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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."
"The notebook's standard battery will last three hours under normal conditions. An extended battery will add six more hours of computing time and 0.6 pounds, Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
Computer are useless: they can only give you answers. - Pablo Picasso
That's the Crusoe chip. These machines have a new chip, the Efficeon. Quoting from the article:
"The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says."
I don't know if 1.4 times the Crusoe should be considered fast, but at least it's faster...
Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.
Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery. Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery. Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter).
"It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem."
If you look at the weight of the laptop 2 pounds for the 3 hours and 2.6 pounds of 6 additional hours. That is lighter than a conventional laptop. Hell, my battery prolly weighhs 2 punds for 3 and a half hours. So this does use less power. The battery is just smaller.
Evolution or ID?
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.
No 1.4 times Crusoe is not fast, since the Crusoe was/is kinda slow. Anyway the comment implied that the line was fast, but as stated in the linked article the Crusoe was panned for its performance.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
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.
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....
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
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.
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 -
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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