Transmeta Goes Embedded

quinticent writes: "An article at CNet talks about Transmeta's entrance into the embedded market. CEO Mark Allen is quoted as saying, "By this time next year, it could equal the notebook market." Wow, when can I get my hands on a cheap embedded Transmeta system to play around with?"

Comments

embedded is SWEET

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

I've been playing around creating embedded ethernet devices... temperature sensors, stuff to control my homebrew beer rig..

check out the TINI stuff at
Dallas Semiconductor

$50-60 will get you a board you can play around with and put on you home ethernet lan..

Re:embedded is SWEET

[sid_vicious]

I dug around on the Dallas website.. here's the press release for the TINI board, it sounds pretty interesting... is that the one you're using?

I'll have to mark it down on my list of potential fun toys to play with.

Dreams coming true?

[richie2000]

The current high-end intel-powered laptops are just silly - who needs a 1.2GHz Mobile Pentium III in a laptop anyway? Is really Powerpoint XP that bloated? I don't think so. I've just sold off my old Toshiba PII@266 laptop but when I try to find a cheap, light-weight system with a decent screen, Bluetooth, 802b.11, Ethernet and modem built in I come up empty-handed. The models with the bells and whistles are also oversized with CPU so the price goes up and battery life goes down.

Transmeta may provide the solution to this equation.

Is this because..

[Anonymous Coward]

They have pretty much failed to capture any significant chunk of the notebook market?

Even in the server arena those new low power 0.13u pentium III tualatin's compete very nicely in terms of performance and power consumption.

So has the hype finally been laid to rest?

They have no choice, Intel has awakened.

[Shivetya]

Eventually if you poke enough times Chipzilla will wake, and thats exactly what has happened. Both AMD and Transmeta have to look at other markets to sustain their profits. AMD has flash memory, and Transmeta is now realizing it needs to enter a market other than the laptop market. I would not be surprised to see Transmeta leave the notebook market completely within a few years.

Simply put, their advantage over Intel in the notebook market is nearly gone, Intel simply did what they constantly do, get off their butts and release the products they should have already had out there, and at prices where they should have been.

If anything, Transmeta's best contribution to the notebook market was in forcing Intel to release superior products are reasonable prices.

Embedded?

[zCyl]

I realize transmeta is a poster child company for the Slashdot community, but they really haven't made a notable contribution to the industry since their creation. I can't help but consider this another pie-in-the-sky agenda for them to attempt, because I can't come up with any reason for the embedded market to inflate that significantly that quickly. Yes, technologically we CAN embed technology in a lot of items, but what benefit do the consumers gain from this that makes it worth their money?

When it comes down to it, especially in a recession, average consumers aren't going to buy something that doesn't make their lives better.

Re:Embedded?

[shibut]

The issue here is at what price. If it was a 5 cent overhead I think you would agree that most people would buy LAN-ready appliances. Not to mention blue-tooth ready cell phones. The problem is that, for example, the blue tooth chip set is way over $5 even which by the time it gets to the consumer means increasing the cost of their cellphone by 50-100%. This ruins the attractiveness.

Similarly, with a Transmeta processor, if you could for example put multiple sensors in your house that would wirelessly transmit humidity and temp readings to a central unit that would adjust the thermostat for, say $50, I think many people would do this. In the future these sensors could be embedded in the AC vents, for example, PROVIDED they are very cheap (not sure what an acceptable price is but I'm assuming $1 should do it).

I think the issue here is that transmeta will not enable a $1-$5 solution so their "penetration" into the embedded market depends on the existence of complementary simpler chipsets (e.g., in the temp case transmeta could be embedded in the central unit).

Re:Embedded?

[bluebomber]

...because I can't come up with any reason for the embedded market to inflate that significantly that quickly

Uhhh... you don't *work* in the embedded market, do you? I write embedded software. The market is already huge. Don't think about where you *might* want to put microprocessors, think about where they already are: phones (cell/cordless), tvs, set-top boxes, microwave ovens, vcrs/dvds, stereo equipment, ... the list goes on and on. Motorola, TI, and Intel are all big players in this market (among many others). As for transmeta being a player? The embeded market moves slower than that...

Re:Embedded?

