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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.
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.
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
Actaully, sharp's PDA is Linux powered, the first widely successful Linux PDA made availiable, I believe. I have one, and I use it as an X server so that I can ssh into my FreeBSD box at home and run programs. It has a WiFi card, built in keyboard, and all around is very nice. There is also an alternative Linux distro availiable for it.
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?
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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.
You mean like this ?
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Yes.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
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
That is not a TM8800 board. The processor it comes with has truly pathetic performance.
I had linux running on my Sharp Actius 100 about 4 years ago. There was even a driver that worked with the modem, as I recall. Let's see.... yeah, here's the archive of my install experiences.
I'm not seeing much in the Prescott internal block diagram to sugest that it is VLIW. Are all the micro-ops really attached in parallel?
I'm not sure why the grandparent post said opteron had VLIW, because it should have basically the same micro-op core as the Athlon64.
Besides, AMD technical doc 24112.pdf (Software Optimization Guide for AMD Athlon(TM) 64 and AMD Opteron(TM) Processors) doesn't seem to suggest that it is a full-on VLIW. The macro op might have one load-store with one compute (int or float), but it is still broken down again to single-op micro-ops:
Internal Instruction Formats
The AMD64 instruction set is complex; instructions have variable-length encodings and many
perform multiple primitive operations. AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron processors do not execute
these complex instructions directly, but, instead, decode them internally into simpler fixed-length
instructions called macro-ops. Processor schedulers subsequently break down macro-ops into
sequences of even simpler instructions called micro-ops, each of which specifies a single primitive operation.
A macro-op is a fixed-length instruction that:
Expresses, at most, one integer or floating-point operation and one load and/or store operation.
Is the primary unit of work managed (that is, dispatched and retired) by the processor.
A micro-op is a fixed-length instruction that:
Expresses one and only one of the primitive operations that the processor can perform (for
example, a load).
Is executed by the processor's execution units.
Actually, if you are into LinuxMobile IBM thinkpads are really good choices.
I own a small Thinkpad X31 and Linux couldn't be happier on this machine than any other. At least I can just imagine what will happen if I run Linux on my friends' Toshibas, Fujitsus, Dells, HPs, and what-nots.
IBM's the real deal, no poppycock Win-anything!
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.
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
Well, you've sort of proved my point. 'meta is just a VLIW chip with some special firmware on it. The real magic is in the firmware. Now, I'm not suggesting that they should open source the firmware, but when you can't socket the thing into a PC MoBo, when you can't even buy the mini-ITX board at a reasonable price, when people have to reverse-engineer basic technical data, it's DOA for any real hacker (except hackers who like to reverse-engineer!). It's for "corporate partners only". It's closed. It's dead, and that's a shame.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.