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Transmeta Closing Up Shop
Ashutosh Lotlikar wrote to mention an article on the Business 2.0 site stating that chip producer Transmeta is going out of business. From the article: "The company's Crusoe family of microprocessors promised lower power consumption and heat generation, enabling the creation of laptops with longer battery life. Critics bashed the chips for being underpowered compared with Intel's latest and greatest. Transmeta struggled to find a market, and recently it sold off most of its chipmaking business for $15 million to Culturecom Holdings, a Hong Kong company better known for publishing comic books."
They're still working on putting out a chip based on LongRun2, which reduces transistor leakage. This is very important for cutting power consumption and increasing CPU speed. They've also licensed the technology to Fujitsu, NEC and Sony, none of which have released a product based on it yet.
It's quite possible, though apparently unlikely, that Transmeta will turn things around and manage to survive. However, Intel is already all over the leakage problem, so this may well be the end of Transmeta.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Who?
Bahahha, suckers!
I wonder what would have happened if Transmeta had released the instruction set for the native VLIW instruction-set processor that runs the x86 emulation layer. Sure, it's probably very hard to code for, but may have offered a tremendous advantage for some applications.
Also, hopefully OQO and others have a backup plan so this doesn't put a kink in the handheld pc market.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
not here
Where is Linus Torvalds going to work now?
(Sources said that he worked at Transmeta... Get it?)
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
If Transmeta does close shop, I hope they consider opening up their "Code Morphing Software". It's an interesting approach to X86 processing on non-X86 processors, for more info check here: http://www.transmeta.com/crusoe/codemorphing.html
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
The whole architecture was build upon the premise that the core is only accessable via the code morphing software, so the different crusoe chips hadnt even binary compatible cores.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
which allows If you answered would take about 2 we all know, Why not? It's quick said. 'Screaming previously thought is the ultimate the project were taken over against vigorous to llok into Usenet is roughly of all legitimate the facts and
I was just wondering what will become of their code morphing technology especially in light of the rumors of Apple potentially going to X86. Could be interesting if Apple had a chip that could do X86 and PPC at near full native.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I suppose Transmeta's technologies will come in handy. Like they say :)
Hyperom.com
I loved my Casio FIVA, which would run 6-8 hr on a Li battery (till the battery pushed up the daisies), and weighed 3 lbs with battery ... It was "fast enough" because my concern was with size and weight.
I have an X40 now and I still get good run time from it, more like 4-6 hr. It's around 4 lb w/o the dock, but right now I almost always carry the dock with the multiburner in it.
Still, I wish there were much more emphasis on low-power laptop designs.
The other day I was fiddling with a laptop that had dual 2GHz processors or something like that. Ehh? I mean, it's great that they can cram all that into a "moderately" small package, but still, you need Nomex pants to use it in your lap.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
It's so irresponsible of /. to post something like this. It's no excuse that they're just re-posting links from submitters. RTFA. Nowhere does it say that Transmeta is going out of business.
The Transmeta CPUs have the highest MIPS/Watt ratio of all, still. Laptops built around them have the longest battery life, and superclusters with Transmeta CPUs have some of the highest processing densities and lowest power consumption - characteristics that may not be an obvious advantage for customers in need of raw power, but that certainly lower the bill when you factor in the power needed to dissipate the extra heat, and the price of real-estate.
I will be the first to admit: I was sceptical when Transmeta started publicizing their ideas. I thought employing Linus was just clever PR. Yet, as time went on, I thought a Transmeta-based laptop would be a very desirable item. I hate it when laptops burn your lap, don't you?
Sigged!
Critics bashed the chips for being underpowered compared with Intel's latest and greatest.
These sound like the same guys who insist Apple is going broke every quarter since '91, can only survive by going x86, etc.
Does the tech industry have more trouble than most w/ utterly clueless people who set themselves up as experts? John Dvorak is still getting published and invited to conferences; so-called analysts make silly statements, Wall Street listens, and everybody (but the analyst) suffers. Crusoe probably got "reviewed" by some moron who gave it a bad rating because it runs at less MHz than the IT guys told him his laptop does.
Transmeta had some good ideas, too.
Something about expensive inefficient processors that irks me...
It's not enough to "take little power". I mean a modern implementation of an 8051 could probably be made to take VERY little power.
The processor has to also be efficient enough todo something meaningful with the little amount of power it requires...
Add to the fact that processor is not the only significant power drain in laptop...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
obviously this is a conspiracy by bill gates. someone please link to one of those super clever posters of bill gates as hitler
This type of news, especially in the chip business reminds me of "Cyrix" - the chip, in the mid/late 90s! In the chip business, it must be tough to be a newcomer. Texas Instruments manufactured some of these, IBM did too and a host of other companies. Some people still believe this chip still has advantages over the pentium! http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/rep orts/592/2/. But who is buying that? No wonder, Transmeta may be forced to see the real world. I wish them luck though. All in all, the chip biz must be tough.