[tmark]

Similarly, with a Transmeta processor, if you could for example put multiple sensors in your house that would wirelessly transmit humidity and
temp readings to a central unit that would adjust the thermostat for,

So why would such simple-minded code need the code-morphing technology that defines Transmeta ? As far as I can tell, code-morphing only makes sense in higher-end computing devices; application in the embedded market where device requirements are far simpler seems to nullify any advantage Transmeta might have. In fact, the overhead this technology almost certainly imposes, along with the overheads associated with the bevy of patents surround Transmeta's (here superfluous) technologies would probably place such chips at a marked disadvantage.

Re:Embedded?

[sql*kitten]

I can't come up with any reason for the embedded market to inflate that significantly that quickly.

Plus, a typical embedded CPU is a Z80, a 6502 or a 68000 or StrongARM at most. There's absolutely no need for a PC-class processor for embedded tasks.

But cost of the CPU isn't the only reason. The Z80 (for example) is very well understood, it and the software running on it can be made very reliable. Applications for the Z80 can be written with minimal memory, because of its 8-bit simplicity, using a 32-bit processor would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The embedded software community are quite conservative, and will good reason, consumer electronics (other than PCs) just can't crash without serious economic consequences. If you did need a 32-bit processor, it's likely to be a SPARC or an i386 (or the aformentioned 68000) for the reason that they're cheap, reliable and well-understood.

The embedded market is already large, but it is dominated by a few entrenched players who compete aggressively with each other. Good luck to Transmeta, but I don't rate their chances.

Re:Embedded?

[iso]

I can't come up with any reason for the embedded market to inflate that significantly that quickly.

This is so funny. I've noticed that the vast majority of people on slashdot don't even understand what constitutes the embedded market. Most people, if they think of it at all, consider "embedded" to mean handhelds and Tivos. Consider: routers, switches, DSL modems, DVD players, microwaves, robotic control, almost any modern car; basically anything electronic that does more than a simple task and isn't a desktop computer probably has an embedded processor in it.

I've got news for you: the embedded market already outnumbers the laptop market! It is estimated that for every personal computer (not just laptops) there are eight to ten embedded computers. When Transmeta mentioned that they expect this market to be bigger than the market for latops they were referring to their chips penetrating that market (ie, sales of their embedded chips will outnumber sales of their laptop chips).

If you're dealing with just PCs and servers, you're missinga an entire world of computers. And unlike the PC market, the embedded market is actually growing.

- j

Re:Embedded?

[gorilla]

It is estimated that for every personal computer (not just laptops) there are eight to ten embedded computers.

Also embededded systems often have multiple processors. For example, one to run the display, one to do each real time operation. That means if the display is being hammered, the real time ops aren't affected.

Re:Embedded?

[WNight]

Phones: Need mucho-CPU for encryption, data-handling, games, etc.

TVs: On-screen menus (Tivo/Replay built-in), Wake-on-Word (watching captions on multiple channels). Potentially decoding some Flash/Shockwave-type protocol for easy field-upgradability.

Set-top boxes: Potentially computer replacements, need enough CPU to work with a few million polygons (eventually) for high-end graphics.

Microwave ovens: How about instead of entering the desired time, if you could tell the microwave what type of food you were cooking and it could tell when it was done via surface temperature and oven-humidity? This is already possible for simple foods like popcorn and baked-potatoes.

DVDs/CDs: Same requirements as a TV, except also the ability to decode higher MPEG levels for future expansion. Also to support decent wireless networking so you can configure play-lists on a device with an interface (handheld, or desktop computer.)

Stereo: 5.1 Theatre sound decoding, etc. Audio filters.

Now, a lot of that doesn't need a general-purpose CPU. You could do it with a smaller CPU and a DSP, but DSPs cost more to develop for (if you're getting their full potential from them you've got to know a lot more about the chip and do a little ASM). Transmeta also has a possible advantage here in emulating CPUs, giving you a faster version of whatever you were using before, removing any development time that would be spent porting.

Re:Embedded?

[tdrury]

Plus, a typical embedded CPU is a Z80, a 6502 or a 68000 or StrongARM at most. There's absolutely no need for a PC-class processor for embedded tasks.

Really? You want aircraft, ships, spacecraft, air control towers, radars, etc. running off a 68k or SA1100 at most?

I've built many systems where an entire PC is shoved into a 19" rack and is considered embedded because it performed a set of defined tasks and is not used for general computing. One system analyzed radar jammer signals and consisted of one 486 host with 20+ 32-bit transputers plugged into the 486's expansion slots. There is quite a market for "big" embedded systems.

-tim

customization

[shibut]

My understanding is that embedded systems need more customization than your typical laptop. That's why companies like Tensilica can sell their design cores. Having a chip that relies so much on sw can be a boon for customization, provided that it is open enough (I'm assuming Linus took care of that). However, one of the reasons that so far companies have customized their chips is that they wanted to minimize the sw part for efficiency reasons. I wonder if this doesn't contradict the vision of cheap embedded systems for all...

Marketing hype

[tmark]

"By this time next year, it could equal the notebook market," Mark Allen, Transmeta's CEO, said of the company's prospects in the market for embedded chips.

I wonder here whether he was talking about the notebook market for Transmeta's chips or whether about the notebook market at large. Note also here that their entrance into this market really amounts to nothing more substantial than 'marketing to' makers of equipment that uses embedded chips. When Transmeta first started trading there was so much buzz around it that the marketing seemed plausible. Now, after a precipitous drop in share price (yes, I own TMTA), and numerous fallen-through-supposed-deals with computer companies, and TMTA looking like it might be delisted in 6 months, this kind of hyperbole makes me suspicious. Why, if this market is going to be so huge, was TMTA *not* marketing to these guys in the first place ? What's wrong with their leadership that they did not initially target a market that seems like it fits TMTA so much better ?

Re:Marketing hype

[Anne_Nonymous]

"By this time next year, it could equal the notebook market," Mark Allen, Transmeta's CEO, said of the company's prospects in the market for embedded chips.

$280mm of cash and near cash
burn rate of $70mm per quarter
capital markets dried up entirely
macro environment going down the toilet

Transmetta will not be around in its current form a "this time next year".

You and me both, brother...

[wowbagger]

I've been eagerly awaiting one of the Single Board Computer (SBC) venders to make a device with a Crusoe on it. I work for a company that makes embedded devices, and currently we are using a Pentium/MMX based system at 200 MHz. Even that CPU board sucks down about 25 to 50 watts, which is not good when you are trying to make a system that needs to run from a lighter socket (ca. 120 watts maximum, more like 80 under real conditions.) Plus, you have to get rid of that heat, which adds to the cooling burden, and the @#()$& CPU fans keep crapping out on us. This is on an industrial SBC costing about US$700.

I'd love to go to a Crusoe based system, pick up a few MIPS, and cut a few watts out of the power budget. Add to this the fact that the Crusoe has the North Bridge built-in, which reduces the size of the board, and you have a great win all around for us embedded types.

However, unlike the laptop market, x86 compatibility isn't as great a deal for us embedded weenies, and therefor the StrongArm XScale is an attractive option too. Transmeta had better make this a very compelling option.

Re:You and me both, brother...

[iso]

If you're that concerned about power, why aren't you using an actual embedded processor?! It never ceases to amaze me how many people insist on using x86 based processors in embedded systems when there are lot of other processors, such as MIPS, PowerPC, StrongARM and SuperH, that are specifically designed for these types of circumstances!

Christ! We're already locked into the x86 architecture monopoly for personal computers and servers, why do we need to bring this into the embedded market where it was never meant to be used?! Use the right tool for the job. Embedded systems are a lot more than an old PC in a little box.

- j

Re:You and me both, brother...

[wowbagger]

First of all:
Sometimes you have to run other people's code, and you may not have control over what they targeted.

Second of all:
The cost of a ready built X86 CPU board is a fraction of the cost of a ready build board with the other chips.

Third of all:
For a low-volume house, the cost of building your own CPU board is rediculous.

Forth of all:
Most of your "designed for embedded" CPUs don't have an FPU. The embedded PowerPC, the StrongArm, and (IIRC) the SuperH and embedded MIPS don't have FPUs. If you need number crunching power, you need to go elsewhere.

Unfortunately, some of us work under all those constraints (also, time to market, availability of second sources, and such).

I suggest that if you are going to tell somebody with decades of professional embedded experience how to do his job, you should try to have a little yourself.

Re:You and me both, brother...

[iso]

Wow, looks like I hit a nerve! Well I work in the embedded market too, and I've experienced exactly the same engineering pressures as you have. Perhaps the x86 processor really does fit your system requirements, but if you're going to use it, accepts its limitations: don't go complaining about 20 watts power consumption.

What I stated above is still perfect valid: obviously power consumption isn't that big a deal for you or you'd be using a better processor.

- j

Re:You and me both, brother...

[wowbagger]

Yah, those damn last time buys kill you on inventory costs. I wish the tax laws would be changed to prevent inventory from being taxed (and taxed, and taxed....). We have to maintain several years for our stuff, and it raises the bill of material.

