Transmeta Astro -- More Details

chill writes "We've recently seen announcements, product launches and reviews from AMD and Intel on their new low power chipsets. Not to be left out, Transmeta has more details on their forthcoming Astro processor. Slashdot covered the Astro back at Comdex in November."

Comments

Re:What ever happened the to the code morphing?

[Elwood P Dowd]

I remember way back before they released anything, their major claim to fame so to speak was their code morphing tech where it would just emulate whatever cpu you needed.

No, their claim to fame was that their code morphing allowed them to run x86 instructions on a VLIW chip, which may turn out to be more scalable/efficient than either RISC or CISC architectures. The R&D on the code morphing was just as expensive as the R&D for the rest of the chip, so I can't imagine they'd go repeating that for some less popular architecture.

They never said they were about to release code morphing packages for other platforms. Idiotic journalists (and slashdot readers) were the ones that pointed out that the code morphing could work for other platforms.

Order by price/power/performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Fastest to slowest:
AMD XP-M
Intel Pentium-M
Intel ULV Pentium III
Via C3
Transmeta Crusoe

Least power to most power:
Transmeta Crusoe
Intel Pentium-M
Via C3
Intel ULV Pentium III
AMD XP-M

Cheapest to most expensive:
Via C3
Transmeta Crusoe
Intel ULV Pentium III
AMD XP-M
Pentium-M

It depends on your need; if you are going for embedded systems try a non-x86 processor, which is better in all two categories and in the middle in performance. For a laptop, the XP-M or Pentium-M offers desktop replacement performance; if battery life is your thing, the Pentium-M, Via C3 or Transmeta processors ought to do ok. If cheap is the most important thing then go Via.