Slashdot Mirror
Possible Crusoe and Recall?
vadim writes "Crusoe may have a bug as reported on yahoo."
Not much there except that NEC is considering a recall because of a "Chip Failure-Paper" (huh?). It doesn't say what the problem is, but it mentions that Sony has also started looking into it.
It's not a "failure-paper". It's just Yahoo's ubercrappy headline system cutting off the byline.
Try reading it like this:
"NEC mulls PC recall, citing chip failure - paper reports."
... and all I wanted for xmas was a magic 8 ball, but i got this lousy
Think of this like golf, a higher number is not your friend. :-)
Wednesday November 29, 4:50 pm Eastern Time
Slashdot Hive-mind rejects legitimate satire
SLASHDOT LAND, Nov 29(Heuters) Moderators on the popular internet news site Slashdot, owned by VALinux and heavily invested in all things Linux, were shocked by an earlier Heuters Wire Release implying that something Linus Torvalds did was anything other than "divine perfection", as one slashdot reader commented.
Various heads of nations and multinational corporations found news of Slashdot Drones turning insane with rage at the slightest hint of anti-Linus humor somewhat un-newsworthy.
Heuters stock plunged 5.062 points in after-hours trading, losing nearly 20% of its value and becoming nearly worthless.
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
Consider a few things - Transmeta's Crusoe chip is a new product, rushed to market in an amazingly small time frame. The engineering staff of rival chipmakers, eg Intel and AMD, must dwarf Transmeta's talent pool. But then again, size isn't everything. Remember IBM's blunders in the CPU market? Like those space heaters they used to make - Also referred to as the IBM manufactured Cyrix 5x86 and 6x86 processors? Ooh - Oooh, my favorite, the IBM "Blue Lightning" chip they had out during the 486 days - That little 386 processor they had running a 486 instruction set, that got so hot they failed 10% of the time WITH the CPU fan and heatsink.
;P
Intel, AMD and Motorola have been making microprocessors for a very, very long time... Why anyone should be surprised that a Johnny-come-lately has skinned their knee the first time down the block is beyond me.
One other thing - One of the first things people look at when choosing a laptop, at least the die-hard geeks, is the relative power the unit has compared to their desktop. It's not uncommon to purchase laptops with 128+ megs of RAM, P3600 or faster processors, DVD players, 15" displays that are sharp as a CRT, 8 gig hard drives or larger - Point being, MOST people are off the AC juice just a few minutes at a time; they are writing notes in an airport lobby. Assuming most laptops can manage two hours battery time, do we really need that much more? All you NEED to do word processing and check email is a 486, if we put an 18 micron 486 in a laptop with today's technology, you'd get what, five hours?
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
I am a lawyer myself, and I can tell you that the "-paper" bit is shorthand meaning that the information is not original and is LIKELY to contain bad information© worth
A more likely scenario is that it's a symptom of our economy's drive to keep making things faster and cheaper. Products get rushed out the door without enough time for a truly thorough QA process. Little things that the design engineers may miss, or discard as "nah, that'll hold fine!", can very easily come back and bite you in the ass later.
I do think your statement is right in a sense. We see more recalls, and a public recall is often preferable to the cost and bad pr of a lawsuit. At the same time, I think there's a lot more really shoddy products out there than ever before. The statement "They don't make em like they used to" has a lot of truth in it.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Even if this is a real problem, a "recall" might amount to nothing more than it does with most automotive problems. When you hear that Toyota is realliing 1.5 million cars, it doesn't mean that they have to be replaced, more likely that one has to bring the car into a dealer where some small part will be adjusted in five minutes.
:-)
Virtually all of the Crusoe functionality seems to be driven by software in flash rom (IIRC), so almost any problem should be fixable by simply flashing or replacing the rom chip.
If this were an old Intel CPU (FDIV bug, etc.) then you *would* be looking at replacing hardware.
Sounds like it might be a good time to pick up some TMTA
G.
The "-paper" bit in the headline is Reuters shorthand, meaning that the story is based on a newspaper article.
---
Felix qui potest rerum cognoscere causas
No conspiracy theories here. But isn't it funny how negative things pop-up at conveniant times? Whether it be drunk driving shortly before an election or a bug when a company goes IPO. ;-)
If your recall Transmeta's initial product anouncement for the Crusoe, you'll remember that the ROM where the code-morphing software resides is flashable. If the "bug" is in the software, problem solved (don't you just love software upgradeable CPUs?). If it's in the hardware, things get a little trickier. For some very specific hardware errors (like the FDIV bug in the original pentium), this shouldn't be too difficult, as they impact one assembly instruction fed a small set of error-inducing data. If the error is more broad, say that there is a major flaw in one or more of the VLIW core's internal instructions, new hardware may be necessary.
But with a chip as simple as the Crusoe, it would be awfully embarrassing to screw up the bare metal that much.
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Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Awaiting the Narn Bat Squad to mod me down.
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Compare that to the lightning quick reflexes of ppl that get First Posts here at /. You snooze, you lose. So cheer up all you FP'ers out there. There is a future for you in the Stock Market.:)
their shirt on is a winner, and will in the long run render CISC
procesors obsolete. But I doubt that Transmeta in it's current form
will reap the benefits. Look at what has gone wrong for them:
700MHz machine gave performance that is probably in the range
450MHz-500Mhz (but independent, comprehencsive benchmarks are not to
be had). By all accounts this has been very disappointing to
Tramsmeta's engineers.
in Intel's and AMD's flagship offerings. Transmeta have not shown off
anything new in this time, so their already poor performance is
falling behind.
year, which, while settled looks to be settled in a quite expensive
way for them.
notebooks.
Most likely outcome: they get bought out by a competitor (Intel?
IBM? perhaps even AMD or Sony?), at a favourable or not so favourable
price. To survive on their own they will need to do something
surprising.
The original, short article on the Yomiuri Times seems to be here, although it's in Japanese.
The extra info that wasn't reported on the Yahoo! reads:
"One of the problems reported was that due to irregularities in the chip, basic software programs (eg, OS) could not be reinstalled"
Laf. That *could* be a slight problem if you plan on running Windoze...
Hmmmm, my informant at Reuters claims they got it from slashdot.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }