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AMD Allies with Transmeta
respect sent us an article about AMD aligning with Transmeta, which isn't that surprising since everybody who is not Intel should be busying aligning with anyone who is also not Intel.
My favorite quote "The industry has been gradually moving toward a 64-bit architecture [From 32 Bits], which multiplies the amount of data the processor can access by four". Rock on CNN!
First of all, AMD isn't making a fuss about this. Slashdot is making a fuss. AMD just made an announcement, and anyone who follows knows that they make several such announcements a week.
But the reason that teaming up with Transmeta is appealing is that Transmeta can offer them a processor that acts like a Sledgehammer well before they have silicon for the part. Software simulation of modern microprocessors is ridiculously slow, particularly when you are upping the word length from 32 to 64. However, writing a code-morphing layer on top of Transmeta's chips means that they can have a near-native speed chip before the design is even finished.
Being able to run tests at near-native speed, pre-silicon means that AMD can overlap software development with the hardware development, which could buy them months of development time. In this business, time to market is of overriding importance. And a shorter time to market is what AMD wants out of this alliance with Transmeta.
--Lenny
Well SlashDot is pretty inconsistent (for example the far greater the normal number of Patent defenders for TiVo -- I love the product, but I still don't like the patent system).
However this may not be all that inconsistent. The AOL/TW merger was arguably the biggest dial-up ISP merging with a very large media conglomerate. Microsoft and anyone is the biggest software company plus, well, a little bug :-) In this case it is the second biggest x86 CPU seller (AMD has what, 30% of the market?) plus one of the smallest (I would guess less then 1%).
Plus this isn't even a merger, it is just "we will license an instruction set and bus". Nobody bitched when the PCI bus was wildly adopted (nobody I noticed at least), but slashdot wasn't around then. Nobody seemed to bitch when the clones adopted MMX either...
Now I think x86-64 is a huge kludge. Maybe not as bad as the iTanic, but pretty grimly crufty. I would much rather see a migration to the Alpha, or SPARC, but that doesn't seem likely. Transmets's adoption makes it more likely that x86-64 will take off, which isn't something I'm thrilled by. Unless the only other choice is really the IA64.
Who really wants an instruction prefix to switch 64bitness on and off and select a register bank for each instruction? Well not a register bank, one for the source and another for the dest. Feh.
No, it's new XML addressing. The four new 4Gig banks are addressed by putting the ascii strings "zero", "one", "two", and "thre" into the top 4 bytes. MicroSoft and Intel engineers patented the new spelling of 3 that allows them to save 8 bits per address!
The *real* problem is that there is only ONE independant implementation of Intel's IA32 architecture, and it's Transmeta's.
Yes, believe it or not, AMD is a licencee of Intel technology, and therefore the Athlon is somewhat dependant on Intel's goodwill.* Fortunately for them, Intel has a large number of contracts (government and otherwise) which require multiple sources for their tech.
Now, if Intel decides to be a bad boy and pulls AMD's x86 licence, Transmeta's IP portfolio starts to become very helpful. Namely, AMD will be able to stay in business.
*Source: AMD quartery report:
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
On May 4, 2001, we, along with Intel Corporation, announced the renewal of the
patent cross-license agreement between the companies.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
...at El Reg
Well, well, well; three holes in the ground...
I recall an older Slashdot article that mentioned that Transmeta was working on adding AMD's 64-bit instructions to their code morphing, and that they'd be helping AMD test software, as AMD's processor simulator was very slow.
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The reason I rely on /. for news more than CNN is because on Slashdot, when a poster fucks up, they get flamed for it, and the truth comes out. Every reader sees what the mistake was, and what the correction is.
To the great unwashed, the talking heads on CNN also "appear" to know what they're talking about, and in the vast majority of cases (we know damn well) they don't. When CNN's talking heads fuck up, the great unwashed never finds out what the truth was.
I'll take /. over CNN any day.
