Intel's Competitor to the Crusoe Processor

TJ6581 writes "C|Net news has an article up about Intel's new competitor(s) to the Crusoe Processor. Apparently the new chip uses half a watt of power and did not require a major re-design. Also mentions in the article that IBM will be using this processor in the notebook originally designed for Transmeta's processor." Update: 01/30 06:48 PM by H : This is the update to the story I posted last October - Intel has come through.

Comments

Regardless of what you feel about Intel

[Hardwyred]

You know, regardless of how you feel about Intel or Transmeta, this proves that competition is a great thing. When we just had AMD vs Intel, it was all about Mhz. Who would get to 1 gig first and then beyond. Now we have Transmeta and suddenly its not just about fast, but efficient also. This is really what the MS trial should be about. Agree to Disagree that Microsoft is a monopoly, but they really dont have the competition that Intel has in AMD/Transmeta. Good things come to the consumer from competition, and after playing with Windows ME, MS could definetly use a Good Thing.

...and the geek shall inherit the earth...

Re:Not exactly powerful

[Ace905]

"To get below 1 watt, they have to drop the speed of a PIII to just 300 MHz."

Where did you get this information? MHz and Watts have no direct, mathematical link between each other. Who did your math?

My calculation for a standard 300Mhz processor is way over 1 watt, at 14.3 Watts.

P=VI; 4.33A (Socket 5) * 3.3V = 14.289Watts

Re:Not exactly powerful

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you get this information? MHz and Watts have no direct, mathematical link between each other. Who did your math?

It has everything to do with frequency. Where do you think those 4.33 amps come from? Modern processors are made using a process called CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor), which is just a fancy name for two different types of transistors connected together: an N-FET and a P-FET. FET == Field Effect Transistor. The N- and P- refer to whether the transistor turns on or off when the gate voltage is above the threshold.

A P-FET turns off when Vin > Vt and an N-FET turns ON when Vin > Vt. If you connect a voltage to the gates of both an N-FET and P-FET, and connect the FETs together, you get a nice situation where there is very little wasted voltage (prior to CMOS, people used NMOS, which used a pull-up resistor instead of a PFET, which meant that power was always being drained in the resistor).

However, there's a problem. The transistors can't switch from "on" to "off" instantly. There's a tiny bit of time when both transistors are in tho "on" state (roughly corresponding to a short across the source/drain), meaning that current can zoom straight through both transistors to ground, which is bad. This is where you lose power.

Now, you do the math: if a simple NOT gate (which is just two FETs as described above) is switching at something like 1 time per second, you don't lose very much power. But if instead it's switching a million times a second, you lose one million times that previous value. And if it's switching at a billion times a second (one gigahertz), then you're losing a billion times that much power.

You should learn a bit more about what you're talking about before you attempt to lay down the smack.

Intel vs. Transmeta

[vlatko]

Intel is big, and they can pull this marketing thing for a while. What
they did is produced the chip that works fast when the notebook is used as
desktop computer, with power adapter on. As soon as the power adapter is
unplugged, the chip goes to being slow.

Besides, really nice technology about Crusoe is that it can detect when
user is having high demand on its laptop, and speed things up, then switch
to low consumption when the computer is idle (like while you're watching
something on the screen, not doing much). Intel has not developed such
technology, it might, but not this year. What Intel is dumping the market
with slow processors that consume less power, something expected for a
while now, and make it sound like they're onto something big.

Quite an expected low punch. Good marketing and excuse for US PC makers
to offer slower laptops for higher price. It will take a deployment of
Crusoe based products, such as new Sony laptop, to debunk the myth. Will
the Transmeta survive? If they have enough money and one or two faster
chips for this year, I would think in deed.

Plus, Intel plans to produce those chips in a year. A long time, specially after delays.

Re:Intel vs. Transmeta

[Breace]

Besides, really nice technology about Crusoe is that it can detect when
user is having high demand on its laptop, and speed things up, then switch
to low consumption when the computer is idle (like while you're watching
something on the screen, not doing much). Intel has not developed such
technology, it might, but not this year

Bullshit. It's called the HLT instruction and any decent OS executes this instruction when idle. It's been in Intel CPU's for ages and works excellent to conserve power: as long as you run a non-brain-dead OS.

When Transmeta publishes figures that actually show the power consumption when the CPU IS busy, then we'll see how far they actually are ahead of comparable speed Intel CPUs.

Breace.

Re:Intel will kill it

[Omega996]

no, the rolling blackouts should wake people up about lack of government control/intervention over necessary commodities...

Intel vs Transmeta vs AMD

[munition]

I have to wonder if this will be yet another area in which Intel will shoot themselves in the foot.

Look at the Pentium 4 chips. They have flopped from the begining, and, according to a few sources, there are several architecture flaws and set-backs still within the chip.

AMD has obviously capitalized on the giant's fall by releasing lower speeds in MHz that out-perform faster chips. And AMD's 64-bit chips will show the same results. EV6 architecture is better than what Intel is doing.

Maybe it is just time that Intel quits pulling the Microsoft and work on improving their current collection.



MunITioN

Re:Not exactly powerful

[lrichardson]

Have you considered Linux? ;)

Runs real good on those Transmeta chips, too.

More seriously, the chips are good these days, but bloatware sucks back the advances. If you want fast, try running some of the older stuff ... such as WP 5.1 on DOS, on a PIII. Your problems stem from one source - M$. Win2K? Bloat. Lousy memory management, but worse, 50 gazillion background processes sucking back cycles (OK, the number is closer to 50, but the point still stands) MS Office? Bloat. Doesn't even matter which version. M$ Outlook? Bloat^nth, on both PC (and Server, if your using one), and the biggest security hole to come out of Redmond. RTF? WTF! Use text or HTML, but avoid M$ formats. It also kinda sucks that certain M$ progs check files for M$ tags before loading ... and they load significantly faster if the tags are present.

Re:Not exactly powerful

[fmaxwell]

Is it CPU speed or I/O throughput that's killing you? Is the hard drive grinding away, or is the CPU operating on a copy of the file in RAM?

The problem with code bloat has to do with CPU mhz bloat. As the average CPU speed climbs and RAM increases, Microsoft feels free to use every spare cycle. Tell executives that they can choose a laptop that runs for 2 hours at 800mhz or one that runs for 8 hours at 300mhz and you will find a lot of 300mhz laptops and a lot of pressure on Microsoft to make things responsive on a 300mhz machine.

Java bytecodes

[p3d0]

Imagine how fast a JVM could be on a chip with so much JIT support?
--
Patrick Doyle

marketing FUD

[jkorty]

This appears to be entirely a marketing campaign. All Intel did was lower the clock rate until they hit the desired power-consumption level. Hardly rocket science.

Intel colluding with IBM?

[Fesh]

Am I the only one who smells a back-room deal between Intel and IBM? IBM decides to try putting rather innovative low-power chips by an upstart company... Then a while later, they announce that they're not going to use them after all. A while after that, Intel comes out with a low-power chip and IBM decides to use it for the same application that would have been filled by the new company's chip.

I'm very suspicious of this flow of events... Intel hears that IBM is thinking about using a chip by another possible competitor, sends a representative over to do some arm twisting, bribing, etc. etc... "Just wait long enough for us to get our low-power PIII out the door..."

Pheeeew. That's got quite a stench to it.

--Fesh

Re:Intel will kill it

[Muddie]

I think that this idea should be persued with the highest degree of intensity, but on a different level. Low powered notebooks are nice, however, what about low powered servers and desktop units? Shouldn't the rolling blackouts in Calafornia trigger to someone that we need to address the issue of power consumption in all industries and, lets admit here, that the Internet is possibly that giant sucking noise that the worlds' power suppliers hear. We keep trying for bigger and faster, but not more efficent. Forget the buggy 2GHz CPU chip that is on the drawing board. We *don't* need it (yet). It will give microsoft something to require -- that's all. New technology just makes old technology obsolete and less expensive. If you need all that CPU, check into a quad PII or something, which should be cheap enough now.

