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Transmeta Astro Processor
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."
According to the CNet article (which actually had more information in it), the Astro will have lower power consumption than their current and competing chips. There is also mention that this is to compete directly with Intel's mobile chip. So I guess the answer is, that yes, they will be doing laptops. Of course, I thought that was what they were aiming for all along.
Wow, frightening! You NEVER need to reboot Win98 with any other chips! I declare shenanigans! AAH!
Again, as mentioned in the CNet article, "Transmeta executives, though, indicated that the company would beat Banias in price." The Banias is Intel's soon-to-be-released next mobile chip. It should be at least fifty dollars less than Banias, but twenty dollars more than Celeron.
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.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
There's a computer chip made by Transmeta
Compared to Intel it's really just betta.
But how long can it last
When Intel's big-asst
Let's hope Intel declares no vendetta.
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
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
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Yes, but Tom fails the mention the two 200W peltiers and liquid helium bath...
I don't know about you, but liquid helium spilling on my pants doesn't really brighten up my day.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Although chips are getting faster and faster people seem to forget that most people dont use a laptop as a portable supercomputer. The average user is gonna write papers and browse the web or soem kind of business application ... not that they wont do other things, but the fact is a laptop was never meant to replace the desktop market. Transmeta not only gives intel competetion, but they assure the consumer that intel will have to do at least a little innovation to make their product worthy. A chip that is fast enough for non video games and has an extended battery life compared to ther brands is a good thing. It is what the goal of laptop makers should be. gaming on a laptop is teh niche market, and thats what alienware computers are for.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Are you a troll? ...lack of sse2... ...uses an astonishing amount of ram...64mb... ...unstable... ...only run at agp 2x...
It doesn't even run X86 natively!
64mb or ram costs 15$ The price difference between the P4 and the transmeta will easily be more than that. Buy more ram!
It hasn't even been released. Kernel 2.5 isn't all that stable, but no one complains because it is a testing/prototype.
The speed of the agp bus has been shown to be inconsequential to the performance.
The rumor is that the demo chip is running at 500Mhz at the moment. Comparing that to the 1.8ghz P4 suddenly doesn't seem so out of proportion does it? I gaurantee you it will be running at at least 1ghz when it's finally released. The final board for it (not the notoriously shoddy reference boards) will perform better as the memory bandwidth will probably be improved.
What if I had done the same review of the Itanium 6 mo. before it was released? It was running at 400Mhz, couldn't run X86 software as fast as a 266, and was practically an unstable toaster oven.
Karma Clown
Wow... and according to tramsmetazone the thing was running at 500 mhz for the demo (against a speedstepped pentium) WOW.
Actually they state that the Sony was running off of AC, therefore speedstep shouldnt be active and the P4 would be running at the full 1.8 GHz.
MSK
3) [the Transmeta booth] Actually contained a chip they let you hold. 1 word: SMALL
and your sig:
"It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"
I am hoping you've made the astro into some sort of necklace already?
SSE2 is used by so few apps that its not very useful for 99% of the stuff people are doing. As far as agp support only being 2x, thats the motherboard's (well northbridge's) responsilibility, not cpu. And besides, agp is a joke, anything more then 2x gives you ZERO performance increase.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Showed off what has been unanimously voted "My next laptop" by half of my company.
:(
:)
Same thing happened in my company... My company is a family run business. Half of the company
wanted it, but then the other half - my wife - said "No, you don't!" No transmeta... for a while...
Well, it seems that 50% wants a Transmeta powered laptops.
Consequently, it multi-processor transmeta systems will outperform single processor Intels dissipating the same amount of heat. This also translates to higher reliability. If the memory busses are done correctly, having inexpensive multi-processors may alos provide significant performance enhancements over a single CPU. (for example, if memory bottlenecks dominate then multiple simple processors that are stalled witing on memory will ustilize every memeory fetch perfectly, whereas a pipelined single processor will waste a large fraction of the memory fetches making it slower).
A schematic of the current trends look something like this.
.......ioo......
|...........i.t..
|..........i.t..
|..........it...
H.........it....
E........it.....
A........i......
T.......i......
|.....io..o.....
|....io.........
|___i____________
Speed--->
o = Transmeta
i = pentium
t = former trendline
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Lack of SSE2 is a bummer but unless you're doing content creation or playing new games it won't matter.
Lack of SSE2 will not matter for any games, new or otherwise, because none of them use double-precision floats in any speed critical code paths. It'll hurt you if you want to render with Lightwave on your laptop, or run fluid dynamics simulations, or whatever. Not games.
2) Showed off what has been unanimously voted "My next laptop" by half of my company.
Which one do you mean, the really hot and nice chick on your lap, or the astro?