...Hypertransport is going to be an awesome technology when it hits the mainstream. And with little or no royalties, it should hit the mainstream pretty fast.
Whats interesting here is perhaps the biggest issue surrounding the computer: I/O. Intel, Sun, HP, Compaq, plus few dozen others are pushing Infiniband. However, AMD is pushing HyperTransport. Hypertrans seems like more of a local I/O solution (replacement for PCI-X), while Infiniband is more of a remote I/O replacement (or competator) to Ethernet. What are other peoples read on this issue?
Someone you trust is one of us.
"We see this is as a strategic deal, not a revenue deal," Weber said.
Translation: "We ain't getting much cash for this here deal."
But, believe it or not, I think that's the right move in this case. AMD realizes that revenue generating partnerships at this stage of the game isn't what's important -- AMD is not going to win by taking a few extra dollars here and there. AMD is going to win by taking market share and growing its brand.
I do fear, however, that we're going to see another Cyrix 486 problem (i.e. the rumors of "slightly different x86 architecture, not quite compatible with Intel/Windows, not gonna buy it.")
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From an analyst by way of CBS Market Watch
Brian Alger, an analyst at Pacific Growth Equities, said the licensing deals will attract attention, but may not amount to much. "People are going to see Transmeta and AMD working together against Intel (INTC: news, msgs, alerts) ," he said. "That's a nice perception, but it's not real. They're not going in side-by-side with their sales force saying 'Don't buy Intel, buy one of our two."'
This makes it sound like Slashdot "took the bait". The market opens in 10 minutes. Let's see how many traders react the same way.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I don't know about you, but from what I've seen in every other instance, Slashdot vehemently opposes industry consolidation and mergers (witness AOL/TW and MS). I guess less competition is only bad when you don't like the company.
Oh well, I guess the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That one always works. Just look how it's helped the U.S. Gov't in the last half a century.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Dave
Whilst I admit most of my industry experiance is in the software field as a dedicated IT professional I've been following the processor market for a while now, and I've got to wonder why on Earth AMD would pull this move.
Because despite the glowing hype to typical of public stories in the field, Transmeta are hardly in a strong market position. The huge hype that got them rolling turned out to be mostly marketing wind. Sure they had a great product, but it wasn't the industry-changing breakthrough they'd been attempting to make it look like, and so they've done no better than any other start up producing components for low-power devices.
Okay, not strictly true. They've done somewhat worse actually.
On the other hand AMD is going from strength to strength in a way that would have amazed insiders a few years ago. They've got a lot of well-deserved respect now, and people are really starting to take them seriously on their own rights, rather than as Intel's annoying little competitor.
But making a fuss over "strategic deals" with underperforming overhyped companies is not the way to go. They should concentrate more on their core strengths and carry on producing excellent processors.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
... who was wrong, but at the moment CNN spells it right:
The industry has been gradually moving toward a 64-bit architecture, which multiplies the amount of data the processor can access by four billion
Now is it CNN was nearly 100% wrong or somebody just need to actually read an article? We will never know.
I just wanted to thank you for letting us all know. I'm immediately liquidating all of my stock and mutual fund holdings related to either of those firms.
Oh, and thanks for also giving us such insightful explanations of why you have chosen to boycott AMD and Transmeta. It's that kind of technical commentary and expertise that makes Slashdot worthwhile.
I disagree with the statement that the non-intels of the world need to band together for protection, AMD is, in my opinion, every bit as good if not better then our precious pentium cranking friends.
I agree that AMD has an excellent product. However, the ashbin of history is filled to the brim with products that had superior technology at the time, but were defeated by a competitor with better marketing (take Betamax, OS/2, and CP/M for instance).
Against Intel's market share and marketing engine (such as the Intel Inside campaign), AMD is doing the prudent thing by forging strategic alliances, rather than waiting for the computing public to recognize them as a superior provider.
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