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Transmeta Will Help AMD Make Code-Morphing Chips
Mark Imbriaco (and company!) writes: "This story at News.com talks about how AMD is working with Transmeta to ship developers systems using the processor instructions from their upcoming Sledgehammer chip -- apparently Transmeta is working on a version of their code-morphing software that supports this instruction set. In return they seem to be getting a license to make chips using parts of the Sledgehammer design. If it's true, it's a pretty cool step for Transmeta since their other products to date have gotten a mostly lukewarm response over the past couple of months."
Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing. Your Subject: line is prophetic - "Cool for AMD".
The only real barrier I see AMD having in the mobile market is heat. PowerNow (that thing where they underclock/undervolt the CPU during times of low load) should help considerably, but what I'd really like to see is how much of TMTA's "we run super-low-power and super-cool" technology AMD can l33ch.
As I see it, the world doesn't need a laptop emulating Sledgehammer anywhere near as much as it needs a laptop with a cool-running 1.2 GHz Athlon at a fraction of the cost of a PIII.
(Of course, if Sledge lives up to its billing, it'll be faster emulated on a Transmeta chip than Intel's solution anyway, so I could be missing the forest for the trees here. I gotta admit, a cool-running Sledge laptop would also kick mucho blue man ass.)
I can't guess one way or the other... but your prediction does fit nicely with the multiprocessor capabilities of the Hammer line. Could be damn interesting if you're right. (And a great way to sell lots of CPUs per box... if you're a chipmaker, you stop caring if PC makers are selling less boxen when you're regularly selling more than one chip per box.)
I think that Transmeta is showing it code morphing technology off by doing this. In the end they will prolly make more money off of licensing the patents than they will of off the chips considering that the cost of everything keeps dropping.
Definitely better than the, "You make a grown man cry!" theme for Windows95.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
However, I'd like to be corrected if I'm mistaken. :)
Oddly enough, so are the Blue Men.
also by 2ndPersonShooter: Voices Inside My Head - The Unauthorized Autobiography
Yep. Judging from his website though, he is heavily into Macs (and, as the cliche goes, so are many creative/artistic folks). Of course if Apple ever saw the light and put out an x86 MacOS X box w/AMD inside (as is oft rumored, but would probably only happen over Jobs' dead body).... can we say "slam dunk?"
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
If amds chips will perform as well as intels chips do in servers this will very good for consumers, since amds chips cost 30% less than intels do(usually).
Well... this case is a bit different... Usually AMD has created chips that are *compatible* with Intels offerings... This time they aren't. I don't know, but i'm guessing that this time Intel patented their instruction set or otherwise protected it in order to make sure no AMD's arise on that front for many years.
So it's just a matter of which architecture developers follow. That said. I'm betting AMD will turn out the big winner, in light of they're not looking to abandon their platform as Intel is. The Itanium looked really powerful on paper a few years back when Intel was saying it'd debut at 600 or 700 MHz, but now AMD's at 1.2 GHz, the P4 is at 1.4 GHz, et al...And as much as Intel wants it, the market they're going after is actually quite small. Yes, high margin, but still incredibly small compared to the market which brought them their current riches.... And their chip will be the least estabilshed brand. So while AMD can eventually "float" the higher end market, intel's offering basically end up being stuck in a sink or swim predicament...
ANd if that happens... What'll AMD decide to charge for their chips if they've clearly bested intel?
.technomancer
.technomancer
Since when was teh Alpha affordable?? The P4 is about 5% slower than the fastest Alpha, and costs 1/4 as much.
I think my point is, intel was speccing the Merced, it set it's target MHz rating based on it's usual progress (Moore's Law). That was before AMD was deemed a threat. Through the last year or so of head on competition, and with that competition only posed to heat up even more in order to fight for a larger piece of the slowing PC market, the Pentium familly is racing ahead of performance expectations.
Merced/Itanium/IA64 hasn't been subjected to that competition at all. Intel's just been taking their time designing it, but already, the chip is proving difficult to run past 600 or 700 MHz. Thats the same speed that it was expected to arrive at years back, when we were using 233, 266 and 300 MHz Pentium II's.
Yes, more instructions per cycle, but the race between Athlon and Pentium is pushing x86 performance higher than Intel ever expected. So, for all but the most memory intensive operations, the x86 may be able to win out over Itanium just based on clockspeed. The expectations of the Itanium haven't been increased to reflect market conditions.
If that makes sense?
> Anyone care to enlighten me as to what is really
> involved here ?
Sure. What you're talking about is impossible.
You assume that software is inherently fully paralellizable, and that's very far from the truth. A huge amount of work has been done on automatic parallelisation, and the results are not very promising. Automatic parallelisation is difficult to implement, takes a lot of computation, and in the end it only works for certain kinds of programs (programs which are dominated by loops with predictable structure).
