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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.)
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
Since when was teh Alpha affordable?? The P4 is about 5% slower than the fastest Alpha, and costs 1/4 as much.
> 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.
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
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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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 feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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.
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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
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:
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.
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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.....