It's no longer a matter of hardware catching up to software needs but vice versa. We have so many idle CPU cycles (your welcome, SETI) but we're wasting electricty in CPU cycles, and then we waste just as much energy on cooling the heat that those CPU's generate.

I also agree that Intel will screw it up as they usually do. I mean, lets face it -- Every 1st generation Intel CPU release is about as reliable as an x.0 release of RedHat, so just work on making what already exists better and more efficent.

I think the Internet community would thank you for it.

"Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong"

--Dennis Miller

--Larry Reckner
larryr@linux.com

Crusoe was not designed for low power

[MrShiny]

It's not surprising that Intel was able to improve on crusoe power consumption so easily as this is not the original goal of the chip. IIRC the Transmeta story that was posted on /. a while ago told how they originally planned to use code morphing to make a processor with cutting edge performance. It was marketing that told them to focus on the low-power market.

Now they are paying the price for not exploiting all the benefits of the technology they developed. I hope for their sake that they can find more "markets" for code morphing or they will end up just another company crushed by the Intel goliath.

excellent use of fallacy

[whizzird]

The writer of that article was probably correct about the 500MHz intel chip having performance on par with the 600MHz Transmeta chip.
And he was probably correct about the intel chip running at 300MHz consuming less power than the Transmeta chip.
But I have to ask: Why didn't he combine the two?
How well does the intel chip perform in castration mode? And how much power does it consume at 500MHz?
Of course that's a moot point, because you can only run it at full speed on AC power, even if you wanted to on battery power.
I'd suspect that the Transmeta chip would run circles around the intel chip (laughing the whole time) if they were benchmarked on battery power. And what's the use of running 20% longer if it takes you 120% more time to do anything?
I'd rather have five hours of good performance! (And I'd get a spare battery pack.)

Of course it didn't take much of a redesign

[AlgUSF]

Intel has been working on Speed Step for the last year... How hard is it to drop down a clock speed. You could do it with a handfull of NAND gates, the problem is that most notebook users don't want a 300Mhz PIII, when they could have a 500Mhz PIII, if Intel had placed a little bit more in the design phase of the Mobile PIII.

Re:Not exactly powerful

[CmdrPinkTaco]

If Linux were a beer, it would be shipped in open barrels so that anybody could piss in it before delivery.

Nice sig, too bad it goes both ways. Try these analogies:
If Windows was a beer...
it would be sealed shut so that you have no idea what they put in your drink.
On the side of the keg there is a warning saying that 1 in 5 kegs explode when you tap them.
Some of the beers you pour will be flat forcing you to dump out your beer and pour another one.
The beer tastes like shit, it makes you sick and lots of people laugh at you for drinking it, but you keep doing it (oh wait, that was my Budweiser analogy).

Re:Not exactly powerful

[crgrace]

Where did you get this information? MHz and Watts have no direct, mathematical link between each other. Who did your math?

Actually, for CMOS, Power = C(Vdd^2)*f
with Power in Watts, C (Capacitance) in Farads, Vdd in Volts, and f in Hertz.

Basically, this equation says to lower power dissipation, we can lower Vdd (power supply), lower the capacitance, or reduce the clock frequency.

yikes

[Brigadier]

this really hurts transmeta, it's probable time they start expaditing the code morphing feature and not the power consumption. I would love to have a system capable of running multiple codes based on different architecture, but to be realistic whats the point. will we ever escape the evil clutches of intel ?

Does this strike anyone else as funny?

[handorf]

The Register story on this read as "Intel targets Transmeta". Doesn't that kind of strike you as "Intel Targets Joe Blow"?

An Intel spokes-droid said today "Since we've utterly failed to compete with AMD, we've decided to set our sights lower. Transmeta, watch out! We're taking your nonexistant market share!"