Actually only one Tablet PC shipped with a Transmeta chip. The first HP Tablet PC (TC1000). They ended up switching to Intel at the first opportunity because performance was lack luster at best.
Same problem as always with market forces instead of regulation; it relies on an informed and interested public allowing the problem to affect their purchasing decision.
In this case, if your credit details get stolen from a dumpster, leading to identity 'theft'; how do you know which company in the last 6 months allowed your information to leak? Assuming you do find out, how do other people find out that information, since it's not exactly going to be large news?
(our lead national story today; joe bloggs lost $200 when company X put his credit details in the garbage, leading to identity theft and an extra charge on his credit card. Can company X survive this devastating blow to it's consumer confidence?)
So instead of putting a small burden on all businesses to buy and use a shredder for financial documents, we add a significant information gathering burden to all buyers to add to the rest of the information they have to find out about their business (do they harm dolphins? do they pollute more? do they hire third world children for virtually nothing? etc etc)
We're also assuming the business with bad business practises has effective and equal competition in it's area, which people can go to.
Market forces are useful for many things, but protecting customers from unethical business practises isn't one of them. Regulation is a far more effective method, as opposed to businesses dumping the costs that regulation would cause into an external cost on the rest of the economy. (time for customers, insurance costs for banks and credit institutions to cover fraud losses)
-Ted/p
A cute McDonald French Fry
What about the work that are outsourced to foreign countries? Every now and then we hear stories about foreign workers taking liberities with personal information, a Federal law doesn't exactly cover foreign soil.
WHOA! Didnt see that one coming!
Just because it doesn't have a virus or malware on it, doesn't mean it is an Apple computer. My Laptop is not an Apple, it doesn't have any malware on it (running Linux). My desktop doesn't have any on that I know of, it is running Windows.
I have several other machines of both windows and linux that are completely clean. They aren't apple. I have a Powerbook, that is clean too, but it is an Apple.
In fact, the conclusion of the editorial is the following two points:
1)More people use Macs than most people realize.
2) People who use Macs don't get many viruses.
Shock! Horror! What next - "The Sky is Blue"? I'm a mac user, and am all for increading market share, but this editorial seems rather vapid...where's the news?
This is good news to hear. In a way, it confirms what I always suspected (especially since I keep my Macs longer than most of my equivalent PC friends -- and I'm a real gearhead). When you get down to it, though, I don't really care how much marketshare/install base Apple has, so long as they can keep cranking out the excellent products that they do.*
*Please keep in mind that I do realize the connection between profitability and new product development. All I'm saying is that the numbers could mean less as long as I'm a happy customer. And boy am I happy.
Given the data points:
- The vast majority of studies estimate the installed base of the macintosh at somewhere around three to five percent.
- One study estimates it at sixteen percent.
The conclusion is:
- The studies estimating at three to five percent must have been doing something wrong
D...id I miss something here?
Now, can you think of any other reason why that may be? Like making an internet connection is the easiest on the Mac compared to all platforms I know of?
you have to be completely retarded to think that PC/Mac usage is anywhere even in the same ballpark to 50/50
Submitter didn't imply that. That figure was an example.
I constantly hear Mac zealots all excited about their new shiny G5 in some overly pretentious colour like magenta or something
Hmm, now this is a lie. Because for years Apple only made machines in white, grey or aluminium.
Most PC people I know are more interested in buying a $600 video card for their 5 year old PC.
I have the strong feeling you are trying to make a point there, I only can't see what that may be ...
I can't personally find a link to the SPA web site, but if it includes shareware developers, and I think it does, this could very easily be explained.
There's a creeping suspicion that the average Mac users spend more on software than the average PC (and by PC in this context I mean Windows on x86, because it's shorter to write) user. Why is this?
Most PCs sit around in offices and do stuff you'd normally do with Office - word processing, spread sheets, emails. Far from all PCs, of course, but definitely *most*.
A sizable part of the Mac installed base are those who do publishing, or video editing, or DVD production, or something with media in general. These people go out and buy font managers, editing software and plug-ins, each probably running up an average of 80 bucks per product, with the actual editing software running from 200 bucks and up, not uncommonly into 500+ territory. People do this on PCs too, but I would bet on the percentage of the installed base being a lot smaller.
Another sizable part of the Mac installed base are those who sit at home and buy lots of shareware. This has a direct counterpart in the PC world, and they're probably about the same size percentage-wise. Note that games fall in the same price spectrum, that the hard-core gamer is likely to spend more on extra hardware (mice, gpu, keyboard, display) than on software, and that piracy probably helps inflate this segment.
And then there's also the fact that, *for whatever reason*, people seem to use Macs longer. Getting three years out of a Mac isn't extraordinary, it's average. Macs also have a higher value on the used market, so there's no rush to sell it.
I think all of this adds up to a skewing of these statistics.
