New Transmeta Chip: "Efficeon"

ddtstudio writes "Oh, "Astro" was such a friendly name -- but it probably had trademark issues. So the alphabet blender came up with "Efficeon" instead. This eWeek story gives the lowdown on what Transmeta is doing apres Linus. There's also a writeup on ExtremeTech."

Comments

Marketing

[mjmalone]

From the article:

Transmeta is the "number two" vendor in the ultraportable mainstream notebook market

Is that why nobody knows about them? Maybe they should focus some attention on advertising, I don't think many people outside the tech industry knows about Transmeta. Intel spends a rediculous amount of money on product marketing, and when many people get a new computer they want "Intel Inside" because it's what they know. I think if any competitor really wants to break into the chip industry and compete with the big boys they are going to have to get their name out, the real differences between one chip versus another are not very obvious to the consumer, brand recognition is what drives sales.

Re:Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why VIA is becoming more and more popular. If you think "ultra-small sized PCs" you have to think mini-ITX, and VIA EPIA.

This is what I think (may be biased by publicity, but that's exactly my point) :
Intel = reliable, industry standard (never had any Intel die, even since the 8086 days)
AMD = power, speed, will burn without good heat dissipation (had two AMDs die on me, installed professionally. Will never buy AMD again)
VIA = low-heat, small size (currently two projets using EPIA boards)

Re:Marketing

[Raul654]

Transmetta specializes in low power computing. That's their niche - processors that don't eat up much energy. This really isn't a direct-sale market. The stuff they make is built into other devices. So their job is to convience sony and/or palm or whoever makes the low power (read - portable) devices that they are the ones to talk to. So I don't think there's really a need to become well known outside the computing industry.

Re:Marketing

[dodell]

Then again, there needs to be a budget for said ridiculous amounts of money.

I think Transmeta is doing a good job getting their chips marketed. HP is including them in their products; this seems to me to be a pretty good method of advertising in the first place -- if your product is already accepted by a major manufacturer, you're halfway there. Then again, I don't think they're in precisely the same market as Intel in the first place.

Re:Marketing

[advocate_one]

"Obviously, we don't have the $350 million Intel has" to spend on marketing, he said.

$350 million buys a lot of presence in magazines etc... Similar problem for linux in trying to get past the reams of Microsoft bought advertorials etc. in the magazines as well...

Transmeta's Efficeon will have to compete on it's technical merits, and when people who matter realise that it offers a much better power consumption, lower temperatures and much longer battery life they'll start to take it up. 3 hours or so with Intel Celeron 1500 is just not on when I was used to some 24 hours or so battery life on my old 8086. Hopefully, the Efficeon will enable them to make notebooks that can cope with a complete working day or more away from the mains outlet... RAM's cheap enough these days to enable them to give it a seriously large cache so as to minimise HD usage, and sticking the OS in a bootable flash disk will improve matters as well. Now we just need a very low power display technology such as high res colour "electronic ink" based thin displays

Re:Marketing

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

Transmetta specializes in low power computing. That's their niche - processors that don't eat up much energy. This really isn't a direct-sale market. The stuff they make is built into other devices. So their job is to convience sony and/or palm or whoever makes the low power (read - portable) devices that they are the ones to talk to. So I don't think there's really a need to become well known outside the computing industry.

True, but companies who make consumer devices would be more inclined to listen to Transmeta if consumers were demanding devices with Transmeta processors. The way to convice consumers is with direct marketing. If you were correct, Intel wouldn't need to targer consumers either, since most of Intel's sales are to OEM, not direct either.

Re:Marketing

[TheViffer]

And 640K is enough for anyone ...

I completly disagree with your posts.

First low power consumption is become more and more and issue. Electricity is not cheap, and with more and more computers in organizations, they are looking for ways to cut down on the electricity bill.

This is two fold because with lower power consumption means less heat. Walla .. save MORE electricity by not running huge, or as many air conditioning units.

This even falls back to home use. 10 years ago running your own home server was a "pipe dream" and not needed. Now just about every slashdot reader has some sort of server(s) running. I myself only run a Duron 1000 due to is low power consumption and cooler temperatures. For serving up files and a few dns, web hits is more then enough. After switch DOWN from a Palamino cored Athlon to this, I saw my monthly electric usage decline.

And your mention of not needing to market is just wrong. They should be out there stating ...

We run cooler ..
We run cheaper ..

And add in a few plugs .. We run faster, better, cheaper, blah blah blah. Go to the extent of showing a picture of an Athlon frying an egg on one picture and a piece of ice sitting on a Trasmetta CPU. And by marketing their name, people come to know it, and trust it more, which mean people will be more interested in products with their chips, which mean more companies will seek out Transmetta chips which mean more revenue.

Why does BASF advertise .. "We dont make 'jack', we just make 'jack' better"

My 0010 cents worth.

Efficon?

[YU Nicks NE Way]

Does anyone besides me read this as "F-ing Con"? Maybe my problem is that seems like a good description of Transmeta's current business model.

God Dammit!

[illuminata]

Why do companies like Intel, AMD, and Transmeta keep having to name processors so they sound like they came straight from the mouth of Rob Schneider's SNL character The Richmeister?

The Celer-on, the Opter-on, the Athl-on, the Effice-on.

It's not good for marketing, guys! Everybody hates Rob Schneider!

Trademark, not copyright

[_fuzz_]

You can't copyright a name, but you can trademark it.

So...

[dex22]

The English will be able to enjoy their Efficeon Chips!

That joke is so bad, I'm questioning if I should post it.

Ahhh, whatever!

Alternative name

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose we stop with these new-fangled blender names. I propose Transmeta call this new chip "The Scotsman."

Nothing is cheaper with the power than "The Scotsman!" Cue intel-sounding theme, but with bagpipes.

Re:whats the big deal

[Nerant]

Transmeta chips are essentially a VLIW CPU, surrounded by a sophisticated JIT compiler that translates and compiles x86 code to the native instruction set of the VLIW CPU, and then runs the code.
This allows Transmeta to save on die space. Smaller die = less transistors = less heat = less power.
Unfortunately, this approach so far has yielded substandard performance. And even though power consumption was better than Intel's mobile processors for awhile, Intel quickly geared up, threw money and engineers at the problem, and came out with the Pentium M.
Arstechnica.com has speculated before that Transmeta could easily use the same approach to optimise for speed/performance as opposed to power consumption : I'm hoping they do.

"Rrropyright Rrrissues!"

[mariox19]

You're darn right there were copyright issues with the name "Astro."

I am become Efficeon, saver of batteries!

[RatBastard]

Behold my power saving and dispair!

From the English Language Ministry

[giminy]

what Transmeta is doing apres Linus

The use of french words are no longer allowed in courriel^Wemail.

Re:whats the big deal

[Erich]

Really? Interesting. I would figure it could never be as fast as native x86, it's all still emulation.

"Native x86" really doesn't exist. Since the AMD K5 and Intel Pentium Pro, x86 instructions are translated into smaller, RISC-like instructions inside the processor.

Instead of doing this translation in hardware, Transmeta does this in software, and it enables a lot of optimization while (at the same time) vastly reducing the amount of hardware resources required to do wide, out-of-order execution.

They get varied results -- some things go much, much faster on the Transmeta, but it's very bad at doing other things (especially things like self-modifying code).

The internal architecture is also very geared towards translation and running translated code. There are features that allow it to run a bunch of code in a translation that is fast, but not safe. If there is a problem with this unsafe translation (memory exception or something) the execution can be rewinded (rewound?) into a known-good state and a slower translation or interpretation can be used.

Transmeta has released some good papers on this whole thing. If you're interested in this kind of thing, you might want to also check out HP's Dynamo and Intel's DAISY.

Yay, clever computer architecture!