Build Your Own Crusoe-Powered Computer

jonmason00 writes "Just checked the Transmeta webpage, and discovered that they are now offering a Crusoe TM5800 System Development Kit. It's a bit expensive ($995) and you gotta register before you can buy one, but they need your support." How about an Astro development kit instead? :)

Comments

"they need your support"

[greygent]

Transmeta is a fucking business for God's sake, not Greenpeace.

They came up with a crappy business plan at the wrong time, and natural selection is taking care of it. Why try screwing the process up?

Re:"they need your support"

[Apathy costs bills]

I think what the original poster meant was that readers who want an innovative, Linux-assosciated chip manufacturer to succeed should do what they can to buy Transmeta products, and this is just one opportunity.

Otherwise I guess we just have to accept AMD/Intel's offerings.

Re:"they need your support"

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise I guess we just have to accept AMD/Intel's offerings.

Darn, I guess I just have to buckle down and accept those 1.6 GHz CPUs from AMD for $80. Why hell, I could be supporting Transmeta and buying their $995 motherboard and processor instead of the $160 I spent on my Athlon and motherboard. Such a deal!!

Re:"they need your support"

[rm-r]

Well, I've just logged on for the first time in nearly a year, and what's the first thing I see? That's right, the parent comment being modded as a troll for making a reasonable and reasonably intelligent comment.

past lost!

Re:"they need your support"

[larry bagina]

Intel has donated code (and money) to the FSF and Red Hat (and other distro's). Hell, they even financeed the BeOS x86 port!

That's a fuckload more than transmeta has done for linux. (Hiring Linus was a marketing move and little more).

Call it flamebait. Personally, I wished the transmeta had succeeded. The idea was (and is) incredible. But they're basically just an expensive, low-speed celeron. wank-wank.

Re:"they need your support"

[Anonymous Coward]

You hypocrites -- you say this, while at the same time, supporting government action against Microsoft, because they are the exact opposite: they are too SUCCESSFUL!

Re:"they need your support"

[MADCOWbeserk]

Transmeta financed thier own Linux distribution, Midori And contributed touchscreen, handwriting and power management functions in the Linux community. Likewise employing Linus and giving him time to still develop Linux is awfully nice.

Re:"they need your support"

[KewlPC]

It isn't just a run-of-the-mill CPU and motherboard. It's a reference motherboard, meaning that people who design motherboards will use it as a leap-off point for their own Crusoe-based motherboard designs. It comes with, and I quote:

schematics, design guides, processor specifications, and everything else needed to jump-start new product design efforts

I think that (once again) the editors and the original poster didn't completely comprehend the article (or didn't bother to read it all the way through). This motherboard/CPU combination is of 0% interest to the average guy who builds his own systems, because he doesn't design motherboards for a living. It doesn't even have an AGP slot, and while somebody designing a new motherboard with this one as the basis will undoubtedly have little trouble adding one to his or her design, the guy building a new PC from "scratch" doesn't know how and so would have no interest (you can't get the new GeForceFxSuperGreatAwesome 5 in a PCI card).

I'll say it again, once more: people who just want to take this motherboard and CPU and use them to replace their existing stuff (or build a new system around them) aren't the target audience for this product.

Re:"they need your support"

[t0qer]

Didn't Cruesoes ship sink and he was stranded on a tropical isle? (BaBumP!)

They need my support?

[tgd]

Sorry, this might be an unpopular view because Linus works there, and all, but no company needs my support if they've got a product I find useful for a price that is competitive with other companies, and I won't waste my money supporting someone else's unsucessful ideas, just because they've got cool technology or cool employees.

Re:They need my support?

[drinkypoo]

Amen, this is ridiculous! Given that I can get a mini-itx board with a 800mhz CPU for a hundred and twenty bucks, why on earth would I buy one of these? I could have a cluster of those for the price of one of these.

I did look at this price, laughed, and moved on with my life. Besides who needs one of these on the desktop anyway, it's a CPU dramatically unsuited for such use.

Re:They need my support?

[PhotoGuy]

Sorry, this might be an unpopular view because Linus works there, and all, but no company needs my support if they've got a product I find useful for a price that is competitive with other companies, and I won't waste my money supporting someone else's unsucessful ideas, just because they've got cool technology or cool employees.
Well, as I understand it, TransMeta has products that are lower powered and run cooler than Intel's, which isn't just fluff, and $995 for a development board is pretty reasonable. (Not for a production model, but development kids are usually pricey). Seems intruiging to me.

Re:They need my support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, as I understand it, TransMeta has products that are lower powered and run cooler than Intel's, which isn't just fluff, and $995 for a development board is pretty reasonable.

Macs are lower powered and run cooler and everyone here bashes them for their price (even though you can get a complete system for $995).

Re:They need my support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Intriguing, yes. But if they had a freakin clue, they would have done this awhile ago. Furthermore, while all this time the mini ITX spec has slowly caught on albeit not like wildfire, Transmeta is no where to be seen. Still. Ooo, a development platform. Where is the fuqin board? AMD has a problem, they release a chipset or their own boards to spurn adoption. Where's Transmeta?

Who the heck is running their sales division? I don't know, but if he's earned an income, he/she/it's being paid too much.

And Transmeta continues to miss out on the DIY market, which inevitably drives wider adoption. Yes, I know, they are not desktop chips, but cripes. And arguably not a "big money" area but it is an area that drives ideas and implementations. Via's shown with the C3 that some people have different cpu wants and needs; Transmeta could have owned this market from Day 1 when the Transmeta was finalized.

And I'm someone who *likes* Transmeta. Cool products. Practical, implemented technology. It's not vapor; even with all the hype 2 years ago, they still produced something workable. They seem to be full of smart people. But they have NO bleepin product usage and near zero product availability. For awhile, if not still, their products can be found only in the smallest Sony laptops, and they aren't cheap. Their marketing department is nonexistent because their products being used as parts in finished products is near nonexistent.

I feel like Transmeta's sales department is run solely by folks that came from the embedded chip market, people who are used to getting big orders in but never fathom to make their chips readily available to individuals or small groups.

How the hell do they expect to have a company if they can't sell what they make? Of course 40% of folks are being/were laid off. Transmeta, you're not MS; you can't run the company from the stock options and investments alone. You need to start selling your stuff, even to the little guy.

Re:They need my support?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's the difference between a development board and an OEM chip?

I do electronics stuff for a hobby, but I've needed a real CPU - just the occasional IC. What exactly does a "development board" allow you to do more easily than an OEM setup?

Re:They need my support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and don't forget to mention they're also glacially slow! It helps a lot with the running cooler and using lower power part. And don't forget to mention that the $995 Mac has an absolutely crap video system and can't be upgraded at all - Otherwise people might mistake you for some kind of Mac zealot.

Re:They need my support?

[SirTwitchALot]

Or you can use Via's C3 processors... with speeds up to 1GHz and socket compatibility with the Celeron, it's a pretty nice chip for less than $50... and since it only draws 12 watts, you can run it without a fan, and it's not a beast on power.

Re:They need my support?

[drinkypoo]

It's cheaper than intel's development boards, relatively slow xscale boards were upwards of two grand from official distributors. Ouch. Their bigger chips get really outrageous :P Motorola's used to be really cheap (a couple hundred bucks or whatnot) but have been going up considerably lately.

Re:They need my support?

[el_chicano]

Macs are lower powered and run cooler and everyone here bashes them for their price

No, actually we vote with our pocketbooks. If Macs were cheaper Apple would sell more of them. It's called "market forces"...

Re:They need my support?

[Anonymous Coward]

12W is a lot compared to what the Crusoe uses.

Support?

[All Names Have Been]

...they need your support...

Great .. Geek corporate welfare.

Re:Support?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you don't follow the usual American business practices and don't buy a senator to do your bidding.

Re:Support?

[Decimal]

> ...they need your support...

Great .. Geek corporate welfare.

Actually, the building is starting to fall apart, and about a dozen geeks are needed to hold the ceiling up. Anybody else interested?

Alternatives

[SteweyGriffin]

Or, build your own Intel- or AMD-based computer that's cheaper, faster, and uses less power.

Transmeta had a great goal when they started four years ago to reduce power use in their chips and allow for code-morphing, but it's now 2002 and mobile Intel and AMD chips are faster and use less power. And don't even get started on desktop CPU comparison...

Re:Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

and mobile Intel and AMD chips are faster and use less power

Lets see the numbers. Prove it.

Re:Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Slashdot subscriber. Are you?

Nope, my filters take care of the flash and banner ads just fine. I don't need to subscribe.

Re:Alternatives

[inode_buddha]

Allow me to play "devil's advocate" in this thread, it seems so one-sided so far. Not that I have RTFA about Transmeta since like Jan 2001...

"...it's now 2002 and mobile Intel and AMD chips are faster and use less power. And don't even get started on desktop CPU comparison..."

Point 1:
Er, *NOW* you're going to worry about your electric bill? Last I checked, the Crusoe 5xxx series didn't even require CPU fans.

Point 2:
Since when does faster == better, as opposed to being more efficient?

Point 3:
Since when were Transmeta chips specifically aimed at the desktop market, as opposed to ie blade servers, thin clients, and embedded devices?

Just wondering.

Re:Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheaper? Yes. Faster? Yes. Uses less power? Put the pipe down.

Re:Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators, what game are you playing ? a thousand monkeys typing at random would do better moderation...This guy pulls up fact from his arse, and you give him a +5 insightful ?
Where are the facts ?

Re:Alternatives

[(H)elix1]

"...it's now 2002 and mobile Intel and AMD chips are faster and use less power. And don't even get started on desktop CPU comparison..."

Point 1:
Er, *NOW* you're going to worry about your electric bill? Last I checked, the Crusoe 5xxx series didn't even require CPU fans.

I picked up a mini-itx board with a 533mhz fanless last spring for under $100USD shipped.

