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Transmeta Astro Processor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the meet-george-jetson dept.

simpl3x writes "Apparently, Transmeta's next generation processor was demonstrated to some folks the other day at Comdex. Tom's Hardware was at the demo and they had this to say: "The new Transmeta Astro was faster in every demo that we saw than the Pentium 4m 1.8GHz chip that was in the Sony GRX." Cnet had some information on the processor also . I just ordered a tablet to play with, though I ordered the Fujitsu which has a P3m (the Compaq has a bad screen according to the reviews). I certainly wish that something like this were available, and i do hope that the manufacturing goes smoothly. Mo options, mo better."

3 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Thoughts on the demo by stevarooski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The interesting thing about the transmeta procs is that they make heavy use of caching to speed up instruction translation. Once the cache 'warms up' around a given application, performance is generally much better.

    I for one would like to know what they meant by 'better performance' than the intel. Did they compare application startup speeds? Had the machine been running the apps previously? Granted I don't know any of the details, but from personal experience (I'm typing this on a transmeta-based fujitsu lifebook, at 866mhz) the current transmeta chips start applications extremely slowly and then progressively get more reponsive.

    I like my laptop and am rooting for the astro! I'm very interested in how they improved the efficiency of their approach.

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  2. Loaded Post by puto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No real facts. Even when you read Toms.

    So they optimized a few apps on the Transmeta, and pit it against a machine that has some unoptimized apps. To quote toms "DVD playback, Office Applications".

    Ok were the even the same office and dvd playing apps? I can show you two different aps that do the same thing. One dog slow, one lightning quick. Put them each on machines with the same specs, and one will open faster than the other.

    So give us name of the apps used. Start up times, were they optimized especially for the meta?

    I would like to see this succeed, but I hate to see the hype.

    Puto

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  3. Re:Another good idea lost by kaphka · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The Astro chips abandon the software "Code Morphing" strategy of the Crusoe chips and instead interpret x86 bytecode in hardware
    Can you support that statement? None of the linked-to articles say anything about code morphing.
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    MSK