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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
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.
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)
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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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.:)
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...