Silly Intel, just make some decent chips.

Not exactly powerful

[rgmoore]

While it does have low power consumption, it's not exactly brimming with processor power. To get below 1 watt, they have to drop the speed of a PIII to just 300 MHz. Of course that's still plenty to run office programs or an mp3 player, but it's hardly revolutionary.

Re:Not exactly powerful

[xpccx]

Maybe he got his information from the article. Now there's a novel idea!

From the article:

On average, the new Pentium III consumes about half a watt of power, or less than half the power of Intel's current notebook chips.

...and...

Like other mobile Pentium IIIs, the new chip contains SpeedStep technology, which lets the chip run at a slower rate when operating on battery power. The chip runs at 500MHz when plugged into a wall and at 300MHz on batteries.

...and...

Transmeta countered Intel's assertions, noting that Intel's new 500MHz chip runs at 300MHz when the notebook is unplugged.

"This is a very slow processor at 300MHz when mobile," a Transmeta spokesman said in an e-mail. "That's a big sacrifice to get to lower power levels. Transmeta is about double the megahertz at the same power levels."

Re:Not exactly powerful

[jafac]

Um, I just waited 90 seconds on my PIII 600MHz with 256 meg RAM running Win2k for MS Office to translate a 1 MB document from .rtf. This document was a saved Outlook message. Don't tell me that 300MHz is fast enough. Fucking 600MHz isn't fast enough. When I have to wait these long times just to open a fucking document, even a relatively small file, there's just no excuse. The CPU's too slow, the software too bloated, and file formats too proprietary.

Re:Not exactly powerful

[jafac]

It's too bad that Transmeta's VCs had to spend so many million$ to get Intel off of it's fat lazy ass. Of course, Transmeta will probably be forced out of business, not because Intel's solution is any better, but because it looks better on paper, and is from Intel.

Then once Transmeta is safely in Chapter 11, Intel can stop revving these low power CPUs, and go back to 60-watts-in-a-laptop-set-specs-for-drive-and-displ ay-manufacturers-to-produce-low-power-components. Don't you just LOVE the free market?

Re:Not exactly powerful

[jafac]

That's the thing. The HD is not being hit very hard, nor is the CPU pegged (I cancelled the process in Task Manager, WINWORD.EXE was at 0% most of the time, but if I waited, the process would complete - eventually).

It's as if Microsoft coded the translation app with a lot of WaitAndPunishUserForUsingNonWordDocumentFormat() loops.

The Word window is just sitting there, hourglassing away. Fuckitall.

Re:Not exactly powerful

[jafac]

In my line of work, in my company, Linux is not really a workable alternative. That's not to say that MS Office is THE standard in my company, things ARE changing, but in MY division, with the people I generally communicate with, Win/MS Office is a LONG standing tradition, and shaking them of it has been very difficult. And getting IT support when things are broke with non standard apps is impossible. So, I have to read LOTS of MS documents, and when I save my email, I used to use rtf a lot, and I don't remember it being this slow back when I was using Office97 on NT 4.0, on a P 166.
It's just fucked.

Re:Not exactly powerful

[Sebastopol]

I think the argument is the reverse of what your saying: Crusoe's power consumption isn't revolutionary since a 700 Mhz Crusoe roughly equals the performance of 300 MHz PIII.

This shows the benefits of competition working in a market driven society: Transmeta forced Intel to offer a low-power chip, which they really had no reason to do until now. Of course, Intel's offering will basically demolish Transmeta b/c OEM sol'ns for PIII are off-the-shelf simple, not to mention a barrage of other concerns (reliability, market proven, brand equity...)


---

Re:Not exactly powerful

[Reality Master 101]

To get below 1 watt, they have to drop the speed of a PIII to just 300 MHz.

Well, keep in mind that this is very possibly about the same performance as the Crusoe will end up being in real applications.

--

With Intel's Current Track Record...