Re:You and me both, brother...

[wowbagger]

Obviously, if I have access to the source, I can recompile. What I meant by "running other people's code" is "running other people's binaries for which you have no source", an unfortunate occurrance that sometimes happens to real engineers but that posers like yourself have never encountered.

As I said in some earlier posts, I really dislike kiddies who think they actually know something. Try growing up, learning to express yourself without being obscene, and getting some real-world experience. Engineering is about making do with what you have, not living in some fantasy perfect world.

Re:Transmeta Smarsmeta...

[tmark]

Would Transmeta get all this hoopla if Linus didn't work there?

I am pretty certain they wouldn't get as much hoopla here if Linus didn't work there. Linus could run a company selling gas chambers to neo-Nazi groups and the crowd here would be talking up how the code determining gas mixtures was open-source.

Isn't this what Transmeta is FOR?

[serps]

When you look at the specs of (or the hype, if you hold that opinion) the crusoe chips, it boggles the mind why they didn't push this this sooner. 'Runs on one AA battery', goes the sales pitch - perfect for the embedded systems which need a half-decent chip but need to conserve battery life (i.e. practically all of them)

A friend of mine was so hoping to use a Crusoe in his embedded web browser tablet thesis project back in 2000. Pity it was released too late for him :)

Embedded market is very price sensitive

[Junks Jerzey]

Maybe you don't blink at paying an extra $100 for a fancier CPU for your home machine, but in embedded systems price is a huge part of the deal. If you can shave $1 off of a CPU then that that's a big difference when you're selling a $50 appliance. Transmeta's chips are even *more* expensive than offerings from other companies, so it isn't at all clear how they're going to go up against processors like the 8051, ARM, MIPS, and so on.

Re:Transmeta Smarsmeta...

[tjb]

The biggest problem with the ARM core is cost.

Buying the chips might be cost-effective if all you need is a basic ARM, but licensing an ARM core to incorporate into a custom design requires a $0.50 royalty on every every chip sold. This is fine for low-volume devices, but when you plan on selling 10 million chips, its cheaper to fork over the million $ for a MIPS design and sell the chips royalty free. Until ARM changes their licensing agreement they will be more or less locked out of the high-volume custom chip market.

Tim

Business Strategy

[BadBlood]

As a stock holder of TMTA (ugh, lately :), I am a little concerned at their changing strategy. Generally speaking, changing business strategy so early in the game for Trasmeta speaks of trouble. It is especially difficult to come to market and try to play catch up with a product that's similar to what already exists, i.e. notebook cpu market. It is even more difficult to switch business strategies and succeed.

Having stated that, my opinion is that this company will end up succeeding. I have trouble believing that such talented individuals (Ditzel, Torvalds, Taylor, etc.) will end up falling on their faces. As a stock-holder (I bought in @$3), my worst-case scenario is that their technology gets bought by one of the bigger players (AMD, Intel). Best-case scenario is that they finally find a product that utilizes the competitive advantages of the Crusoe processor - whatever that may end up being.

Y'all still using

[wiredog]

The Z-80A? A couple of years ago I was looking at embedded systems and the Big Name Chips were the 386/486, StrongArm, and Z80A. IIRC, the Z80A was a 32 bit Z80. The Z80 was what the Sinclair computer ran on, and some calculators.

Re:Y'all still using

[gorilla]

The Z80A was actually the chip that the Sinclair systems had, a higher rated version of the Z80. It was actually rated for 4Mhz, but Sinclair underclocked it to either 3.25Mhz (ZX80 and ZX81) or 3.5Mhz (Spectrum) because it saved on a seperate clock chrystal. The original Z80 was a 2.5Mhz chip. Later Z80 variants were the Z80B (6Mhz) and Z80H (8Mhz), and the Hitachi HD64180 added a MMU to support paged memory.

The Zilog Z280 was a 16 bit CPU, also adding a MMU, but mainly increasing the address space to 16Mb, with an internal clock quad, so it would run at 16Mhz on a 4Mhz bus.

Later still, there was the Z8000, which was also basically 16 bit, but had instructions to use its registers as 8,16,32, or 64 bit registers, and the Z80000, which was 32 bits internal version, but with the same basic instruction set.

Zilog's current product line include a number of variations on the above chips, designed for embedded systems with things like on chip ethernet, UARTS, real time clock, etc.

where to get one:

[gtx]

Wow, when can I get my hands on a cheap embedded Transmeta system to play around with?
try here:
Crusoe-based PC/104-expandable single board computer

People who work need 1.2ghz Mobile ...