Many programs are inherently serial and cannot be parallelised. Automatic parallelisation also tends to rely on static analysis, which is basically impossible to do at the level of binary machine code.
The Stanford Hydra processor does a form of automatic parallelisation of binary code using thread-level data speculation, but there's plenty of evidence that the speedups are not that great without support from the compiler.
If your hardware supported thread-level data speculation (none does at present), then I could believe that code morphing might be able to produce significant speedups using parallelisation, but the code morphing process would be much slower and the speedups would be much less than proportional to the number of processors.
Transmeta HAS shipped... well, since they pay Linus to basically take up a desk and work on the Linux Kernel, Transmeta is somewhat responsible for the shipping of Linux 2.4.0, albiet rather late...
AMD isnt' redesigning Sledgehammer to include Transmeta tech. They're using Cruoses as development simulators to get developers to port their code to the Sledgehammer architecture *before* the silicon hits the shelves. Today, this is NOTHING MORE than a way for AMD to ship fast enough simulators so that ppl can start coding for the Sledgehammer.
In the long term however - it'll allow transmeta to develop Sledgehammer compatible chips - but that's a long way off. (BTW, Is it only me that thinks that they targeted their chips at the mobile market as an afterthought "Oops guys, we can't get this to run fast enough. What to do?" "Hmm.. we'll call it a mobile chip.")
-henrik
*laugh*
Now THAT'S the ad campaign AMD needs to get "mindshare". It would beat Intel's Blue Men, and DEFINITELY the guys in the shiny clean suits with the pseudo-rock playing in the background.
The 'Intel Inside' melodic bong-bong-bong-bong! is kinda catchy, though.
--Just Another Pimp A$$ Perl Hacker
El riesgo vive siempre!
I wonder if it isn't a move by AMD to get the processor into a mobile platform ASAP.
Assuming that the Sledgehammer code can run (decently) on existing Transmeta chips, then they may beat Intel to market on the 'next generation 64-bit x86 successor', in a laptop version. This leaves AMD to concentrate on a desktop/server processor without worrying about mobile concerns (heat/power/size).
It would also give transmeta a shot in the arm since they would be in the position of offering something that no one else had (a laptop ready version of Sledgehammer).
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Cheers.
Unfortunately it seems like businesses treat Intel and AMD like Microsoft and Open Source. Will this help change anything?
"Why don't use Open Source/AMD instead of Microsoft/Intel?"
"Well, we have been doing pretty good with Microsoft/Intel and and we don't see a reason to change."
"Can't you see that Open Source/AMD is better, fast, and cheaper?"
"Yeah, but change is bad..."
Isn't Transmeta the one who needs help from AMD? I guess Transmeta has eliminated any notion of profit from its business plan.
Could this be the same modification I predicted at the time details of "Code Morphing" 1st leaked out? Basically my hunch was that Transmeta could tie a bunch of crusos together with it's code morphing so that they appear to the OS as a single CPU of immense power.
This means that you could have a machine that Linux or Win2K recognizes as simply 2 way SMP ( nearly liner scaling at that level ) but in reality it's 16 CPUs in gangs of 8. Even with the overhead from code morphing being high ( and I have no evidence that it is ) this could still perform like a 12 CPU dream machine.
Then again I may be totally wrong and this "prediction" has no connection with reality whatsoever.
Anyone care to enlighten me as to what is really involved here ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
What, never heard of the Compaq Alpha?
Check some of the examples at Polywell. You can find more with some simple searches, like Yahoo
Relevent story on The Register.
Oddly enough, Polywell indicates they are _shipping_ Athlon DDR systems.
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A lot of hardware vendors write simulators for their hardware before the hardware is available. This lets them get started on the system software (OS and compilers) while the hardware is being developed and debugged.
.. so they're using Transmeta technology to ship something even better - a chip that behaves like the real thing. A Transmeta chip can simulate a 64 bit Sledgehammer, probably much faster than the software simulator.
It sounds like AMD's software simulator for the 64 bit Sledgehammer was too slow to use
Imagine what a developer gets on their desk - a hardware box that looks and feels like a 64 bit Sledgehammer, except the BIOS initializes the CPU a little differently and it's a bit slower than the real thing, which doesn't exist yet. Sure beats the hell out of simulating everything, including the I/O, which is the other alternative.
Is it just me, or is this story in response to a comment by someone in another story who claimed his story was rejected by slashdot.
Slashdot needs to get it's act together, and the moderators will probably troll me for insulting them, but it's true
AMD's design, as reported so far, unlike Intel's design, does NOT use 32 bit emulation in the sense that your post implies.
