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Build Your Own Crusoe-Powered Computer

Posted by timothy on from the lower-your-electric-bills dept.

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? :)

6 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. They need my support? by tgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:They need my support? by PhotoGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
  2. Here's why by Compact+Dick · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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.

    --
    Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
    1. Re:Here's why by MisterFancypants · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

  3. C3 is a dog, but it doesn't matter by X_Caffeine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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' $$$!

    --
    // I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
  4. Re:How about access to the cpu "core" by binaryDigit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.