It included LAN, sound, USB, video (vga, svideo, and rca), serial, printer, ps/2 mouse and keyboard, standard ATX power supply, and a PCI port. As a bonus, it uses dirt cheap PC-133 sdram as well.

Did I mention it only uses 2.8 watts? Availavle months ago?

Now that is hardware I can screw around with. Car PC, box for playing DVD's in the house, random controllers that can use a serial port (wicked grin). If I want to spend a grand on some hardware kit, I have to ask my wife or sneak it in part by part...

Re:Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

SteweyGriffin is a troll. His posts are not original. He steals everything from other discussion groups. He is manipulating the slashdot moderation system. Please do not mod up his posts. Please review his previous posts to see the pattern.

Re:Alternatives

[dhartman]

The mini-itx form factor board you mention doesn't run any of the mentioned chips. It's powered by VIA's (Cyrix) low power solution.

The original version you also mention will not play dvd's without a separate decoder card. The new series EPIA-M (M being multimedia) has a built in mpeg-2 decoder.

Never the less, VIA is succeeding where Transmeta failed. These are great little boards.

Re:Alternatives

[(H)elix1]

I noticed a dozen others posted about the mini-itx - that will teach me to sit on a post for a while (grin).

Anyhow, correct - not AMD or Intel, but close it is x86 - close enough for me. I tried a bit of underclocking with some AMD chips and got very close to fanless... but in the end the heat was still too much for what I could deal with in the space.

The 533mhz C3 chip can play DVD's, but you really have to scrub the OS to get it to work well - playing from the ram / hard drive with the CSS removed helps significantly. I originally intended to just use it as an MP3 for my car, but I did give it a whirl. Even still, I'm going with a hardware mpeg converter card for my project box if it comes in the house and ends up in my home theater.... or pawn it off to my parents and get something with a faster cpu. Its just on the cusp of 'fast enough'.

Cost and availability are the biggest things. I was lurking the transmeta, amd, intel, and via sites looking for a low power x86 CPU that would not cost me as much as a strongarm solution. Looking at the other responses, the transmeta kit looks DOA.

Re:Alternatives

[Daniel Phillips]

Or, build your own Intel- or AMD-based computer that's cheaper, faster, and uses less power.

Not according to the guys who know what they're talking about.

Your AMD or Intel machine will not get anything close to the mips/watt ratio that the Transmeta does. The LANL people go on to conclude that the Transmeta is cheaper in the long run as well, because of power (including cooling) and space savings. Faster, I'll grant you, but one out of three is pretty poor batting, certainly not worth a moderation of 5.

For a cluster, the faster argument goes out the window as well, because the performance equation comes down to mips/watt, mips/cubic foot and mips/$$$, in all of which Transmeta leads AMD and Intel.

Now I don't know about you, but I find the monolithic, nuclear reactor core kind of box is getting less and less interesting as time goes by, and what I really want is a box full of much more efficient processors, all dirt-cheap of course. I'll admit that that there's no way for the typical home user to get into this kind of system for a price that competes with a single, Athlon or P4, but that's this year. Check again next year.

Re:Alternatives

[spike hay]

Nope, my filters take care of the flash and banner ads just fine. I don't need to subscribe.

Don't be an asshole. Slashdot's banners are not annoying at all. The sad fact is that you need ads to support this site! Do you think the bandwidth and server costs magically come from fairy-land!?

I can understand blocking popups and animated ads, but sites like slashdot do need revenue.

Here's why

[Compact Dick]

Intel and AMD have both signed on to Microsoft's Palladium program. We need a chip maker who hasn't succumbed to this yet.

A crappy marketing strategy is no reason to write off an innovative technology [and yes, for once I believe the word is used rightly here.] The lower power consumption specs don't hurt either.

Re:Here's why

[Neumann]

And have they promised not to sign on?

Because if they havent done that, nothing is stopping them from signing on when they get successful.

Re:Here's why

[MisterFancypants]

Intel and AMD have both signed on to Microsoft's Palladium program. We need a chip maker who hasn't succumbed to this yet.

That's a great theory, but meaningless. In various interviews David Ditzel has been quoted as saying that Transmeta's chips would be in a unique position for Palladium because the Code Morphing layer would allow them to implement the security features without having to change their designs since that CMS isn't accessible to normal system software and thus is hack-proof-enough to meet the Palladium specs. Not exactly the kind of thing you'd hear from someone who is going to make a stand against Palladium.

I'm pretty positive Transmeta WILL implement Palladium if it is required for future Windows releases. They haven't said they won't, they just haven't said they will. You assume that because Linus works there, they will decline, but business reality will make them accept it just as AMD did. How many laptops do you think are sold for the Linux market compared to the Windows marker? Transmeta is in deep enough trouble without cutting out 90% of their potential market in the future by thumbing their nose at Windows/MS.

Re:Here's why

[alienw]

If Microsoft makes an OS that requires Palladium support from the processor, any chip company whose main segment is PC processors will make processors that support it. This includes Transmeta and anyone else.

Remember, companies do not do what they think is "right", they do whatever makes or helps make money. That includes employing Linus -- the only reason they do it is because they think it is a good R&D investment.

Low power consumption is nice, but adequate performance is more important, and innovative technology without good marketing is worthless.

Re:Here's why

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but they'll be bankrupt within 6 months so it's a moot point.

Re:Here's why

[mark_lybarger]

If Microsoft makes an OS that requires Palladium support from the processor, any chip company whose main segment is PC processors will make processors that support it.

if none of them make the chip w/ palladium support, how will the customers know they need the new OS from Microsoft? i know, i know, someone will always jump ship and the others will have to follow suit. i just find it very odd that the software manufactures are in a position to define low level hardware requirements. hasn't it always been the other way around?

Re:Here's why

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, OpenGL and DirectX both define hardware level requirements for optimum feature set.

Re:Here's why

[Decimal]

Intel and AMD have both signed on to Microsoft's Palladium program. We need a chip maker who hasn't succumbed to this yet.

How about looking to China and the yet-to-be-released Dragon Processor? Considering how China has made a few nose-snubs at Microsoft (Red Flag Linux and Chinux come to mind), they may decide to avoid the idea of Palladium altogether.

Then again, there may be enough computing power out there on the market -- we can just get what we need and stop buying until Palladium dies. It shouldn't be here for a few years, right?

Re:Here's why

[Bux]

From their website:
"Transmeta enjoys a strong relationship with Microsoft..."
Be damn sure they will sign up for Palladium.

Re:Here's why

[sketerpot]

Just a thought, but could this same Code Morphing layer be used to implement fake security features? Perhaps someone could make a small, legally questionable business selling reprogrammed CPUs that pretend to support Palladium.

I'm just shooting off an idea here without much knowledge of Palladium or the Crusoe chip, so take this with a grain of salt.

They don't need my support

[MisterFancypants]

They need to create a product that I feel is worth buying. That is what businesses do. Just because Linus works for them doesn't mean they have any reason to exist. If they can't compete on the merits of their products, then let them die.

And, just for the record, this product isn't one I will be buying. It is way overpriced for what you are getting. A comparable barebones motherboard + CPU based on Intel or AMD could be had for an order of magnitude less money without requiring any kind of signup deal.

Re:They don't need my support

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't for joe consumer, it is a development board.

Re:They don't need my support

[MisterFancypants]

It isn't for joe consumer, it is a development board.

I'm aware that it is for developers & OEMs. I was commenting more on the Slashdot writeup that Transmeta needs our support, as if we should all go buy this thing to use as a desktop system just to help them out.

Re:They don't need my support

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's just the Slashdot editors who remain ignorant of basic market realities.

Re:They don't need my support

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not the merits of their products. It's the non-availability of them. Very few products have Transmeta cpus in them, and it's not like Transmeta is selling their chips or making them adaptable to other, smaller markets, like folks that want to build silent PCs.

No one knows the merit of their products really because Transmeta has tried to focus on the lucrative OEM market; but that market has shrunk substantially, which burned them. Point being, I don't know if their chips are any good; to me, it's all hype, because I've seen like 3 products, all Sony's, with Transmeta, and they were all over $1200, until today.

Merit is one thing; sales channels is another. This move helps, but quite a bit too expensive, albeit it is a development platform.

Re:They don't need my support

[larry bagina]

don't worry, reality will be giving them a wakeup call in a couple more months, when they find themselves unemployed.

Re:They don't need my support

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

Lately I've started a little short-run project, a rather small system where fans are impossible, and even heatsinks are not preferred.

So I went looking for competitive parts to use as CPU's. Transmeta looks really nice, unless you look closely. I can't find any way to get even proper tech specs (pinouts, etc) without buying a development board. Honestly, they should be up front with all the docs, and the chips should be buyable in small quantities from their page.

Now, this doesn't help average PC builders, since they are NOT standard pinout compatible. But for embedded hobbiests, it would be a boon. Then again, somebody might adapt some for PC motherboards...

I eventually just settled on a 133MHz AMD Elan. Nice chip, very highly integrated, slower than the Crusoe but does everything i need. Best part? Docs are right on AMD's page, rather easy to find.

Re:They don't need my support

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you insane? This is way cheaper than any AMD or Intel development system. And, having dealt with development systems from Intel, NSC, Arm, etc. I can tell you they all come with the sign-up crap.

You must be confusing this with a piece of production hardware. It's not. It's for hardware developers.

Why is it that IT people don't have a clue about how the stuff they use is ever developed?

Re:They don't need my support

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that most slashdotters being technical means that a large percentage of us actually do H/W development.

For those of us who do, it's a nice article to push to our bosses and say "Hey, if we need an X86 CPU, let's look at this one."

It is cheap and low power. Assuming the availability is there, why not put it in a design.

This all applies to X86 embedded systems only; if anybody here is doing a design from scratch I hope they would be sensible enough to pick PowerPC, microSPARC, MIPS, or ARM!

Transmeta

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how universal this article is.. sooo many people at slashdot are going to go ordering these kits so we can design our pcs around transmetta proccessor. get real. this is free advertizing for a company that the mods/eds have an affinity for due to the dietization of linus.

Re:Transmeta

[Anonymous Coward]

this is free advertizing for a company that the mods/eds have an affinity for due to the dietization of linus.

I think you meant "deification." The dietization of Linus might be a good idea--he looks like he could stand to lose a couple of pounds.

Re:Transmeta

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant defacation.

Yes Linus works there but...

[sirtimbly]

It's not our responsibility to keep the company afloat. I'm all about supporting software projects that obviously serve the open source movement, but a business faces risks when playing in the processor arena. I am happy to pay money for projects like the free blender foundation. Transmeta is responsible for getting their processors put into retail products, we are not responsible for donations.

Yeah!

[delta407]

They need our support, guys, let's rack up huge bandwidth bills and see if we can set their web server on fire!

Nothing like a good ol' slashdotting to bring a business back in the black.

Why?

[I Am The Owl]

That's ludicrous. I could go out and buy an Athlon XP or even a Pentium IV for half that price, and get twice the performance or better. Why the hell would anyone buy this?

I bet even the mobile versions of the aforementioned processors are cheaper and faster.

Re:Why?

[ksw2]

This is not insightful . There are no mobile Athlon XP or Pentium 4 chips.

I'm becoming less impressed with Slashdot moderators every day.

(Lemme guess, this will get -1 Troll *sigh*)

Re:Why?

[Kufat]

That is incorrect:

Mobile athlon xp

Mobile pentium 4

-Kufat

Re:Why?

[haroldK]

That's a funny thing to say. Unless you mean that the P4m and the mobile version of the Athlon4 (as they called it when it came out) aren't actually mobile proccessors, you're just wrong.

Re:Why?

[ksw2]

That occured to me after my post... however, it's pretty clear the OP was referring to the regular consumer Athlon and P4 chips.

And are the mobile versions half the cost of the transmeta chip?

Re:Why?

[greenrom]

I've seen several comments posted like this, so I thought I'd point out that this is NOT some off-the-shelf motherboard targeted at the consumer market. This motherboard is a reference design for people who are designing their own platform around their processor. When was the last time you got a full set of schematics with your motherboard (and no, I don't just mean the jumper settings)? If you're a laptop manufacturer, $995 is cheap for a working reference design you can modify a little bit to fit your specific needs.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, it was quite clear. That's why I included that last sentence in there, just to make sure that you would never think that I was also referring to mobile versions.

Idiot.

--I Am The Owl

Re:Why?

[Valar]

What the parent poster means is that the current athlon/pentium chips don't do very well in mobile applications (more of a matter of opinion than fact, but I agree). Just because I call something 'mobile', doesn't mean it is actually suitable for moving. For example, if I called the great wall of china "Great Wall of China Mobile" or "Great Wall of China M", it wouldn't make it anymore more feasible or useful to move it around.

Re:Why?

[nomadic]

Just admit you were wrong, man.

Re:Why?

[ebyrob]

So, um pardon me for being dumb, but what exactly is different about this "reference" board than a typical ATX board? (Yes, you get schematics, but that doesn't make the board any different!)

It seems if I wanted to build my own laptop from scratch, I'd need a whole lot more than this board to play with (like a whole bin of laptop parts and some method of integrating them or building the missing pieces to fit it all together).

Further, how do I program the chip itself? The crusoe code morphing software sits on a ROM chip...does the board come with a way to reprogram that sucker?

Re:Why?

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

Reference boards are generally either oversimplified or overfeatured, to give the system designer a quick and dirty overview of how the chip works.

Funny you mention building a laptop from scratch, I'm currently looking at doing just that. To actually do the build, yes, you need the parts and some PCB facilities and a good solder station or a vapor-phase soldering system.

But to design them, you can just take the reference board into schematic capture, netlist to a pcb and move the parts around into your new form factor. Often you will hardly need a redesign.

The chip itself is almost certainly (I haven't worked with the Crusoe, but FPGA's do this) have an external EEPROM or flash ROM to store the configuration information (the code-morph ROM) in. They provide this in binary form, you stick it on the ROM. The system reads it on boot.

They have NOT released specs on code-morph, so you'd be on your own for reverse-engineering it, though.

Re:Why?

[Grab]

In a word, everything!

A development board is designed for use by engineers working out how to drive the chip. Typically there'll be a few peripherals (ADCs, DACs, etc), a serial port or similar as a programming and debugging interface (and the debugging interface itself will be something you wouldn't get on a laptop), some RAM onboard, all that kind of thing.

As an analogy, it's the difference between a bare engine clamped to a dynamometer, and an engine fitted in a car. You can work out how to get your power source working, but there's a whole load of other stuff that needs to go around it in order to build something useful.

Grab.

laptop case..

[Anonymous Coward]

this seems interesting but i would like to see if it is possible to fit something like this into a generic laptop case....
like that would ever happen stupid me...

Off-topic rant

[orthogonal]

What's with this "you gotta register"?

Why can't businesses be content with getting my money?

Oh, because they're not selling commodities anymore, they're turning their customers into commodities to be sold.

Shall I supply my blood type and a DNA sample and a piss test and fingerprints in addition to my social security number and home phone and mother's maiden name?'

Get out of my life! Sell me your product and go away! I am not a number, and I don't need to be in your database!

Re:Off-topic rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you have to register because you're purchasing a development system and they want you in the developer program. This isn't a product, it's an early release development platform to enable OEM's and software developers to have early access and detect bugs in both Transmeta's stuff, and your stuff.

Re:Off-topic rant

[beta21]

Shall I supply my blood type and a DNA sample and a piss test and fingerprints in addition to my social security number and home phone and mother's maiden name?'

Also you need to provide a stool sample

Re:Off-topic rant

[Dark Lord Seth]

I couldn't agree more. Companies should be happy with my cash, I pay them for a product or service, they do (or, in case of my ISP, do not do) as they stated earlier and that is it. They want my data? They want to know where I live, what my phone number is and what my general interests are? Okay, that's information people are interested in and information these days costs money, so why don't they pay us consumers for our info we give to them?

Or for laughs, you can just give false info. According to a few sites, I'm now either an Iraqi military official with an interest in gardening, a german marketroid named Hanz Wurst with a yearly sallary of 50k+, 3 cars, a wife and 4 kids or a russian computer programmer named Pitr...

Re:Off-topic rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I have thought about creating a website where all of these profiles can be listed so that everybody will be able to use the same ones. If everybody uses Hanz Wurst and puts in the same marketing profile, the companies attempting to collect this data would figure it out pretty quickly. "Look at this! In the last months Hanz Wurst has spent $10,000 and has brought everything from crucifixes to butplugs"

Re:Off-topic rant

[Anonymous Coward]

If everybody uses Hanz Wurst and puts in the same marketing profile ...

Good idea, but get the spelling right. It's either Hans or Heinz. "Heinz Wurst" is actually kinda funny. :)

"Hanz" is not a name, well, maybe it is, in Hollywood. It probably "sounds German enough" in some kike director's ears to use for an Evil German Soldier character.

Re:Off-topic rant

[orthogonal]

Uh, you have to register because you're purchasing a development system and they want you in the developer program. This isn't a product, it's an early release development platform to enable OEM's and software developers to have early access and detect bugs in both Transmeta's stuff, and your stuff.

And if they asked nicely, I'd probably participate. But don't insist I do beta testing for your product (or "early release"); conscription doesn't put a smile on my face.

Re:Off-topic rant

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't insist I do beta testing for your product (or "early release")

Then don't buy it. It is a DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM. That is what it is there for.

Re:Off-topic rant

[Dark Lord Seth]

Like marketroids care. But to be honest, I got the name from the dutch remark "Hansworst", which is sometimes used to describe a clumsy person in an obvious yet funny way. I took the word apart and "germanized" it just because it sounded funnier. :) (Yes, I've got a warped mind, I know...)

benchmarks?

[Luke-Jr]

Does anyone have any comparisons so I can see how a Crusoe MHz compares with a PIII, P4, or AMD MHz?

Re:benchmarks?

[TeknoHog]

1 Intel MHz = 1 AMD MHz = 1 Crusoe MHz.

Performance is another thing, but one million cycles per second is the same thing in every friggin supercluster. Sorry to burst your bubble of different MHz measurements, but I guess truth always hertz.

Re:benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you a fucking wizard. You dumb fuck.

Think you are real spiffy with that hertz bullshit, eh? Suck a cock.

Re:benchmarks?

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

Funny, there are several things wrong with this statement:

Multiple clocking. Some chips are clocked to rising edge, some to falling edge, and some to both. Clocking to both doubles the EFFECTIVE clock speed.

Differently specced clocks. The AMD Elan I'm working with now can use either 33.000MHz or 33.333MHz as its base clock chip, leading to slight variations in the final frequency, but that's rounding error.

Split clock, anyone? Horrible to work with if you've done any LSI or VLSI, but running the chip on multiple multiples/divisors of the base clock is actually relatively common.

Finally, asynchronous designs, lol, although neither of the systems mentioned are asynchronous. Clockspeed is no longer a true concept anymore.

Re:benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah woah woah there. You're all wrong there honey. Why? You're a woman.

Re:benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is simply not true. In measuring the performance of a system, you need to take into account both the mhz and the CPI and the instruction complexity.

The CPI (or IPC) is the cycles per instruction. That is multiplied by cycle time to get a fairly accurate measurement of performance. But then there is a difference between RISC and CISC cores also. P4 uses a RISC like architecture (calls them micro ops) while TBird and P3 use a more proper CISC architecture. This doesn't even tak into account memory architectures, FP/I performance and so on.

Basically the point i'm trying to say is that mhz != mhz. Its a hell of a lot more complicated then that.

Re:benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

MHz does equal MHz, but MHz does not equal performance.

Re:benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) You're wrong. An Intel MHz = an AMD MHz. Just like a Honda km/h = a Ford km/h. Does an Intel chip turn any given clock cycle into more heat or move more data with it or does it do it more reliably? I'm not sure, but MHz doesn't measure those things. Let's not turn MHz into something more significant than it is. It is simply one million sqaure-wave (roughly) clock cycles. And one million Intel cycles look, smell, taste, and measure EXACTLY like one million AMD cycles. We've never measured performance or temperature or reliability in MHz, so let's not start now. MHz = MHz.

2) At this writing, your website is down. Maybe you used the wrong kind of MHz in your server.

or use a mini-itx for $100

[horster]

or you could just use via's mini-itx multimedia platform for around $100 (board, cpu, network, sound & video).

mini-itx.com

Re:or use a mini-itx for $100

[pointwood]

Yes, I plan on building my own little personal server based on the mini-itx platform. Use one of the CPU's that only require passive cooling. It's got one onboard nic - Outfit it with a second nic, some memory and a quiet harddisk like the Seagate Barracuda's, put it in a tiny case and you got yourself a really nice little *silent* server. The only problem is finding a good case. If someone started selling a system like this, I would most likely buy one as soon as I got the money.

What about...

[Tuxinatorium]

A beowulf cluster of those?

Re:What about...

[sirtimbly]

what about... an original idea that isn't mentioned every time some new piece of hardware comes out. "oooh let's see if we can make a beowulf cluster of TiVo's they are so cool!" - "I wonder if I can make a beowulf cluseter of Ti83 calculators..." jeez people :P

Ummmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does THIS company need my support and not many of the other companies out there?

Soley because Linus works there? I'm a huge linux fan, but it's a bit rich to tell me they need my support.

Interesting article though.

Or I could try to find a job

[SteweyGriffin]

Listen, I love Transmeta because they had some cool ideas when they started out. And hey, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, works there as well. So their geek factor is really high and they seem like nice people as well (I visited back in 2000).

I was just let-go by my company last Friday after 10 years of service. Bills are lying around waiting to be paid and I'm trying to send out resumes and find some work before my wife and kid leave me. I love them to death and would probably "end it all" if I lost them.

So why should I spend my meager (non-existant, now) salary to support a company? They're in a business, and the business of business involves profiting.

If you can't profit, you lose the business. So Transmeta, enough with this puppy-eyed cutesy appeal to the geek masses for financial support. Many of us are unemployed as it is and risking losing our lives from insanity.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Exiler]

You seem to be addressing Transmeta with that last sentance... Remember, they're not the one that asked.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Abcd1234]

This is off topic, but I really hope that whole "wife and kid leave me" thing was just hyperbole... otherwise, you might want to think about how much your wife really values your marriage.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT

linux sucks

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[sirtimbly]

how do you know they didnt orchestrate this instance of slashvertisement?

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[MisterFancypants]

I was just let-go by my company last Friday...
...I have a large penis

Have you considered working in porn? I've heard that porn generally isn't too negatively impacted in rough economic times because a guy's gotta wank when he's gotta wank, job or not.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Abcd1234]

Oh good! ;)

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, without a job, he probably wanks more... boredom and all that.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[geekoid]

Hey man, I feel for ya.

I am in an area where technolody worker unemployment rate is about 40%(portland, OR), and I found a job in 2 weeks, so I thought I'd let you know what I did, I hope it helps.

I printed up 100 resumes, went door to door in every tech sector and business park I could find
wlaked into the door and said:
"Hi, do you employee software engineers?"
usually theyresponded with "yes, but we're not hiring"
then I would say "not many people are, can I drop off a resume anyways?"
"Sure"
I spent 3 days handing out 75 resumes. They guy who called had just had a programmer quit, and like the fact that i am a "go getter" and hired me after a 15 minute interview, which too place 10 minutes after he called.

I'm not sure what you do, but maybe you can give this a try. Good Luck.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[andrewski]

I must concur. If your wife just views you as a large piggy-bank that must be fed, you may need to reconsider your relationship.

Why not ask her to help out with the bills for a while, and you can stay home with the child for a change. Then you might see how equal your partnership really is.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if you're trying to land a job, what are you doing posting on Slashdot?

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe he could log off Slashdot for a while and spend more time with his family, looking for work, or making himself useful.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[ahaning]

would probably "end it all" if I lost them

I don't know you, but I'd like to ask you to please try to keep from going this far. My mother is long-time friends with a woman whose husband committed suicide fairly recently. I knew the guy. He was really nice, and this was not at all expected. Above all, your committing suicide because your wife and kids left you might solve the problem for you, but your kids would be very hurt -- moreso than if they just left you.

Basically, any pain you feel that is killed with your own death will be magnified within all of those who know and love you (and even if neither of you know that they love you now, they will know that they love you if you kill yourself.)

Please don't kill yourself. Thank you.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if you're so friggin lame that you can't survive a short stint on unemployment (because you didn't do spit for financial planning), your wife and kids have no commitment and wouldnt support you through it, and you're so friggin weak emotionally that you'd even consider offing yourself- Be my guest and get it over with NOW!

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Directrix1]

Wow, thank you. A sane person on /. finally. I applaud the seemingly only person on here who actually has a soul. Good comment.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[larry bagina]

he is making himself useful. At least to me. While he's busy reading slashdot, i'm busy satisfying his wife's womanly needs.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[God! Awful 2]

So you go off ranting about how it's silly to spend your money supporting a business case and how businesses should profit from selling things and not from soliciting donations from geeks.

Then your sig says "I'm a Slashdot subscriber. Are you?"

Hypocrite!!

-a

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Bronster]

Bills are lying around waiting to be paid and I'm trying to send out resumes and find some work before my wife and kid leave me

And then the sig: I'm a slashdot subscriber, are you?

Dude, I'd really reconsider that slashdot subscription if I was you. In these hard economic times, you should be looking at all the ads you can to save money for your family.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[Anonymous Coward]

SteweyGriffin is a troll. His posts are not original. He steals everything from other discussion groups. He is manipulating the slashdot moderation system. Please do not mod up his posts. Please review his previous posts to see the pattern. Earlier today he posted about his company switching from Perl to PHP and now he fears them going out of business.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[barawn]

Are you developing a Crusoe based project? No? Then why would you need a DEVELOPMENT KIT? While I appreciate your problems, no one asked you specifically to support them.

Now, if anyone is reading and is developing a low power x86-based solution, they might be encouraged to get this, because Crusoe is an elegant and expandable solution.

Transmeta didn't appeal to the geek masses. They appealed to the embedded/laptop masses. And a $995 dev kit isn't expensive. It's cheap.

Re:Or I could try to find a job

[el_chicano]

While he's busy reading slashdot, i'm busy satisfying his wife's womanly needs.

How? By buying tampons for her?

Not meant to replace your workstation

[BitHive]

Yeah, it's stupid to say that a for-profit company needs our support, but this thing is not meant to be your next desktop machine. Transmeta knows you can get a barebones x86 box for much less with far greater performance--they're not as stupid as many of you would like to believe. They're selling a development kit, i.e. for someone wanting to prototype, say, a stereo component or set-top box for resale.

Re:Not meant to replace your workstation

[BadlandZ]

I do understand exactly what your saying... However... How is this any different than any other x86 barebones box in that respect?

I mean, I understand they are trying to target the "non-desktop" but were exactly does paying $1000 for a development kit prevent someone from having to come up with a custom motherboard fab for a set-top or other embedded device? Where exactly is paying $1000 (and I really want to know this, there might be an answer) help you in writing code for embedded device on a processor that is suppose to be x86 compatible?

I'm really missing the point here... But IMHO, it's more likely they are leveraging the geek market to help promote other mobo manufactures to build transmeta boards, so they can sell more chips in the long run..... And prolong the time it takes before they reach the fate that Cyrix did (bought out, low market share, nitch low-budjet/low-preformance x86 compatible chips).

Re:Not meant to replace your workstation

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, if that's the intended market with this stuff, honest question here. Why would a stereo or set-top box need so much power vs. a StrongArm or something? Pocket PCs (which do a lot more) certainly get by on 200MHz StrongArms.

Re:Not meant to replace your workstation

[BitHive]

I don't know...I was just trying to address a lot of the misdirected bashing in the other comments. If Transmeta is trying to enter this market, there's no reason for them to engineer a 200MHz CPU when they can throw in one of their more powerful models. Obviously there will be a point at which their Crusoe can handle more than a StrongArm, which allows for more features or the addition of unanticipated ones.

Re:Not meant to replace your workstation

[Anonymous Coward]

They laid off 40% of their workforce. I can hardly find products with their CPUs anywhere, much less just the CPU. They do not care about bottom up business models, where they generate a good product, make it readily available, and allow people to find uses and, perhaps in turn, formulate a product which uses their chips, e.g. silent PCs, media PCs, adaptable general control centers, scientific data collecting applications.

They are pretty damn stupid in my book.

Re:Not meant to replace your workstation

[barawn]

Development kits separate the programming aspect of bringing something to market from the hardware aspect. If they want to maximize the power usage, they need to figure out how to use LongRun, and also how to use the northbridge aspect of the Crusoe processors.

They will come up with a custom motherboard fab - they'll be developing it at the same time as the software.

In addition, development kits usually include schematics and/or gerbers for the actual board itself, which means you get FAR more than a board - you get the DESIGN, which can save a LOT of time.

In general people will just take the design, and strip off chips they don't need - hence the reason that so many PC boards you buy lack large portions of chips (that, and modularity).

This is actually cheap for a reference design - look at the uCdimm from Arcturus Networks - the dev kit is $1500.

Re:Not meant to replace your workstation

[barawn]

Do they play DVDs? Set-top box with integrated DVD and PVR functions.

Crusoes are really tablet/laptop boxes, though. This is intended to allow people to kludge together a laptop rather easily - hence the daughterboard which supports a battery.

Or a server board, to be honest - when you have dozens/hundreds of servers, small power savings add up in a power budget quite quickly.

People here keep suggesting the VIA Eden platform as being "just as low power" - bull. Transmeta processors are extremely power efficient. Just because something runs fanless doesn't mean it uses very little power - it just means that it has a power dissipation that can be handled by a heatsink only.

Java bytecode as the native inst set...

[dubbayu_d_40]

We in the Java world were creaming all over ourselves at this prospect.

Why didn't they persue the embedded device executing bytecode natively path?

Re:Java bytecode as the native inst set...

[Directrix1]

There are available processors which execute native Java bytecode. Go get one.

Re:Java bytecode as the native inst set...

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't "persue" this because the whole code-morphing was a smoke screen. It wasn't done for any reason than to avoid lawsuits from Intel for reverse-engineering the hardware. Instead they can just claim everything is in software, and not hardware.

Re:Java bytecode as the native inst set...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible (from the point of view of available documentation and accessibility in terms of installing new code-morphing software) for me to write my own code-morphing software for a different instruction set? And if not, why in God's name do Transmeta not make this possible? Do I have to wait to pick these up remaindered at ELI's (nod to MIT/Cantabrigian crowd) after Transmeta goes Chapter 7/11 before I can try?

Too expensive yes, but also too big

[binaryDigit]

I can see the attraction for a kit like this. For those of us who might want to put together some type of home theatre pc or car pc something _like_ this would be nice. With the low power/heat requirements, it would lend itself nicely to such uses. IF it were a lot smaller. It's just too big. Plus they are just competing with all the other microatx mb's out there. This is the feature set that I think would actually be attractive:

- make it much smaller, all small as feasable, don't worry about making it a "standard" size

- chuck the floppy/parallel, keep one serial for programming

- add 2 firewire ports for camcorders/ipods

- sell a 12v converter for car/boat apps

- allow the sound/video to be upgradable somehow (logic on sodimm?) to allow upgrading.

- of course, drop the price.

If they had done these things, then I would be most interested since I have several projects that are begging for a formfactor smaller than microatx, but yet doesn't force me to use crap audio/video.

Hell if you're going to go for a niche, then GO FOR THE NICHE, don't come out with a "me too" product that has very little to distinguish itself from the competition.

Re:Too expensive yes, but also too big

[gl4ss]

you do realise that it has 3 pci slots? i wonder what they are for.. maybe they have forbidden you to not use a vga card on those(say, ati r9000 pci) or soundcard..

Re:Too expensive yes, but also too big

[binaryDigit]

you do realise that it has 3 pci slots

I'm glad you mentioned that because I forgot to add them to my list:

- remove the 3 pci slots

For the formfactor and applications that I mentioned, a pci slot is worthless (actually, maybe one horizontal might work). I want this thing to be small, throwing in a big ole nvidia card with massive heat sink and fan isn't going to help the applications that I have in mind. That's why I said to give it expandability by sodimm based modules. small enough for you to upgrade and still keep the thing a minimum size. Better yet, allow some of the code morphing magic to do things like the audio, so I can "upgrade" without adding anything other than software (I'm dreaming now :)

Re:Too expensive yes, but also too big

[Gogo Dodo]

Hell if you're going to go for a niche, then GO FOR THE NICHE, don't come out with a "me too" product that has very little to distinguish itself from the competition.

It's a Development Kit. It's not intended for mass-market use. You're supposed to use the board to help you create real stuff. You stuffing it into some non-development work isn't its intended market so complaining about it is pointless.

Now if Transmeta said this was a motherboard for non-development markets, then you would have a complaint.

Re:Too expensive yes, but also too big

[binaryDigit]

It's a Development Kit. It's not intended for mass-market use. You're supposed to use the board to help you create real stuff.

Right but it's a development kit that is designed with that form factor in mind. I don't see any other support on their site for taking what you've designed and being able to apply it to other form factors. After all, it reads like a software development kit, not a hardware one since there are no hardware hooks. Is there a replaceable flash or anything of the sort, nope. They want you to cram the thing into a case, not a beige case, but some sort of case and build a product around this board, so my complaints are far from pointless. What makes this board any different from the other MicroATX boards out there other than the fact that it has their processor?

I stand by my contention that this board does not go far enough. It is NOT a "cpu platform development" board, it is a "system development" board to wrap the board in. Unless you saw something on their site that I didn't, if so, please point me to it, because like I said, I'd love to do some custom systems with it if they offer something other than a glorified microatx board.

Re:Too expensive yes, but also too big

[Anonymous Coward]

Please reread the billion other posts here that describe the purpose of the developer board. They aren't trying to force a particular form factor board on you, they are providing a simple board so that you can learn to use/interface with their chip/technology. The people who would be interested in this are the ones who would be building/designing their own boards and form factors with their own included flash chips or whatever.

They don't know what developers would want to use their chips for, so they provide a basic board with some simple I/O so that developers can try it out with whatever they want to put on it.

Why bother? VIA has em beat

[nweaver]

If you want a small, low power platform, look at the latest from Via, which contains 933 MHz processor (C3), USB2, audio, video, TV, ethernet, 1x PCI, in a 17cmx17cm form-factor for $160 from Fry's.

It definatly blows away that transmeta one: giving more functionality for a fraction of the cost. You can even get slower (~600 MHz) versions which are totally fanless.

Support Soekris or Mini-ITX boards instead

[ksw2]

At around $200 US, the Soekris net4501 makes a wonderful platform for firewall/vpn development, and beefier boards are forthcoming (at 500 and 800 MHz) in the near future. http://www.soekris.com

Additionally, if you're looking for higher end right now, choose one of the many mini-itx configurations available. http://www.mini-itx.com is a wonderful site based in the UK. Buy directly from them or use one of the vendors they recommend.

Sorry Linus , but people developing for tiny platforms can't afford to spend an extra $400-$500 for a Transmeta solution.

Re:Support Soekris or Mini-ITX boards instead

[i_am_nitrogen]

From what I understand, these are developer boards. Not consumer boards. Most embedded system developer boards cost two to ten times this much.

Re:Support Soekris or Mini-ITX boards instead

[ksw2]

From what I understand, these are developer boards. Not consumer boards. Most embedded system developer boards cost two to ten times this much.

So you're saying the "Crusoe TM5800 System Development Kit" is a consumer board?

Obligatory SP refernce

[DShard]

Step 1) Hire high profile geek.
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Profit!

Politics at work

[obiedxss]

It's very nice that there could be an alternative too Intel/AMD, but this product is simply to expensive.

Transmeta is like the Green Party. In 2000, neither the presidential candidate from either of the two major parties was terribly attractive. Nader, on the other hand, had some good ideas. Then again, was it really worth voting for him? It was impossible for him to get elected.

I voted for him...

So that means you buy Apple then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you don't practice what you preach?

Consider the alternative, guys..

[EvilStein]

http://www.savetransmeta.com

http://www.savelinus.com

http://www.helpcrusoesail.com

Yesh. I think that charging $995 might be just a wee bit more tolerable. :P

Hrm. Maybe we can get savekaryn.com to redirect funds to Transmeta. Hmm

Re:Consider the alternative, guys..

[ShadowDrake]

I really liked the promise of the Crusoe. I thought it was very clever technology.

The problem is that the marketing was terrible.

Crusoes were targeted at laptops. Problem: In a world where I can buy a Celeron 1500 laptop for USD 1000 or less, you'd better do something to impress me if you wanted me to buy a Crusoe. You can make it cheap, which you didn't (the only Crusoe laptop I see locally sells for ~USD 1800). You can make it last a long time on the battery, but I can get similar battery life for less money by throwing an external battery on the back of said $1000 Celeron. You can make it perform well, but you didn't.

Make it competitive, or make it cheap. Transmeta (or perhaps more likely those who made products out of Transmeta CPUs) chose neither.

I was surprised you didn't see the Crusoe landing on the corporate desktop too. There are plenty of places with 300-400-500MHz machines that are adequate (because they don't feel the need to play games). I would think that a Crusoe-based box would be ideal for that sort of role (as a replacement for dead boxes, or to put analogous boxes on more desks)... with limited cooling requirements it would be quiet, not belch out tonnes of heat, and save maintenence hassles by removing moving parts (fans).

I also assumed you'd get a lot more flexibility with the "morphing" technology than you actually did. When Transmeta made the necessary documentation to exploit this stuff hard to find, they cut off their nose to spite their face. Why doesn't that "new Amiga" someone promises every few years run on a Crusoe set to emulate a 400MHz 68060? Why don't you see one-off Crusoe boxes designed to simulate obscure and otherwise irreplacable hardware. Hell, why don't you see them set up for student projects at universities to emulate the architecture they want to use as a teaching tool?

What did get exploited was that 'Web Pad' deal which never materialised. Now, we have this 'Tablet PC' thing... which will probably immediately bloat its way out of the Crusoe's performance range.

I had hoped that someone would buy Transmeta and do something useful with the technology. Now, I hope that when Transmeta finishes circling the drain, the local dealers start dumping Crusoe laptops cheap. :)

Oh so now AMD is evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freaking amazing. Just because Linus work there (Transmeta)? I would bet if Linus started working for Microsoft themselves, Bill Gates would be known as the new savior.

What do you get for 995?

[stratjakt]

Just 1 pc Reference board?

Or a bunch of other goodies, tools to play with the codemorph twiddly-winks, or whatnot?

I mean I get the difference between a reference/debug build of a machine vs a retail build, eg Debug X-box vs a Retail X-box.

You have to get more than a half-assed MicroATX board with a Linus(tm) CPU on it, right?

I'm trying to avoid the obvious 'bah i wont support blah blah' thing and understand exactly what you get for a g-note from these guys.

How about access to the cpu "core"

[binaryDigit]

What would really be cool is if they had a kit that allowed one to right their own "code morphing" code on top of their vliw core. I'm sure someone is/has work/ed/ing on a jvm for it. But imagine a linux kernel on core. I know that stuff like this has been tried before and failed miserably, but hey, that's what stuff like OS is about, just doing and making it work, and saying "now isn't that cool".

Or you could even come up with your own custom extensions to the x86 IS, implement game logic, whatever.

Re:How about access to the cpu "core"

[andrewski]

What ever happened to their plan to support other platforms like PPC and others? I thought that one of the coolest plans that Transmeta had when they finally announced was to support more than just fucking Intel eventually! It's now, what, 4 years later and they still only have x86. Shame on you guys for lying to me like that!

Re:How about access to the cpu "core"

[binaryDigit]

It's now, what, 4 years later and they still only have x86. Shame on you guys for lying to me like that!

I don't think they lied, it all has to do with reality. The reality is that the cpus have not sold in the quantities that they would have liked. In order to spend money on resources to come up with these other "personalities" you have to get the money from somewhere. I can't imagine that it would be cheap to develop such a thing and make it performant enough to justify the expense. Like the original poster of the article said, their hurting and it sure doesn't make any sense to pour money into supporting other chips that don't have nearly the market as the intel chips anyway. plus one of their claims to fame, low heat dissapation, isn't as big of a deal with the PPC since the chips run at lower clock rates and use less power in general anyway. Do cut them some slack, nice idea, just no money in it, sounds familiar.

Re:How about access to the cpu "core"

[Fnord]

They didn't lie. They never said they were going to support other processor architechtures. The moment they released the details about code morphing, people everywhere (slashdot especially) started speculating on how they *could* support other architectures. After months, speculations turned to rumors and rumors got treated as fact. Someone from Transmeta even said in a press release at one point that the crusoe's instruction set, while adaptable, was designed with emulating x86 in mind. It could emulate other architechtures, but it wouldn't be efficient at all. The code morphing was just there to allow the core to be simpler, smaller, cheaper and lower powered. And he specifically stated that while it might be a possibility to go to other architectures, it wasn't a definite part of their plans.

Re:How about access to the cpu "core"

[mandolin]

What would really be cool is if they had a kit that allowed one to right their own "code morphing" code on top of their vliw core

I thought TMTA's whole point was that they could completely redesign the core to be, I dunno, really-freakin'-large-IW and no apps would break -- because they all used the code-morphing interface. Giving direct access to the VLIW core would defeat that.

As I recall, NexGen (who was bought by AMD) did expose their pentium-class x86's RISC-like core. It had a register switch or something. Nobody I can recall made use of it, though.

But as long as we're dreaming, I'd think bigger. Like Bochs with multiple front-end instruction sets.

Also, I'd like a pony.

Re:How about access to the cpu "core"

[Animats]

That's a good idea. (It would be an even better idea if Transmeta had some market share, but I digress.)

One extension to the architecture that I'd like to see tried is better support for fast interprocess communication. I'd like to have the hardware support needed to do a context switch and set up some segment addressing for an interprocess call without going through the kernel. Basically, I want peer-to-peer call gates. IA-32 has a mechanism nobody uses called "call gates", which almost, but not quite, do something useful.

This wouldn't benefit traditional operating systems much, but it would speed up MsgSend/MsgReceive in QNX (which is about 1us now) to the speed of a subroutine call. That would make true microkernel operating systems speed-competitive with monolithic kernels. Might even make the Hurd work.

Re:How about access to the cpu "core"

[melonman]

I don't think they lied, it all has to do with reality. The reality is that the cpus have not sold in the quantities that they would have liked.

A bit of assembler is about as close as I have ever got to the core of a chip, so sorry if all the terms that follow are inaccurate. But I also thought that by far the most interesting thing about the Crusoe was that you could potentially produce a different instruction set. And, sure, I guess it takes a lot of work, but isn't this the sort of insane project that could potentially be tackled by the Open Source community?

One of the machines I used a long way back had microcode that was loaded from disc (it had a separate 68000 just to bootstrap the main processor, which was a circuit board the size of a large suitcase), so you could really edit your instruction set in emacs, reboot, and presumably watch your machine die. Can you do that with a Crusoe, or is the microcode (or whatever it's called nowadays) blown into the silicon?

The potential benefits of doing this sort of thing could be quite high. The machine mentioned above had an instruction set that was optimised for lisp-like data structures, and, as a result, ran lisp much faster than other processors of the time with similar clock speeds. There must be other applications where a custom-made reduced instruction set would pay dividends.

obvious troll

[Anonymous Coward]

sometimes I can't believe how retarded you moderators are.

need my support?

[GoatPigSheep]

lets see, for what you get.. their development kit is very overpriced. Crusoe is an underperforming chip. Why would I support something which just isn't very good?

Sorry, I am not throwing my money on this sinking ship.

Re:need my support?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want performance, you buy a performance chip. If you want budget, you get a budget chip. If you want low power for mobile/low noise systems, you get a Crusoe. Market segmentation--your sinking ship is someone else's goldmine.

Your comments make me want to put a 3+GHz Hyperthreading P4 in a tablet PC and see who wants to buy it.

Gee

[unterderbrucke]

Intel lets me buy a motherboard and stick their chip in without paying them, why should I pay Transmeta?

Re:Gee

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a development kit, you dumb fuck.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, arrogantly incorrect.

Your hidden message is not so hidden

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen, I love Transmeta because they had some cool ideas when they started out. And hey, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, works there as well. So their geek factor is really high and they seem like nice people as well (I visited back in 2000).

I was just let-go by my company last Friday after 10 years of service. Bills are lying around waiting to be paid and I'm trying to send out resumes and find some work before my wife and kid leave me. I love them to death and would probably "end it all" if I lost them.

So why should I spend my meager (non-existant, now) salary to support a company? They're in a business, and the business of business involves profiting.

If you can't profit, you lose the business. So Transmeta, enough with this puppy-eyed cutesy appeal to the geek masses for financial support. Many of us are unemployed as it is and risking losing our lives from insanity.

I have a large penis.

They don't want my business...

[frovingslosh]

and you gotta register before you can buy one, but they need your support.

If they need my support so much they wouldn't make me register just to become their customer. We all know that Hitler used the pretext of registering Crusoe development systems in the 1930's, and then had a handy list when he confiscated them in the 1940's! Heck, anyone that can see this conspiracy coming is likely to believe we put a man on the moon, too!

I can see the hellstorm that is to be released...

[SensitiveMale]

by telling a group of linux users that they have to spend money.

If there is any other user group that will try to squeeze each and every cycle out of an old 286 then I don't know of them.

Simple

[0x0d0a]

Transmeta's chips run cool. Not a big deal to many people who grew up on vacuum cleaners inside their computers, but many Mac aficionados know how much having a very quiet computer can mean.

There's a lot of applications that just don't *need* a ton of CPU time, but longevity and the ability to not have failure-prone and noisy fans in a device is worthwhile.

I don't see why this is so bad. If I get a laptop in the near future (think I finally settled on a new desktop instead this year), it's going to be a Lifebook. Why? The things *get* a ton of battery life (17 hrs spec, 10 hrs under load).

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Transmeta support YOU.

Bitch-Slap Powered Computer:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yowsa!

Re:Bitch-Slap Powered Computer:

[Shuh]

Very funny.

This is just a developer kit

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most of you guys missed the point. This is not so much for you to build your home entertainment PC, or the next killer desktop machine. Quite rightly, an Intel/AMD/Via solution would be much more cost effective.

This is here really for smaller manufacturers to have accesses to the technology needed to build their prototypes etc. You prototype your next device using these parts, and when ready to go mass market, you can strike a deal for the CPU's etc. at bulk or whatever.

This is just a developer kit, it isnt supposed to be really cheap/competitive etc. The value stuff comes when you are buying in bulk later.

C3 is a dog, but it doesn't matter

[X_Caffeine]

Similar to the way that an Athlon 1600+ is faster than an older 1600mhz Tbird, the VIA C3 processors are nowhere near as fast as equivalently clocked Pentiums or Athlons. I'm highly skeptical that a 900mhz C3 is close to the performance of a 900mhz Crusoe, which by most accounts performs as you would expect a near-1ghz processor to do.

But man, Transmeta has totally missed the boat by not making basic, affordable computers available to hobbyists. FlexATX and C3-driven Mini-ITX boards are enjoying the kind of hobbyist popularity that helped put AMD on the map a few years ago. This $1000 "developer board" is too little, too late, and too much freakin' $$$!

Re:C3 is a dog, but it doesn't matter

[Black_Logic]

Similar to the way that an Athlon 1600+ is faster than an older 1600mhz Tbird, the VIA C3 processors are nowhere near as fast as equivalently clocked Pentiums or Athlons. I'm highly skeptical that a 900mhz C3 is close to the performance of a 900mhz Crusoe, which by most accounts performs as you would expect a near-1ghz processor to do.

Good point, but for the $100 bucks it costs for an 800 mhz (optional fanless config), VIA mini-itx make a great super small desktop system (for non-gamers) They've also got great linux support and tv-out works great with RH pschye.
Also for around $300 you can get a complete mini-itx system including case, hd, cdrom and memory, I'd say these systems would work as more than just hobbyists' toys. Seems like these would make great workstation and desktop boxes.

Re:C3 is a dog, but it doesn't matter

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

My 'main machine' is a VIA 866 with 256MB DDR. I do not play games and it is both quiet and fast enough to handle DSL. I originally bought it as a low-power firewall machine but it was just to good for that.
Yep, I would love to test a Transmeta system, but Mobo+Processor are around $800 more expensive (ok, 5 times the price) and it is simply not worth it. Maybe this offer should have been available 2 years ago and at a sensible price, at the moment I see no reason to change.
Now, for a fast machine, the AMD Hammer should be interesting. I am seriously thinking of getting one of them in 6 months.

Agreed 1000%

[bhsx]

Sort of OT; but why isn't the EPIA series, especially the 6000 model with 800MHz C3 not gaining more attention? It runs fanless, has TV-out on the board, can take 1GB of ram and has everything you could need on the board, throw it into
one of these which happens to have an external PS and a front USB port and was pretty much designed with the EPIA 6000 in mind. I've harped on it before, but why isn't this the preferred RYO PVR platform?
The form factor fits right in with your vcr, and the case comes with a pci-riser card to fit that AMD AWIP card for TV-in, and excellent 3D. Nearly silent and the price is right (the Mobo/Case costs around $195). You could make a fantastic PVR/PC-compatible-gaming-consolesque system for around $500. $195 +$100(AIW) +$75(80GB eide hdd) +$60(1GB pc133 ram) +70(DVD/CD-RW comb0 drive). Add it up. And that's a lot of overkill on the ram, but hey, it's cheap. So why isn't this a story? Because it's not coming from Intel, AMD, or Transmeta? All of this "digital convergeance" is leading to more and more embedded arenas, if we can make a box like that at retail prices, think of what we could prototype for our own foray into the embedded market...

Re:Agreed 1000%

[horster]

totally agree - every time there is a stupid quiet pc or case moding story on slashdot I post to mini-itx.com. don't really know why people arent' more pysched, this is the board everyone claims they've been wanting - cheap, quiet, low power, mid range performance. perfect for web and multimedia.

Re:Agreed 1000%

[X_Caffeine]

One reason: they're slow. An 800mhz C3 is NOT as fast as an 800mhz P3 or Athlon. An 800mhz processor really is acceptable for most work or even as a TV companion, but C3's are barely up to 500mhz standards.

If Transmeta could sell processor/board combinations as cheaply as VIA C3s, they'd murder the Mini-ITX market. Unfortunately, hobbyists and home-builders are not a priority to them.

Re:Agreed 1000%

[drinkypoo]

It's not a story because we already all know. I was going to buy a mini-itx system but I got an old athlon 700 instead because it turned out that no one made a mini-itx with dual ethernet at the time. Someone may now, but I wouldn't know.

See I think the whole damned purpose of mini itx is blown when you have to stick PCI cards on there to get things done with them. At that point you might as well just get a baby atx or whatever the smallest of those are called. They're only a couple inches bigger than mini itx and they cost about the same amount with a gigahertz celeron on them.

I would pay $200 for a 1ghz mini-itx board - a small processor fan is okay, I can always replace it with a peltier junction and a (fairly) big heat sink - That had the following interfaces: IDE, USB 2, IEEE1394, and the usual PC crap. I don't even need serial or parallel ports. I would further pay about $130 for one about the same speed with just ide and two ethernet interfaces, and the PC crap. At that point, if you want video capture, you can add the PCI riser and add something which does both video capture and hardware encoding, leaving your CPU free to play DVDs or something.

But seriously, dual ethernet is a necessity. I hope someone has figured that one out by now, I'm too lazy to check :P

Re:Agreed 1000%

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this if you need dual ethernet, it has 3 in pretty much the same form factor and a CF slot! http://www.lex.com.tw/cv860a.htm

Re:Why bother? VIA has em beat

[repetty]

...more functionality for a fraction of the cost.

Like what, specifically?

Maybe you should spend less time at Slashdot?

[melted]

Maybe you should spend less time at Slashdot and more time looking for at least temporary job? "End it all" is an easy and irreversible solution. And dude, your wife sucks bigtime if she'll leave in a situation like this. Put your shit together!
*

Read the sig of the above poster

[wwwgregcom]

It reads:
I am a slashdot subscriber. Are you?

In his post it reads:
So why should I spend my meager (non-existant, now) salary to support a company? They're in a business, and the business of business involves profiting.

I don't know. Why should you?

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Crusoe-powered computer builds YOU!

Might be worth it dor DRM avoidance

[vandan]

AMD and Intel are pushing for integrated DRM in all systems. Using Transmetta products might be a way of avoiding that - if enough people boycott AMD and Intel and are vocal about their reasons we might be able to get compulsory DRM at bay.
However I did notice that they use an ATI video card. Bad move if you're wanting to use that under Linux. Their video cards are all tied up in patents. I have been trying for 18 months to get an answer on why ATI asked people to cease development of TV-out support on my Radeon. That was one of the reasons I bought it, and it WAS supported and worked well at the time. Now however it only works with 18-month old drivers that don't really sit well with X. Damned ATI. Oh and Damned nVidia also. Their driver lock my system every 20 mins without fail - the other reason I chose to buy a Radeon. Maybe I should just redirect my console to my canon bubblejet...

Re:Might be worth it dor DRM avoidance

[damiam]

Maybe I should just redirect my console to my canon bubblejet...

The 3D support there will probably be even worse tham your Radeon...

Re:I can see the hellstorm that is to be released.

[Anonymous Coward]

linus requires a 386 (because the 286 doesn't offer protected memory, and GNU/applications are so buggy they'd trash all your memory, given half ythe chance). Anyhow, Slashdot readers are generally using a P4, anything less and they'd need to admit that XWindows sucks ass.

PPC emulation

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, technically, Crusoe's compatability with x86 is strictly software -- the 'code morphing' software is just another layer between the OS and the processor...if enough people could get their hands on this type of development kit, might someone be able to write some software that would let the Crusoe emulate a PPC chip rather than x86?

Just wondering because it'd be awesome to be able to truly dual-boot your computer, with x86 and PPC (or SPARC, or whatever else for that matter).

Be positive

[Compact Dick]

Yes, Ditzel would want to show Transmeta as pandering to the Windows market - after all, how can a HW manufacturer stay in business if it doesn't?

But remember: there will be a fast-growing market for non-DRMed CPUs. If Transmeta play their cards right [get better marketing and business managers, dammit!], they can show the PHBs of the world why it is a bad idea to invest in hardware that they do not have full control over.

Thanks for the informative post.

Re:Be positive

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

Is it just me, or is Transmeta's market surprisingly.... Embedded?

I don't know about you, but when I'm working embedded, I either use Linux, or a proper RTOS (or one of the RTOS flavors of Linux). Windows? What's that?

Nope

[Compact Dick]

I steal my Amigas.

[yes, that was in jest.]

Sigh..

[jaseuk]

This kit is a tool for people who are considering using this device. As a working demo platform that they can fiddle with while getting their own implementation online.

Please don't go out and buy on of these just for the hell of it. I doubt they are interested in selling this kit to you unless you are intending to take a shit load of quantity.

Jason

Christ on a Cracker

[Anonymous Coward]

You're having rough times, ok, but please realize the guy posting this article wasn't necessarily directing the call for support to YOU PERSONALLY.

Sheezus.

kernel.org & transmeta

[bigberk]

Sure, I know they're a business. But they're going out of their way to support linux and that's something I'm not ashamed to support. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours as they say.

$ host -t NS kernel.org
kernel.org name server ns2.transmeta.com
kernel.org name server zenii.linux.org.uk
kernel.org name server ns.vger.kernel.org
kernel.org name server ns1.kernel.org
kernel.org name server ns1.transmeta.com
kernel.org name server ns2.kernel.org

Re:Why bother? VIA has em beat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the original poster, but does their board have firewire? USB2.0? TV out? 7cm square size? Readily available cases which make matx brethren look gigantic? Drop in replacement for most socket 370 boards, depending on the CPU you chose? Drop in to your current case and power supply, depending on the motherboard chosen?

Gee, choice, while not functionality, is pretty damn cool as a feature, don't you think?

Why codemorph?

[pitr256]

The more I read about the Crusoe chips, the more I start to think about how they should just drop the strict x86 compat, and start people developing directly for the core of the chip, in it's native tongue.

The Crusoe is a chip that runs comparable to a similar Intel/AMD chip and yet does it all through software emulation. Imagine what it can do with it's straight instruction set! Developers could start programming applications that take advantage of this, but then if they required a backward compatible app that has been compiled for x86, then the chip could also run those too. A distro based on the "native" Crusoe instruction set, could run x86 compiled applications.

Why stop there? If they are able to codemorph x86, why not PPC or ... make the Crusoe a 64 bit chip, and codemorph SPARC or MIPS.

Re:Why codemorph?

[MikeBabcock]

Code morphing isn't the problem. They should be supporting other chips though as well, if they want the embedded market. Having ARM support would be a killer (IMHO) and emulating some of the low-power Motorola chips would also be a great deal. Doing Intel support was obviously to sell laptops and Windows machines and get more exposure.

$995 is irelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

.. for a development kit.

What counts is per-unit production costs if your trying to build consumer devices. Now that would be intersting to compare....

Reference design.

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

It's a reference design. One of the hardest things when you're designing a new motherboard is to get everything to "go" the first time. Once you're running, you can worry about fixing your network card. The board just lets people play around with the hardware.

With any luck there are expansions on the board for custom hardware, but even if there aren't, plenty of chipsets can be moved from PCI form-factor to PCI-on-the-PCB form factor easily enough. Lets you get "your" design running faster.

Oh, and they come with full schematics, which I believe to be royalty-free. Really good for use.

Honestly though, I like lower barrier-of-entry, since I'm mostly a hobbiest, so AMD got my money (the Elan, not the Athlon). Specs and datasheets are free for that chip ;)

Transmeta should talk to motherboard manufacturers

[blackwizard]

... if they want my support. I'd love to build a machine that uses less power and doesn't need a CPU fan; it'd be good for a router or a file server for my humble home office. I would use a Transmeta CPU in a heartbeat if it were available and relatively inexpensive. VIA actually offers some similar products; I used a CPU from their C3 line that advertises that it doesn't need a fan, but it isn't nearly as nifty as Transmeta's stuff. Anyway, why doesn't Transmeta start talks with competing motherboard manufacturers?

Re:Why bother? VIA has em beat

[barawn]

I doubt the Eden platform is actually lower power than the Crusoe platform. Running fanless simply means that the processor has a low power dissipation - that is, W/mm^2 - power per area. It doesn't necessarily mean that it actually uses low power.

That, and the Crusoe devkit is basically designed for a laptop. You can't buy a charge controller/keyboard/touchpad interface for the Eden platform.

Not to mention the fact that you get schematics, as well. For $995. That's cheap.

Via C3

[Anonymous Coward]

I know others have already mentioned Via CPUs...

Years ago, when they first came out, I wanted to build a Transmeta system - I longed for the days of my silent Apple IIe. Since then the noise level the average PC has only increased. In the past few months I learned about the mini-ITX board, and the VIA Eden fanless CPU.

Then I bought a integrated Soyo MB with a Via C3 800Mhz cpu ($74),a fanless power supply ($70) and a seagate baracuda 80GB HD. I run it fanless, even though you're not supposed to. Usually (web browsing, email, xmms, ssh, emacs) the CPU runs at about 96+% idle, and its heatsink is slightly warm. When I do heavier stuff (long compile jobs, audio encoding, gnuchess), I flip a switch on the CPU fan to keep it from getting hot. A friend says I'll cook the CPU. We'll see. But until then I can fall asleep and wake up to streaming audio or audio off of the hard drive.

I named the computer silence. And it lives up to its name.

Re:Why bother? VIA has em beat

[repetty]

I was asking about the CPU, not the board (although board-wise you make excellent observations).

Me? The number one feature I want in a workstation is quiet. I'll game on another box whle wearing enclosed headphones, but otherwise, I want freak'n quiet.

So, about the CPU... what features?

Crusoe and x86-64?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering Torvalds' flirting remark with X86-64 half a yea ago, will there be a Crusoe supporting x86-64? Anyone heard any rumours?!

Re:Why? -- Mod parent down

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a development board dumba$$. Read before you post.

too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pity that transmeta didn't do this a few years ago when it first launched. A lot of small-time developers like me were looking to incorporate Transmeta products into internet appliances, handhelds and wearables. All we (the little guys) got was a load of snobbery; if you didn't have a billion dollars in the bank, they didn't want to talk to you. It didn't matter how good (or bad) your idea was, it just mattered how many millions of units you had the potential of financing and manufacturing per month.

Whatever happened to sowing a thousand seeds and seeing which one bloomed? Whatever happened to grass roots, passion, and evangelism? It wouldn't have hurt them to at least share the specs and allow anyone to develop innovative product demos. Transmeta needed all the friends it could get when it was getting started, but their fat-headed sales reps felt they knew all and they were wise enough to hand-pick the few partners that would carry them to success.

I've seen too many products die because of policies like this. "We don't have the resources to support the little guys thus engaging them might tarnish our reputation" "We don't want shoddy mom-and-pop shop products ruining the name of our fine product" I'm sorry, but even the big players turn out some flops, and sometimes the most visionary products come from holes in the wall.

not that much of a dog

[g4dget]

The 800MHz C3 runs like a 266MHz P3 in some benchmarks I ran. I think on the EPIA-M, they did something with the memory that may improve performance beyond the simple increase in clock speed; so, I would expect the 933MHz C3 to come in like a 300-400MHz P3. I'd expect the 900MHz Crusoe to be somewhat faster, but not a whole lot.

But for $160, including processor, the EPIA-M is an amazing deal, and it's fast enough for most day-to-day uses. Dollar for dollar, it's by far the best deal around. Those things should be in every school and business as workstations and desktop machines.

hs-1600

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.transmeta.com/everywhere/products/mobil e/boser/boser_hs1600.html

switch to FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

If Transmeta had endorsed FreeBSD, they would be doing much better today. Like so many unfortunate companies, they bet on the wrong OS.

Transmeta's Market

[Anonymous Coward]

What Transmeta should do with their code morphing is make an X86 processor that can also do multi-media things (like MPEG decompression).

If the VLIW engine is efficient enough it would be possible to dedicate a percentage of the CPU power for multi-media apps and then the remaining power to the X86 layer for control logic.

My company was looking for a chip exactly like this to rid ourselvs of the Sigma Designs EM8400 on our board.

Hint, hint Transmeta: Go for the niche markets!

IN FASCIST AMERIKA

[Anonymous Coward]

CAPITALISM HATES YOU!

A viable business plan

[varjag]

1. Invite a geek celebrity into the company
2. Ask geeks for support
3. ????
3. Profit

Crusoe PPC!

[jblaze]

Why don't they just write the processor code to emulate a PPC? Please. They say this can be done. What is the point of having code morphing if you only write for 1 instruction set?

A system developmen kit isn't what YOU think it is

[anactofgod]

This is insightful? Once again, a the peanut gallery is revealing its ignorance.

This is a comment I'd expect by someone who probably thinks that "developing a computer system" involves buying a video card, motherboard, memory, a hard drive and a CD-RW drive and a cool game controller, installing them into a pre-built chassis and loading RedHat 8.0 from a CD s/he bought from CompUSA. For an added challenge, s/he might overclock the CPU!

For the record, this is called "assembling a computer", and requires no more engineering skill than installing a water filter on the kitchen faucet. Real computer ENGINEERS developing a new product know the value of a good system development kit, and wouldn't compare one to a "mini-ATX board". We're not talking about a system development kit that an code monkey would use to write the next greatest "Hello, World" perl script. System development kits are used in the creation of new computer-based hardware and software SYSTEMS, including embedded applications like settop boxes, robotic controllers, and automobile control electronics.

This development system may not provide the value and functionality required of it, but that should be determined by comparing the features/capabilities that it provides against those required by the engineers in the markets that Transmeta is trying to develop, and by comparing it to other similar system development kits, and not by comparing it to an off-the-shelf motherboard you get from Fry's and the perceived need of LAN party attendees.

Via C3

[nweaver]

128K L1, 64K L2 (victim cache I assume). It's, architecture wise, roughly between a Pentium and PPro (and 2 and III) core, so roughly, a 933 MHz C3 would be about a 400 MHz Intel PIII. Not great, but fast enough for most tasks. The latest Epia board does have an MPEG2 decoder in hardware, so you can do full-rate DVD decoding.

Note that the C3's peak power is the same roughly as Transmeta (5.5 W), at a fraction of the cost (the die on the C3 is 53 mm^2 and it is PIII compatable chipset-wise), and considering how poorly Transmeta performs (notice Transmeta is very lax on giving benchmarks, and are really sensitive to caching on the instruction stream), Via pretty much has em beat.

Hey ekrout

[Anonymous Coward]

IN SOVIET RUSSIA ekrout is not a fucking troll!

bytecode processors don't sell well... ask Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun had a couple bytecode processors in their famous javastations. They tried to sell them too. In the end they died off - no demand. No demand, no sales. No sales, no profit.

What "kind" of "support"?

[teqo]

... they need your support..

While usually almost every /.er is very fast at identifying corporate monopolistic evil (Microsoft, Intel, whatever) and pointing out how threatening they are, now many (are these the same people?) seem to be pissed off by the idea of "supporting" a company because it's their obligation to deliver a product which can compete both in quality and price with those who own the market (read Intel, plus AMD).What kind of support do they need? Are they having volunteers crusing through malls collecting spare change while singing Christmas songs, like the salvation army? Do they send you donation requests every three weeks with pityful photos of their starving employees? I don't think so, though some of the posts seem to imply this.

What they need is people and companies considering their fringy product despite the domination of that market by quasi-monopolists. Are there reasons to do so, apart from being an affectionate Linus-hugging idealistic person? Yes, there are!

• The Transmeta chips, as said before, offer a much better performance/watt ratio than any Pentium or Athlon available, which is not only mandatory for portable/low-power devices, but also a plus in terms of <kyoto>sustainable use of energy resources.</kyoto> (Given, StrongArm and XScale play in that area, but they are not IA32-compatible..)
  
• Transmeta so far will not implement the TCPA, AFAIK. If you dislike the TCPA (you dislike the TCPA, don't you?!), you need an alternative if you want to stay with the IA32-architecture (which will be around for some time despite upcoming IA64 and Hammer, IMHO).
  

I admit that power consumption and TCPA threats are (not yet) an issue for all of us who think electricity drips right out of the wall sockets, but if you ask yourself questions about energy and TCPA, TM can be part of the answer. The attitude of many posters which reads "Pah, I don't care, I can build a better system cheaper!" proves that the "support" they need is getting rid of preoccupation that the Intel/AMD/mobo companies cartel is the answer to all of our questions. The "support" they need is to realize that alternatives will vanish from a market which is dominated by few, very powerful companies unless you actively consider using the alternatives. There is good reason to consider TM and other alternatives, reason beyond some geekish affection and mere pity for a kewl silicon valley startup.

It's the same kind of "support" garage companies producing neat car mp3 players, *BSD delevopers who ask to occasionally buy a CD to support the costs, or the small grocery store next to your Walmart needs: If you care for the product, buy the product. If you don't care, then don't buy it, but don't be too surprised if it will be gone tomorrow due to a market which is occupied by few global players dominating their product area who do not need any customer support, because they a) have the monitary force to kick any small competitor out of the market, b) leave no option to the customers anyway, and c) have followers do not value alternative solutions for alternative questions.

Maybe we all can agree on this, because hardcore pro-capitalistic people usually love competition, and the rest of us love alternatives... >:)

--
"Where do you want to go today? Somewhere you can never take me." -- Chumbawamba

Re:A system developmen kit isn't what YOU think it

[Anonymous Coward]

I gotta tell ya, that "s/he" stuff really gets annoying after awhile.