Slashdot Mirror
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.
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...
www.linux-skunkworks.com
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 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.
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.
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
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
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.
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.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
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.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
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.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
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-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
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...
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!"
----------
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
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.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
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. ... will they?
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
I think that is what will define whether Transmeta survives or not.