From the latest I've seen, AMD's chip runs 32 bit code natively, on a pair of 32 bit cores that are capable of being operated together in 64 bit mode. There is no redesign of the emulation facilities because the Sledgehammer doesn't use it. That will be one prime advantage of the Hammer series of chips over Intel's 64 bit chips.
AMD & Transmeta's goal is to get a good, fast Sledgehammer emulator into the market well in advance of the actual Sledgehammer chip.
Please read the articles more carefully before posting.
Actually, transmeta wasn't in direct competition with the two; thier chips are made with a different purpose in mind.
I would say that's unlikely. An Alpha will outperform a higher clockspeed x86 chip. It's more than just more instructions per cycle. 64 bit instructions help just about everything. I haven't looked at the spec for the instruction set, but I'm guessing that Intel has dumped a lot of the crap that the x86 instruction set had. There are instructions for BCDs in the x86 instruction set. Does anyone use them these days? Not likely. Even if they were used they would probably be slower since Intel's strategy lately has been to optimize the simpler instructions in imitation of the RISC architecture. Optimized code uses a bunch of little instructions rather than one slower equivalent instruction. However, the other instructions are just dead weight. Getting rid of the crap leaves more chip real estate for optimizing the simpler, more general purpose instructions.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
"Yeah, but change is bad..."
Oh please. I've used AMD in my home system since the early K6's, but I still won't put them in a server. Why?
- No ECC functionality - Kind of useful in a server.
- No MicroATX boards with video and a good 100BaseT chip - Pretty much required for a 1U server.
- No multi-processor chipsets - Yeah, yeah, it's "just over the horizon." That doesn't help me right now.
This is an improvement over the K6/K6-2 chipsets, which could not be set to power on when plugged in. You power cycled the box and it stayed off. That really sucked.I have no problem with AMD CPUs, but nobody seems interested in targetting the server market with them.
This will lend some serious legitimacy to the Sledgehammer. Plus, it sounds like there will be clones, too! Love it.
This might just be the shot in the arm that Transmeta needs to get it back to where it belongs.
Unfortunately, as all know, the recent failure of Transmeta to really secure a company willing to openly use its technology (with the one exception of Sony) has hurt it in the public eye. I'm willing to bet that, at least on some level, irrepreable damage was done a week after launch when compaq pulled out, and IBM chose to rethink their position.
However, a new major backer, especially another semi-established chip company, might just be the major backer that T needs to go from in the dark chip company to what it really should be, a publically watch company with a great force in the future.
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
The Sledgehammer simulator is crucial to AMD's plans to break into the lucrative server market. With a software simulation of the chip, developers can tweak their programs so they can release products when Sledgehammer emerges commercially in the first half of 2002. AMD will also come out with a version for desktop computers called ClawHammer, the company has said.
If amds chips will perform as well as intels chips do in servers this will very good for consumers, since amds chips cost 30% less than intels do(usually). This will allow smaller companies to have much faster servers at a better price. Seems like a win-win situation, well except for intel(which will still get the high-end market share,for now anyway)
Sledgehammer is one of AMD's most ambitious projects to date. The chip will process data in 64-bit chunks, rather than in 32 bits like AMD's Athlon processor. Sledgehammer also will allow computers to manage more memory than current PCs and servers. The chip will compete against the long-awaited Itanium processor from Intel.
Finally a 64 bit processor, and with amd the server chips might be affordable.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
I remember how long everyone waited for Tansmeta to announce what they were doing, and when they finally did, as cool as it seemed, the enthusiasm just died. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to get my own Crusoe portable, but I'm not as enthused about it as I was when they first announced it.
Let's just hope that more hype like this about Transmeta doesn't totally finish them off.
Ok, Deja Vu.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
You need to read more carefully... The person quoted in the article (who you also quoted) was refering to the software-based emulator that AMD developers had to resort to before AMD signed this deal with Transmeta. They're betting that they can get better performance out of a Transmeta processor running "code-morphed" Sledgehammer instructions than their current software-only emulator. So basically, what AMD gets out of this deal is a more usable emulator to make their developers' jobs easier, and in exchange, Transmeta gets technology that will improve their future products. All in all, it looks like a pretty sweet deal for Transmeta.
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Fanatic (n): a person who won't change his mind and can't change the subject.
It would have been cool to have three major competitors for a change, but I guess Transmeta was never up to that.
It only makes sense for these two underdogs to join together to take on Intel, but they've got a lot of catching up to do in the public eye before they become a serious threat.
Sledgehammer, does that mean a later release date for the chip? How
does that affect the likelihood of uptake for the new chip?
I don't know what to make about this story. My gut feeling is that
AMD is casting about in its 64-bit strategy after not getting the
support it had been counting on from Microsoft.
Reading your post, I nodding to myself in agreement. Until I got to the actual time quote.