[11thangel]

I'll bet its an underclocked P3 or a brand new chip that needs 2 more years of work.

*ahem*

[OlympicSponsor]

Didn't we already hear about this?
--
MailOne

DAMMIT

[OlympicSponsor]

http://slashdot.org/articles/00/10/12/1820241_F.sh tml
--
MailOne

Re:Yeah but...

[Jedi Alec]

Does it really matter how much power the processor uses in notebooks when the screen sucks the battery dry?

Pardon my ignorance, but how about the "moving parts" of a laptop? I can imagine the harddisk taking up quite a bit of power as well, which could become very frustrating as you frantically try to save your hard work before you're out of power...

Copper??

[FortKnox]

Not only will this result in smaller, cooler chips, but these processors will be made with copper, rather than aluminum, wires. Because they conduct electricity better, copper chips will reduce power consumption.

I thought Intel has had horrible trouble making chips with copper? Is this true? If so, what can we expect from these chips? Isn't this why Intel is having so much trouble competing with AMD?

--

Re:Copper??

[jeffsenter]

Actually I don't think Copper is the critical factor. While the highest speed Althons I think the 1.1GHz and 1.2GHz are made with Copper in Dresden only, I believe the rest including the 1GHz and the non-Thunderbird 1GHz are at least sometimes made with Aluminium. Copper is probably most helpful at the extremes of clockspeed and power consumption, but it isn't why the P-III can't get beyond 1GHz without reducing the die size.

Low Power - So Watt?...

[sjbe]

I keep hearing Transmeta (and others) spout off about the low power requirements of their chip. While that is interesting, I think it really misses the point of what is interesting about Transmeta's chips.

What is interesting about their chips is the abstraction layer and the benefits it provides. No longer is it impossible to update chips to fix flaws in them and no longer is it necessary to have a single vendor for whatever chip the software was designed for. The fact that Transmeta's chips happen to draw very little power doing it is really just a nice byproduct. I think Transmeta is doing itself a disservice by harping on this fact.

Granted, low power consumption is an easier concept to communicate but I think it really misses the bigger picture. In the same way that higher level languages made software development easier than coding in assembly, Transmeta is taking the next step in abstraction. Easing software design barriers is what is truly interesting and revolutionary about what they are doing.

BAD reporting, interesting story

[swordgeek]

First of all, kudos to Intel for this. Nice modification to their product.

However, the writing in this story hit a new low, even for C|Net. It seems as though the reporter couldn't justify transcribing the entire press release, so he added a few sentences of his own. Aside from that, it was pure and utter pro-Intel, end of Transmeta, drivel.

C|Net has never had great reporting, but this _stunk_.

Re:Transmeta needn't worry.

[iso]

Also, as Transmeta reduce feature sizes, they should be able to break into the embedded market at some stage over the next few years. I fear for Intels future, in this regard.

why do people keep gunning for Transmeta to go into the embedded market? why do you want antiquated x86-based chips in the embedded market anyhow?

x86 is still kicking because of backwards compatibility for PC applications. the embedded market doesn't need this kind of handicap! there are plenty of good embedded processors, such as PowerPC and MIPS, that are considerably better designed to meet the needs of true embedded applications.

now if you're talking about a Transmeta chip that's not simply x86 compatible, perhaps with more direct access to their "true" instruction set, that's different. but embedded devices shoudn't be cripped by a processor that's better designed for other tasks. use the right processor for the job!

- j

Re:No worries yet...

[Ami Ganguli]

I don't have any inside info. on how portable the code morphing is, but implementing a new instruction set (not x86) or porting code is bound be easier the second time around.

They've got the experience from the first attempt, and that makes a huge difference.

Re:Intel vs Transmeta vs AMD: forgot PowerPC!

[2nd Post!]

How about a nod towards the PowerPC for balancing power and performance?

AMD for now has a huge performance lead, at the sacrifice of power. Intel has a huge marketing and manufacturing lead, with slightly less power and slightly less performance.

