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Transmeta TM8800 And Ultraportable Announced
yerdaddie writes "The just-released Transmeta TM8800 has been integrated into a new ultraportable from Sharp. The smaller 90nm variety clocks and performs better than the older 130nm TM86XX Efficeons. It also seems the Orion Multisystems personal clusters discussed earlier on slashdot will be built around this processor variant. Hopefully Transmeta will be releasing a developer kit soon for eager hardware hackers."
Since the new product is in Japanese, I can't really comment except to ask about Beowolf Clusters...
Put identity in the browser.
someone wake me up when Sharp decide to build an ultraportable that runs Linux.
Repeat after me. Winmodems are not modems.
Could anyone who is gifted with the knowledge of japanese please tell me how much battery life it has?
http://www.engadget.com/entry/5844163416339364/
Another Link provides some extra info.
I know that Mini-ITX boards using VIA low-power chips have a strong following of hobby SFF projects. Is there something similar for the Efficion?
why is it that i still can't buy transmeta cpus easily to stick onto also easily available motherboards? these days low power, running cool and reliable are more important than high performance (24/7 devices).
How can I buy a transmeta chip and build a system from one ? I checked pricewatch but they dont list transmeta chips... and what sort of motherboard do they clip onto ? It seems to me, at least, they're cool factor (linus a former hacker) is very high but in reality it's very ambigious when it comes to the real world.
:( :( :(
Love to put to get a mythtv box with a transmeta chip at its heart but I guess that's not possible so far
Skype Me! username: john_allen_mohammed
It looks to have the following abilities/specs:
1.26 kilograms (2.772 pounds)
1.6GHz Transmeta processor
Wireless B/G using an Atheros device
CD/DVD drive
Some kind of hyper-brightness ability for the screen
Windows XP SP2 (NX flag support)
ATI Mobility 7500 (probably at least 64MB RAM, since it says the laptop can play FFXI, and that's kinda video-intensive)
A switch to convert from normal-power mode to mobile-power mode (thus changing processor efficiency and other things)
Some kind of remote control a la the iPod Remote
I can't read kanji and hiragana, so I'm quite out of it.
I assume that Linux support will be forthcoming from the community for this, as Sharp states that they recommend XP Professional SP2 for this device at the top of the page.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
More Information from Gizmodo
Japanese Stats
I want someting about the size of one of the old Sony picturebook, running on either a transmeta or via low power processor. It should have a color screen, although it doesn't have to be too fancy even older dual scan technology would be fine. It would need wireless, and should have decent (4+ hours)battery life. All for under $700USD. It wouldnt need all the bells and whistles that the Japanese like to stuff in their ultraportables, it just need to be able to browse web pages and run a word processor.
Or in fact any mother board that takes a TM8800 that is sold retail?
Nah, that would mean selling more processors so they won't do it.
Some things are more important than an animated rat
and a Dirrect HDD function which lets you hook it up to another PC over USB and use it as an external hard drive (if only this were standard on every laptop).
I have been wondering how long it would take the Windows world to adopt this feature. Of course it has been shipping with every Powerbook since the very first one (I believe the Powerbook 100 back in 1990 or 1991). Of course back then it was with SCSI and now it is with Firewire leading me to wonder why they used USB?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Approximately, it builds in the thin-shaped DVD drive of 9.5mm, lightness approximately 1.28kg (PC-MP50G approximately 1.26kg)* 1 scantness approximately 28.8mm (the most thin section) actualizing the light weight compact body. With business and it can carry about lightly with private, shows the high performance of completeness ahead going out.
Due to the CD/DVD drive of built-in, the pleasure of DVD spreads e.g., you look at the movie software and the original work DVD with the business trip return and the coffee. It is the front tray system which taking in and out the disk is easy to do. In addition, if PC-MP70G of DVD multiple drive loading, it can compile television program and the image etc. of the digital video camera which were videotaped with the DVD recorder easily, can draw up original DVD. All you base are belong to Sharp
From state of power source off, the button of the substance one touch just is done, Windows(R) without starting INSTANT PLAY which start * 1it is possible DVD and CD* adopting 2. Furthermore, using the remote control headphone where volume setting and chapter operation etc. belong, because it can do, it can enjoy in portable DVD player feeling.