[cybrthng]

I for one need my Laptop. I use it at work while docked, use it at home and use it at remote locations.

Compiling code, monitoring systems, working on spreadsheets, logged into Oracle applications and spotlighting several huge oracle databases.

I wouldn't want to do this on a crappy 266.

If you bought a 1.2ghz laptop you would see most come with dual nics, modem, infrared, 802b.11 support built in or for another 50 bucks. Not to push dell but i have 2 batteries, dvdrom, 2internal 10/100 nics, built in v.90 modem, and a large lcd screen at 1600x1200 with a fast video card that works great in hi-res/high color on my 21 inch monitor. I need the screen real-estate since i'm monitoring many systems or utilizing many windows. Hell i even have dual display when i'm at home which is great. That is the beauty of a powerfull laptop.

There are a ton of users who have to take there work home with them, and a laptop is the easiest way. Just because people are mobile doesn't make there work or productivity less computationaly stressfull and thus there is no reason for not having a comparible workstation for use.

Re:People who work need 1.2ghz Mobile ...

[Paul Komarek]

On the other hand, there's an argument to be made that many people don't need 1.2GHz on their desktop or laptop. When a 400MHz K6-II went down on me, I switched back to an old 200MHz K6 (supposed to be 233MHz, but my crappy Azza motherboard doesn't have the right multipliers).

I was able to run all my normal stuff (I'm a Math/CS grad student) mostly painlessly, including Gnucash and Mozilla. Mozilla was a little slow, but surprisingly it wasn't that bad. I suppose someone running the latest MS Office or MS Dev might have more problems, from what I'm told.

-Paul Komarek

Re:Transmeta Smarsmeta...

[iso]

Well it depends on what kind of embedded device you're designing, but in many cases the MIPS processor fits the bill better than ARM. MIPS processors are designed by many different vendors, and each has their own target market. The MIPS architecture has seen a massive growth in the embedded market in the last few years and there are some impressive processors out there from the low end to the extremely high-end.

StrongARM is well positioned for handheld devcies, but I'd say the MIPS architecture is the most promising in the embedded space over all.

- j

Cheaper cyber-clothes soon?

[Domini]

If this gets applied, it would make cyber clothes more of a reality, since the last thing I want to do is have huge battery packs in my pocketess.

Besides, It's cool for the winter...

Re:Cheaper cyber-clothes soon?

[Domini]

I love gadgets, and not because I want to look like a geek. I don't like the look of gadgets, so the more invisible they are the better. Clothes is the best place to 'hide' gadgets.

I'm already thought of as strange AND a geek, what more could I want?
;)

Some embedded links

[wiredog]

Embedded Linux Journal

Omega Engineering

Computer Boards

Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted

yes ARM but INTEL & TI are the real deal

[johnjones]

yes ARM arch is nice and well designed ISA

and yes transmeta have not got a hope in this area
(anyone with any experance in building real embeded systems knows you cant afford 16MB for code morphing or have the fact that it might not execute in 25 cycles )

but really Intel with StrongARM2 (aka Xscale) has the ropes nobody can licence this off intel so ARM's bussiness model goes out the window
and TI who just use ARM to get their DSP going well
(lets face it a phone is just a DSP and so is a MP3 player (watch out empeg))

both of these dont licence so the only thing that ARM has left is ARM7TDMI and derivertives + makeing up new extenions to arch + macrocells

yes ARM is nice but with Intel killing ST and the rest I dont see where any more revenue comes from for ARM the company

+ the fact that all WinCE XP will be Only ARM
(suspect that Intel cuddled up to MS and got them to see reason much like symbian)

just watch out for MIPS
(I saw a dual 64bit 1GHz on one chip which was nice)
and for SOC parts there is always the ex strongARM design team http://www.alchemysemi.com/

which seem to be doing very well with more on chip and lower power than StrongARM + can alter clock speed

lets face it MIPS is one of the oldies but goodies

regards

john jones

Poor Transmeta

[ZigMonty]

Ever since I first read about them in Spectrum, I admired them. Here is a company that has a very original idea and the CS behind it is very cool.

IMHO, the embedded market isn't as big as they claim. And if it is, why would anyone want x86 compatibility? The only use I can see for their current design is what it is doing now, Low power x86 compatible PC chip.

