepower to do it. I haven't played with chording keyboards, but people who use them tend to rave about them.
[*] he had difficulty with other things, too, like breathing, and walking up the two flights of stairs to our (elevatorless) offices.
This is what the Crusoe was designed for. From Transmeta's webpage, speaking about the Crusoe TM3200, which ranges from 333-400 mhz with 96K of L1 cache:
- "The TM3200 is the ideal engine for a new class of mobile Internet devices weighing just a pound or two. With up to 400 MHz in performance, the TM3200 is designed to allow a full day of web browsing on a single battery charge."
The current crop of Crusoe processors comes in a 474-pin grid array. This is pretty big if you think about it. This is basically a socket A processor. And when you think of how little room you have in a device such as a Palm Pilot, the comparitavely huge size of the Crusoe processor(s) might present a space problem.Current PDAs are equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM) line of processors, the fastest of which runs at only 233mhz. Offhand, I really don't know how big StrongARM processors are physically, but I recall them usually being soldered onto the board and being pretty small, like the size of an old 80487 math co-processor or smaller. In sharp contrast, Crusoes are available from 333mhz-700mhz. Crusoe would definitely provide an infusion of power into the PDA market. PDAs with 400, 500, even 700 mhz processors in them combined with 256MB+ memory have have the potential to be really powerful, but also really expensive.
But I guess we all know that already. Unfortunately, I cannot justify spending $500 on something I probably would never use.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
I suspect that the true power of Transmeta is yet to be unleashed!
We've all seen the reviews of the P4's lackluster performance, until apps are recompiled... well, Transmeta CPUs, in theory, doesn't suffer from that problem!
What would be really powerful from Transmeta is a whole line of different CPUs targeting different markets, but able to run, relatively efficiently, an identical codebase! It's just another level of abstraction, one below ASM this time.
Imagine 4 lines of Transmeta CPUs;
a DSP like CPU handles streaming really well, targeting games or entertainment
an ultra low power ultra efficient device for sub-portables and handhelds
A power-hungry long pipeline high Hz CPU targeting the Intel mainstream
A middling class CPU that is more efficient than the Power Hungry beast, but more powerful than the ultra-low power, for mainstream CPU use
Then imagine the code that, compiled once, would run on all 4 classes of machines! Then code could be written and compiled against, say Java to be silly, and then retranslated and recompiled per architecture to best take advantage of each system. The true, real benefit, however, is the time shifting code independence. Something compiled 3 CPU generations ago will be able to run efficiently and effectively on a modern CPU, because of code morphing, where both Intel and Apple has had issues whenever the userbase needed to be moved over from one architecture to another.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed