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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."
Oddly enough, so are the Blue Men.
also by 2ndPersonShooter: Voices Inside My Head - The Unauthorized Autobiography
> 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..."
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
And Transmeta got it. The AMD deal has allowed Transmeta to produce the only things they've been competitively successful at shipping: Press Releases and Slashdot articles.
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
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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.
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.
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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