Personally, I would love to see how well the Crusoe goes running native code. The whole super-RISC VLIW architecture sounds a lot better than the x86 or even the PPC. Maybe they should try native BIOS AND a native Linux kernel. In fact, have everything possible native and leave the whole x86 'code morphing' bit for binaries you don't have the source for.

Another idea, since they are emulating/binary translating the code anyway, how big a job do you think it would be to have multiple virtual machines? Naturally they'd all need their own RAM but RAM is cheap. It could give dual booting linux with windows a new meaning!

Also, how easy would it be to add other architectures? I can see a PDA that not only runs Windows CE software but PalmOS stuff as well. Just some ideas, any of them feasible?

best case is a take over or licence technology

[johnjones]

your best case is that they get taken over because they are not going to make any money when up against
ARM (intel& TI), MIPS (NEC, IDT, PMC) and PowerPC (IBM & MOT)

really its nothing more than fancy VLIW machine

in terms of selling it they have not got a chance outside of the low power x86 market
(where legacy apps need x86 otherwise we would use something else witness MS useing ARM and only ARM for the new WinCE XP)

get real they are screwed because they tried to use the best fabs to get one over on intel (TSMC fabs) and failed

regards

john jones

Hype machine into overdrive...

[MosesJones]

Transmeta realises its done nothing in notebook market and makes desperate dive for embedded market. ARM and TI described as "not worried".

Every little piece of Transmeta news gets broadcast as bible.

Embedded market not "cool"

[dmccarty]

I know it's fun to talk on /. about how cool PC, chips and gadgets are. It's nice to have new stuff, and it's nice to have cool stuff. "A cell phone that will play my MP3 files with a garage door opener and streaming wireless video? Cool!"

But I work in the embedded systems sector. It's the plumbing of world industry, and it's not cool. There are a lot of factors when it comes to embedded systems, but the number one factor is "cheap." Systems must be built cheap. (I'm ignoring reliability and other factors for the sake of the argument.) That means 486's and Pentiums, not the bleeding edge of 2GHz cool chips. Code is written in assembly, C and uncool languages, not Java and Perl. OS's include VxWorks, pSOS, LynxOS and DOS. Not cool ones like OS X, XP, etc.

My point is that it's nice for Transmeta to get into the embedded market, and I hope that they do well, but the "that would be cool" posters don't have a clue about how to make it happen, and neither will statements by Transmeta CEO Mark Allen, like "by this time next year, it could equal the notebook market." This industry is dominated by players that have been there for 30+ years, and if Transmeta wants to make a mark--as it seems they must if they're going to stay alive--they better have a pretty compelling offering in the works.

Some one please tell me

[slashdot2.2sucks]

Can a Transmeta chip emulate a Java VM and run Java byte code natively. Or is Java byte code not low level enough.

What about ZFLinux?

[certsoft]

Next year, the San Jose, Calif.-based company will come out with an inexpensive system-on-a-chip that fuses a processor, a chipset and a graphics chip as well as a new high-performance version of Crusoe, said Dave Ditzel, Transmeta's chief technology officer.

Sounds like they are trying to get into the same area as the ZFLinux chip.
Has anyone seen any power consumption comparisons between the two?

get a different sbc

[burris]

The Lippert CoolRoadRunner ][ has a 300mhz cyrix mediagx, isa/pci, eide, cf, vga, audio, serial, parallell, and 10/100 ethernet and pulls less than 10 watts. It isn't cheap at $560 a pop though.

burris

Re:Chasing nanovolts

[wowbagger]

You are correct, the -120dBm is for a BW limited signal of 30 kHz around the frequency of interest, however making the front end be able to cover the entire 3GHz range gets tricky. (http://www.ifrsys.com for an idea of what I do).

As to your project - well, I took a shot. Yah, RF astronomy is even worse than comms systems (especially since comm systems keep trying to encroach on the astronomy bands!). Just out of curiosity, what band you working in?

Yes, been done

[alienmole]

The folks at Transmeta have already done this. They even apparently implemented a version of Doom, with the main loop in picoJava code (Sun's Java processor core) and the rest in x86 code. The Transmeta chip "morphed" both instruction sets into its native VLIW instructions, and seamlessly executed both.

This was demo'd at the Crusoe launch, but was not intended as a product. I don't know the current status of any Transmeta products related Java - does anyone else?

ARM doesn't give you plug-ins, etc...

[Svartalf]

Depends on the embedded device, but some of them can't use the ARM, MIPS, or PPC because of commercial offerings NOT being there for those architechtures.

ARM's very nice, but it's not the end-all-be-all solution to embedded systems.