Transmeta wipes the floor with power, at the sacrifice of performance.

How bout something in between?
PowerPC, with good power, and good performance?

Geek dating!

Transmeta needn't worry.

[Urban Existentialist]

Although Intel have an impressive grip on the processor market, I am tempted to buy shares at this news. You see, the foolish reactionary types who make buy/sell decisions at the major brokers will doubtless make a kneejerk reaction and announce Transmeta dead. However, I think that the future is still bright for Trandmeta. The market for these types of chips is growing hugely, and Transmeta have a head start. There is no reason why they shouldn't be able to improve what they have above and beyond what Intel have, especially considering that Intels engineering department appears to be run by the marketing department. We have seen the consequences of this with the P4.

Also, as Transmeta reduce feature sizes, they should be able to break into the embedded market at some stage over the next few years. I fear for Intels future, in this regard.

Transmeta have a bright future, despite this news.

You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

Re:Transmeta needn't worry.

[stripes]

why do people keep gunning for Transmeta to go into the embedded market? why do you want antiquated x86-based chips in the embedded market anyhow?

I don't want a x86 in my embedded product, but lots of people who design them do. Either because lots of tools work with x86s, or it is easy to find people who can do x86 code, or x86 drivers exist for devices they want, or because that is what their boss wants.

Transmeta shouldn't argue with those suckers, it should take their money.

So it's true

[heroine]

It's been rumored for a while that Intel was pulling back its efforts in number crunching power and focusing more on low power consumption and portability. It started when they discontinued SMP in the Pentium IV. Now it looks like they really are shifting to embedded systems.

Transmeta's effect

[the_tsi]

Even though this means they're about to get hosed off the face of the planet, Transmeta has had a significant effect on the mobile processor market... While AMD has shaken up the "inexpensive desktop market" enough over the past several years and managed to force Intel to drop their prices and to continue to push the Celeron line, no one really took on their mobile processors. Transmeta, by getting a couple OEM contracts and producing some damn spiffy chips, have gotten enough momentum to make Intel drop their prices, power consumption and the like. Even if Transmeta isn't around in a year, their influence on Intel will be... people won't pay the 4x premium anymore for notebooks that run at 1/4 the speed of their desktop.

-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...

Re:I've always suspected ...

[Pulzar]

You'd think that they already knew that lowering the clock speed lowers the power consuption. I guess they didn't believe the "science mumbo-jumbo" until they built a chip and tried it out.

"Oh, look, the smaller feature size also made the chip smaller! Damn those mathematicians, they were right again!"
----------

Re:No, but THIS is:

[handorf]

So glad to see people justifying the existance of ACs like this. Ahhhh... anonymity. :-)

More info in The Register

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/16463.html

No worries yet...

[Ami Ganguli]

Transmeta should be able to improve on their initial products as well. We're used to this kind of one-upmanship with AMD, I see no reason why Transmeta can't do the same thing.

But aside from that, I doubt that Transmeta's entire business plan is based on low-power. The strength of their technology is flexibility. It would be cool, for example, if they could produce a laptop version of AMD's 64-bit chip, or Itanium for that matter without a major re-design. While Intel needs years to ramp up a new, expensive hardware architecture, Transmeta can copy it in a few months cheaply.

Re:Hard times for Transmeta...

[Crspe]

Sure, I have bought one - using it right now. Works fine - so much fun watching the frame rate increase in geiss visualisation as the morph engine re-optimizes.
As for whether this is the end of Transmeta, I guess it depends what they do with their product line from here - The concept is really great, and should allow transmeta to bring out improved models fairly quickly. The question is ... will they?
I think that is what will define whether Transmeta survives or not.

I've always suspected ...

[legLess]

From the article:

"To cut power consumption, Intel essentially took advantage of certain characteristics it discovered after the chips came out."

Haven't you always suspected they designed things this way?

[Spokesdroid]: "This is our new beta^H^H^H^Hhigh-performance chipset..."

question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes