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Sharp Debuts New Transmeta-based Laptop
kpogoda writes "Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will debut today within a new trim and slim Sharp notebook. In case you don't remember, the processor family is known for its extremely low power consumption and blazingly high computing speeds."
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
While I love their products, the slashdot title of "blazingly high" clock speeds is a little misleading.
From the article: "A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April."
So we are looking at around 1ghz.
Seriously, though, this practice shouldn't be rewarded with more free publicity for these products or their "reviews".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
...a laptop with a dedicated "portable" architecture. I can definately see Intel saying "More transistors, more power, more clock, and it'll be okay" - which is questionable on the desktop but not at all adequate with laptops. Transmeta's departure from this is an interesting turn of events - Will we see two separate processor lines, one for the laptop, and one for the desktop? And I don't mean the M-series, which just added variable clock and PM, but something like two different design philosophies.
:)
And damn, that's a sexy laptop...
toresbe
How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?
And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one?
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
The CPU is just one component that eats electricity in a laptop; the other big hog is the back lit screen.
Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.
I think that many people have a laptop for ease of use (all your files not backed up in one place that moves with you) and expect the laptop to do everything. What I like is those laptops that drop performance in battery mode.
The new Muramasa has been out in Japan since January. It has had some nice reviews and keeps up well with Pentium-M modells of similar clock speed (see this Japanese review). And it is much cheaper.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I don't know what everybody is complaining about with these being slow chips. THey should really start to look at the trade-offs. Do they want to lug around an 8 pound laptop, with 3 hourse of battery life, just so they can say they have a 2.4 GHz laptop, or would they rather carry around a 2.6 pound laptop with 6 hours of battery life (weight with extended battery), and have to run things just a tinsy bit slower. I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, Transmeta's tend to run alot cooler then Intel/Amd...
I know personally after sitting in a class at university with my Dell my legs feel like they are about to melt. Anyways Transmeta has exact stats on the site but its somewhere around 1/4 of the heat output, personally thats why I am considering a Transmeta next round....
what these processors are known for. Benchmarks show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
I think the question should rather be...
Whether linux is well optimized for x86 arch.
since these chips use a VLIW core for the actual processing with the x86 instructions being compiled on the fly to the vliw code.
Maybe if the linux kernel was compiled to take better advantage of instruction level parallelism the code morphing engine(the x86 to vliw compiler) could actually run linux much faster.
But then that would be doing some part of the code morphing engines job at the compiler level... nothing wrong with that except you would have to write an entirely new compiler.
plz correct me if i am wrong. (any comp arch gurus around)
[all generalizations are untrue except this one]
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:
While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.
-Charlie
Of course both fans spinning will impact your battery performance but it's better than third degree burns on your... lap.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
As far as I'm concerned (and lots of people I know as well), the magic price point for notebooks financed from personal funds has become $1000 or less. After all, these are machines that are often "refreshed" every two years or less, I definitely don't want to spend much more than $500/year on notebooks. This Sharp is only giving me a slow processor, XGA and 20GB for $1500? Heck, I can get the ultra-slim Averatec 3150 for $900 (often for $700 refurbished), and it's got twice the HD and a faster mobile AMD to boot. Given that the backlight eats most of the power anyway, I doubt this Sharp will run all that much longer on a charge than the Averatec, Transmeta or no Transmeta.
I very much doubt your Pentium M numbers. Why else would e.g. Samsung need to permanently activate the cooling fan on its Pentium M notebooks when running without battery, whereas the Efficeon doesn't even need a fan.
And saying just because the TM5600 (oldest Crusoe) was slow the Efficeon is also slow, is like saying just because the K-6 was slow the Athlon64 is also slow.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Somehow Transmeta will always have a warm place in my heart.
And Intel will always have a warm place in my lap.
Seriously, though.... The new IBM X40 is only 2.7 lbs with approximately the same battery life. The Transmeta only looks good until one realizes that it has a tiny 10" monitor.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I have a feeling the guy writing the summary was blazingly high.
Intel Pentium M Thermal Design Power is listed as 24.5 Watt at 1.7 GHz, a FAR cry from the 7 Watt you claim
The 900 MHz and 1GHz ones are the 7 Watt models, but how those perform compared to an Efficeon I was unable to find.
Cooper
--
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!
- Groo The Wanderer -
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.
Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile.
There is an option to optimize for the Transmeta processor line in the kernel configuration. That option is passed along to GCC to make sure the kernel will run as fast as possible. So GCC supports the Transmeta system.
There are also things like LongRun support, etc. that are in the kernel configuration, that don't necessarily involve GCC options.
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I've heard that Crusoe processors tend to do well on relatively compact computing tasks, like CPU-heavy numerical analysis in which a relatively small bit of code is run repeatedly-- a bit that's small enough to fit into the instruction translation cache. One interesting thing that I've noticed is that, compared to most applications, OpenOffice seems to run quite nicely on my P1120. Perhaps that's because the JVM (or its most frequently used subset) is small enough to stay in the translation cache? I'm just guessing, here... more informed insight is welcome.
The extended battery really does last almost 9 hours if you're not using WiFi-- e.g., on a flight. I still had 48% battery remaining after constant use on a 5-hour Orlando-to-LA flight last summer. My WiFi use is mostly at home, and it's still decent-- though I haven't tried to measure it. (Interestingly enough, the biggest battery hog seems to be the tiny DLink USB Bluetooth adapter that I use to sync my cell phone!)
On the other hand, I effectively lose some of my performance on airplanes, due to everyone around me saying, "What the heck is that thing? Aww, how cute..." Then they realize that their Dell laptop's extended battery is almost as big as my whole rig. :-)
FWIW, my P1120 doesn't appear to have a fan or a vent. And I can actually place it on my lap for a while; it gets warm, but not too hot.
Obligatory Linux content: I haven't tried loading Linux on it yet, because as far as I can tell, there is no available touch screen calibration utility. (The screen itself reportedly shows up as a generic USB pointing device.) Anyone know of a solution for this?