Letter and the picture clear vivid. It can enjoy with the image where also the DVD software and the broadband contents are beautiful brightly.
* 1 When the DVD software and the CD software are enjoyed with INSTANT PLAY, it is necessary to set the disk to drive.
* 2 It actualizesInterVideo (R )withInstant ON TM.
Low adopting the trance meta corporation make Efficeon TM TM8800 1.6GHz which is proud of the electric power consumptionhigh performance to CPU. High operational frequency is actualized without increasing electric power consumption with adoption of 90nm process.
Trance meta corporation makeEfficeon TM TM8800 strengthens also security performance. The safety for virus attack such as the cord/code execution with buffer overrun is raised.
(C) 2002- 2004 SQUARE ENIX CO. and LTD. All Rights Reserved. Title Design by Yoshitaka Amano
Indicating the 3D game and streaming image etc. insmoothly with the ATI corporation make MOBILITYTM RADEON TM 7500 which corresponds to 3D. High throughput It requires "FINAL FANTASY(R) XI for Windows(R) ", it is appointed to the official operational recognition personal computer.
* 3
The game software is selling separately. With the economical electrical design, approximately 5.0 hours* actualizing the long haul drive of 4. In addition, if the MOBILE switch was changed to MOBILE mode, CPU throughput and picture brightness were held down,* 5, it becomes setting of electric power consumption concern.
* 4 It is the time when it measured Corporation electronic intelligence technical industrial association "JEITA battery methods-time measurement (Ver.1.0)" of on the basis. You can verify detailed measurement condition, in the support page classified by type of Mobius home page.Http://www.sharp.co.jp/mebius/ and actual drive time differ depending upon use environment.
* 5 The operational frequency of CPU is held down low, in initial condition display intensity from under 2nd is changed in. There are times when occurs scene falling with such as animated picture playback.
Maximum 54Mbps* 6 (standard value) building in the wireless LAN of the IEEE802.11b/g conformity which corresponds to high-speed communication. The Super G TM mode which raisestransfer rate* it corresponds to also 7. The other personal computer and the data can share "radio de chat" and network setting can be changed "entrusts Internet" and so on, can use automatically smoothly with the wireless.
* 6 Numerical value of indication is maximum with respect to theory of wireless LAN standard, is not something which shows actual data rate.
* 7 SuperGTM is the wireless LAN high-speed technology which the Atheros Communications corporation developed. SuperGTM function is used, it is necessary also for the wireless LAN equipment aheadconnectingto correspond to Super G TM.
Unfortunately, for Transmeta, this "technology" is neither new nor hard to duplicate. The Opteron (AMD) and the new Pentium IV (Intel) are both VLIW processors microprogrammed to execute the IA32-64 instruction set.
Both AMD and Intel have an R&D budget that dwarfs the annual revenue stream of Transmeta. It has had several years of losses and will likely head into bankruptcy by the end of next year.
AMD and Intel are in a fierce battle that will destroy lesser players like Transmeta. Unfortunately for Transmeta, the IA32 processors are rapidly becoming commodities with shrinking margins.
Is there a white knight for Transmeta?
EmperorLinux offers the Sharp Actius MM10, MM20 with various distributions of Linux available (pre-installed). The Sharp features full Linux hardware support for: X, sound, USB, PCMCIA, WiFi, networking, hibernate, and more. They include a 56 Kbps PCMCIA modem.
I have dual partition with Fedora Core 2 and Debian Sarge installed on my MM20. Check out the web site for more details.
Welcome back from your deep sleep.
http://www.emperorlinux.com/meteor.php
I did a big search for Transmeta benchmark results a couple days back when Orion was announced and found nothing of consequence.
What's up with that?
Sure, it is probably 'fast enough', but I want to know how fast.
Development kits for this chip start at $445 and increase sharply from there. That is a problem for my students who are trying to do projects. The good news is that they can often, but not always, get donated evaluation kits.
You can usually buy a chip on some kind of commercial board for less. Does anyone have any experience using boards that weren't intended as development kits?
Given another poster's comment that the company may not be there next year, is it worthwhile (educationally) to develop for these chips? ie. Will the knowledge gained by doing a project with this chip be transferrable to other low power chips?
When will it be available in the USA, like the mm10 and mm20?
Yawn...
Half opens an eye. MM20 is nice. Hmm. 2 Hrs battery life.
Thats like a UPS isn't it? Not cheap.
Thanks for the coffee
I am curious; is there any comparison chart of the efficiency (MIPS/Watt) of various CPUs?
I wonder how the Transmetas really score...compared to PowerPCs, for example.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"Both AMD and Intel have an R&D budget that dwarfs the annual revenue stream of Transmeta. It has had several years of losses [smartmoney.com] and will likely head into bankruptcy by the end of next year."
Intel and AMD stockholders must be wondering what the fuck their company's have been blowing their R&D budgets on.
Smaller companies are almost always way more productive with a buck than big companies. That's why I would withhold publishing their obituary if I were you.
Remember, Apple has been going out of business every year for two decades.
--Richard
Do you know where I can buy one? I can't seem to find a URL on the ibase website.
Some things are more important than an animated rat
Hrm.. it appears to be 32MBytes of vram (http://www.sharp.co.jp/products/pcmp70g/text/p6.h tml)
10.4" screen (Do they use inches for screen size in Japan??)
I know next to nothing about Japanese, so grain of salt for us all!
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Instead of listening to the Intel marketing department, I suggest that you look at the block diagram of the Opteron. Each IA32 instruction is converted into a wide instruction or a sequence of wide instructions. This instruction then drives, potentially, multiple functional units (e.g., addition and multiplication) in parallel. If that behavior is not VLIW, then what is VLIW?
You say "tomato". I say "tomatoh". You say "RISC". I say "VLIW".
Are you sure that's not an iBook?
1.6GHz Transmeta processor
Does anyone know if the new Transmeta processor is any better than the older ones?
If AMD vs Intel has thought us anything, it certainly proves that clockspeed does not equal to performance!
While Transmetas are really great power-wise (even predating the Pentium Ms), I really wonder if they can hold their own speedwise when compared to a 1.6Ghz Centrino processor.
Anyway the Pentium Ms are pretty good.
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Transmeta is too closed to hackers. That's part of the reason it's failing. Few hackers are going to buy one of their $1000+ devkits when they can get a mini-itx board for $200. Yeah, the 'meta board can supposedly peform better without a fan, but so what? Transmeta has no clue. They could have started a revolution, instead they tried to push disruptive technology through channels that didn't want disruptive technology.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Transmetta chips are small so that they can fit into tiny ass enclosures like notebooks, those orion things, and OQOs. If it had to be socketed (instead of a BGA) it would be thicker, the ceramic packaging would be larger and more expensive due to the use of pins...
Etc...
Its a space/size thing... I'm sure they could make one if they wanted but I doubt the demand would be enough to warrant the manufacturing costs (don't forget Transmeta pays TSMC or UMC to make the chips for them).
FWIW
I hope you die painfully and alone.
> Transmeta is too closed to hackers.
Don't be so sure of that. I'm involved with the group that's reverse engineering the Efficeon and CMS right now.
This is from the same people who brought you the Crusoe Exposed series of articles, but the Efficeon version will be *much* more detailed. As you'll see, Transmeta should not have relied on trade secrets in lieu of more patents. There are many smart people out there and this chip can and will be exposed.
Besides, Transmeta is no longer releasing a full Efficeon devkit to anyone with cash, supposedly to avoid another "incident" like with Crusoe. Notice how only a 3rd-party SBC is available to the public in lieu of a real "development kit" this time. Unfortunately they were too late; the analysis effort is already well under way.
I never understood why IBM uses accupoints, which are awful, the trackpad is the best mouse in the world, I even use a trackpad with my desktop.
Besides, IBM does not know how to build small, X31 is much heavier than mm20.
mm20 works great under linux and weighs only 1.99 pounds.
An ultraportable must be light enough so that can be comfortably held with a single hand. mm20 has the right weight, X31 is too heavy.
What major advantages does this have over the 18-month-old Panasonic W2 other than a slightly better video card and smaller footprint? The W2 weighs 2.8 pounds, has a DVD-RW, 12.1" screen, big keyboard, 1.1 GHz CPU, and its battery lasts over 7 hours.
In the USA, we get the older version of the W2, but it's still some-tasty.
On a side note, some tips for running Linux on the W2:
- Red Hat
- Debian
- leog forum
I also own a MM20 but I am using Slackware Linux. The battery life is actually between 3 and 4 hours of use. Remember that this is a ultra-portable. Only approximately 1.9lbs. That is an excellent battery life and form factor for this price. There are two additional batteries available from Sharp that provide 6 and 9 hour charges but add additional weight. It makes my IBM X series laptop look like a luggable.
The Sharp MM20 is in my opinion that best ultraportable available outside of Japan for linux.
In order to use the computer in hard disk mode you need to use a cradle which is HUGE, heavier than the laptop itself, in order to keep the balance. It does not make sense to use the cradle on the road, I did not buy a 1.99 pound laptop in order to carry 5 pounds around!. In addition, knoppix does not recognize the cradle as a high speed USB device, transferring data under knoppix takes forever.
In never use the cradle, for making backups of my linux installation and transferring data, I boot the laptop under knoppix from an external pocket DVD writer and save the data on an external firevire drive connected with a PC card. It works much faster than with the cradle.The pocket dvd writer I use is much smaller and lighter than the cradle and can be easily moved around.
The "technology" that Transmeta developed is essentially a VLIW processor that can be micro-programmed to interpret the IA32 instruction set...
Not INTERPRET, but rather TRANSLATE IA32 to native VLIW. The word "translate" means "compile binary to binary" here. The translated result is cached, which makes the whole thing run at a more acceptable speed.
Intel and AMD do the same thing - IA32 is translated to an internal RISC-like code. They also cache the translated code. Only they do the translation in hardware, while Transmeta does it in software.
The extra translation hardware drains extra power. The extra translation software uses up extra CPU clocks, effectively slowing down a Crusoe (or any transmeta CPU) compared to a Pentium (any recent Intel/AMD CPU) at the same clock rate. If you slow down the clock on the Pentium so that the performance equals to that of the Crusoe, you reduce the power consumption to the same level as the Crusoe as well. Or better.
So, all in all, it's a wash. All mobile CPUs throttle down the clock when possible. The maximum speed for the Pentium is higher than for a Crusoe with the same clock. The die of the Transmeta chip is smaller. That's all the difference.
Surprisingly, where Intel (not AMD) gets its edge with Pentium M has nothing to do with CPU core. It's the way they handle the L2 cache. They have a large L2 cache, but they only clock the block of it where there is an access. This saves a lot of power, while allowing for a larger L2 cache. Which has more effect on the CPU speed and power consumption than all the tricks with the core architecture.
The original idea that made Transmeta chips so attractive had nothing to do with the core architecture either. The idea was that they would not only slow down the clock, but also reduce the supply voltage accordingly, which squared the power savings compared to Intel SpeedStep. Of course, by now both Intel and AMD do the same thing, so Transmeta doesn't have an edge there any more.
AMD and Intel are in a fierce battle that will destroy lesser players like Transmeta
Not necessarily. Transmeta is in a niche market, ultra-mobile IA32 devices. As long as they stay in a niche market, they have a chance. But I doubt they could make it into the mainstream CPU market in near future.
Is there a white knight for Transmeta?
Is there an SS1 for Transmeta? Wait, wrong topic...
I own a Sharp Mebius MM20 (Japanese model of Actius MM20) with a 1GHz TransMeta Efficeon TM8600. I managed to get almost everything working in linux, except for one thing: power saving modes (sleep/suspend). Actually, sleep did work with some versions of the kernel (2.6.6 maybe) but after resuming the wireless LAN would stop working (not sure if this is a problem with the ACPI or the Prism54 drivers). Unfortunately, as my main use of this notebook is to work on the road, this forces me to use it in Windows most of the time.
http://www.ibase-i.com.tw/mb860.htm
its "only" the 1Ghz model but thats what counts for getting into people's hands. the faster ones will follow.
look at the Sharp Mebius CV model. Its also an efficeon system but is much closer to picturebook size.
Here is a nice site that discusses ultraportable computers and u-PCs (ultra-personal PCs): http://u-pcs.com/
Anybody who follows mini-itx and 'meta has known about that for months. They've also known that you can't buy it retail in onesies and twosies--nowhere. Nowhere. It's dead. There are so many other solutions out there that unless you, like Slashdot, follow 'meta out of some warped allegience to Linus, it's not even on your radar. It's dead.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?