Considering I can restore my old NCR 486-66 from a parallel port 2x CDROM drive (image is 685M, gzipped) plus install Windows 95 manually in a little under two hours, I'd say it came down to either operator incompetance or a CDROM drive banging against bad media.
.sig: Now legally binding!
but let's see if my mind works well:
- transmeta releases its chip. Sony, hitachi and others think "interesting! just build up something". IBM awaits.
- IBM refuses to implement the TM in its laptops, adducting (and being right about) performance problems. In the underground, develop his code morphing engine.
- Transmeta, without the IBM support, now search someone to catch in the idea, just not to fight alone between giants.
Adding code morphing capability to AMD Processor should reduce the overheat who often afflicts the AMD processors. So everyone (TM and AMD) have something to learn in this partnership.
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The latter "bit" is no small matter, and the potential of having a bunch of CPUs on one chip doesn't make these issues go away.
These issues are essentially why AMD (and Cyrix and others) haven't had SMP systems; it's costly to construct the logic necessary to let multiple CPUs play on the same set of memory buses without trampling on one another, and the tradition of AMD/Cyrix being "low end" was just not compatible with spending the money to build that.
I'm still skeptical that there will be any massive movement by AMD towards SMP. And the introduction of some "cool code morphing" from Transmeta doesn't do anything to simplify or otherwise resolve this.
I would think that there could be some pretty slick results from an AMD/Transmeta technology transfer; it's just that SMP doesn't seem high on the list of "obvious cool things."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Ok, let's say Transmeta and AMD go all out on this partnership and exploit their respective strengths...
The last possibility is really interesting. I bet AMD and Transmeta have thought of this too.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
How many chips has Transmeta actually sold? How many slashdot threads have discussed transmeta chips? Which number is greater?
This is an example that should be followed more widely. The strength of each company is being utilized here, and the end result is better for everyone: AMD, Transmeta, and the consumer.
This is also an example of why most of the people reading this site despise Microsoft so much. When was the last time MS worked together with another company to make a better product? It's so much easier for them to simply buy the competitor, or crush them with their own product, haphazardly cooked up with a flurry of resources. MS is unfortunately in the position where they can ignore QA and true innovation due to their almost gauranteed market share for any product they introduce.
May more companies follow the lead of AMD and Transmeta! Oh, and Happy New Year!!
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
We're talking about a modest number of development systems here, not a production product.
"I wanna be your.... Sledgehammer!"
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Now AMD is taking market share away from Intel, their chips are better and Intel is the one who can't manufacture anything in quantity to save their lives. To top it off, the AMD design is better.
Who does Transmeta turn to in that situation. It isn't hard to see that Intel isn't going to want to help them politically, but since AMD is a better choice anyway they go with the underdog.
Sweeeet.
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Not only is it cool for Transmeta, but it is also pretty damn cool for AMD. If they were to write the morph code properly, quick software development for their new chip would definately be possible. Plus, it would be a pretty good notch in Transmeta's bedpost if they could properly pull this off.
;-)
Slightly off topic, I wonder if Sony would consider creating low cost Playstation2 development systems with Transmeta morphing software...
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
So... there's no way of telling how well your code is actually performing? Nice step forwards with regards to translatable code and stuff, but you wouldn't exactly develop a 3d engine on a 386 these days...
Also, what are the implications for the Transmeta chip? If interoperability is one of the USPs, then a 15-year old performance isn't good. However, the article also mentions:
only one of which i have yet taken naked pictures of.
i bet i get negative Karma for that here, but it speaks well of the coming year for me.
The story actually doesn't say that Transmeta will help AMD make code-morphing chips. The description here is all wrong. The article actaully says that Transmeta has licensed the rights to AMD's upcoming new technology, Sledgehammer, to be included in a line of their chips. Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually reads the articles here.
"Being alive is a crock of shit." --Kilgore Trout
Lukewarm response? Well, I can't say I blame the market... A laptop that runs 11 hours... but at 1/10 the speed? =p
Well, I have to admit I love Transmeta for how they are stirring things up in the CPU market. At the same time, having been closely affected by their recent recall, I shudder at the thought of their name being put right next to "code-morphing chips"...
Me:I just wanted to compile the 2.4 kernel...
It:Here you go - (hands me win32)
Yes, I'm just kidding, but... hey, the possibilities are endless...
From the article: AMD's Sledgehammer "simulator is quite slow. It runs at speeds like PCs 15 years ago," said a source with a software company, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
So... there's no way of telling how well your code is actually performing? Nice step forwards with regards to translatable code and stuff, but you wouldn't exactly develop a 3d engine on a 386 these days...
Actually, this is the performance of the systems they sent out about a year ago. Their hopes are that the Transmeta based systems will be faster and make up for that 'speed' problem.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....