"The best part of RC5 is that it is Alti-Vec and multi-processor aware, and Macs crunch data 5 times faster than a PC of the same MHz. It is a great way to show off the speed of your CPU."
if i had to guess, it would be that the parent is from the US, and the grandparent is from Australia or the UK. in those countries, the "6 monthly" formulation is the norm for every six months. having been a visiting physician in papua new guinea (ex-australian protectorate) i had to get used to a medication dosage schedule of "6 hourly" meaning once every six hours and not six every hour.
just FYI
(If for example 2 people are using computers and one replaces his 2x in a 3 year period and the other only does once, market-share dynamics dictate that one demographic has 75% market share while the other has only 25% -- even though install base is still 50/50.)
Let's go over this: Person A buys a peecee but feels compelled to upgrade later (by buying a new computer) resulting in an 2 peecees purchased while Person B buys a Mac only once. The install base is 50/50 but the market share shows that 2/3 of computers bought are peecees and only 1/3 are Macs. Where did the 75%/25% come from?
Now that we've established that your summary sucked (no offense), should I bother reading the article? It is /.
On another note, in the Astrophysics Department here at Caltech, I'd say something like a fifth of the install base is Windows, the rest being Macs and Linux (with more Mac laptops and linux desktops) and several other non-engineering science departments have many more Macs than Windows boxen but if you want me to believe that a macs make up 16% you've better have some really good data out there that no one else does.
An interesting related article and discussion on interpreting Google's zeitgeist OS numbers. And what it might mean for % usage of OS (which for Mac ends up being the 3-6% people usually speak of, 3% from Google's direct number and another 3% from Google 'Other' OS).
So which category do I fit into then ? Windows XP, fully service-packed and with a single application installed (Xilinx Foundation, approx $2500, it's all I use the machine for), BSOD yesterday after running a place-and-route for approx 10 hours. I would have used the linux box but it has been busy running a similar PAR for about 2.5 days now. Identical machines, same software, one crashes, the other just carries on working...
No, you're assuming they're assuming that. I read it as 'hey, these guys *aren't* paid to lie - fancy that!'. The truth (or lack thereof) of the article rests on its merits.
It works quite nicely, how ? Do you have any example rootkits that work remotely ? As far as I'm aware, a rootkit is only a threat when it can be installed remotely via an exploitable hole in the system. If you have root access to the system, you don't need a rootkit to make it vulnerable! Just as a data-point, linux rootkits won't work on a mac, for the obvious reason that they're running very different software and potential exploits will therefore be different!
Well, this is down to personal taste of course, but I tend to use commandline ftp even on a windows box... I'm a unix-orientated guy and that's the way I prefer to work. OTOH, you can just type 'ftp://user@host' into the 'Finder->Go -> Connect to server' dialogue box and it'll open up the directory just like any other Finder window. It works the same way for 'smb:', 'nfs:', 'afp:' etc. etc.
Sure, XP has *more* software, and there are a few areas where the Mac still lacks (eg: EDA, hence the XP box), but for the 90% of people who don't fall into that category, it's there waiting for the taking.
"Where can I buy one" was what I thought when I first heard about Transmeta's processors.
I don't need a laptop. I want to put one into a PC. VIA makes a similar sort of low-power product, and you can actually play with those.
Transmeta made some inroads into the laptop and supercomputer markets, but there was just no way for normal people to play with one, except by buying a laptop.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
Seriously, wtf?
This is either a headscratching mistake by AC, or the most perplexing copy/paste troll ever.
Now I really will be the only one with a LifeBook.
It's an interesting thought ...
Intel optimised the performance of Just-In-Time compiling for Java straight to x86 assembly language. And at the same time, Intel also designed the Pentium processors to convert x86 instructions into internal processor instructions. What if Java were compiled directly into internal processor instructions?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
So now some "holding company" reporting to China's industrialist mafia government has all the rights to America's most cutting-edge CPU tech of 3 years ago. Capitalism really is a glorious way to get ahead, when you've got the bucks to buy time.
--
make install -not war
On the tangential subject of dead cool chips, anyone know how the Java Chip industry's going these days?
They don't. They couldn't even beat Intel on MIPS/Watt, and ARM has between 20 and 100 times the MIPS/Watt that Intel does.
There's no way Transmeta was the best in any technical measure.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Just so damn slooooooooooooooooooooooow.
My 2120 feels like one of those one cylinder portable saw mill motors next to Intels Formula One processors.But then I've never heard the fan and it makes ice cubes to boot!
That's too bad...I've always liked the idea of my ancestors storming across the land, exterminating entire species of giant animals with spears and rocks.
I envy early man and his wider variety of animals to eat
What, did you expect that a mere asteroid can be a bigger disaster than us? Hah!
When push came to shove, Intel responded with an excellent chip: The Pentium III M.
The great Pentium M powering just about every modern notebook is largely based on the P3M's architecture. (Tualatin)
What percentage of animals that once lived are now extinct? (this is sort of a trick question for the christian "scientists" who go looking for dinosaurs in Africa, but lets ignore those morons for a moment.)
Over 99%? Oh.
Yes, species die off. Sucks for the those animals, and makes us feel guilty if were are causing it, but the fact is that natural processes have killed off more animals than humans have.
Everyone who has a vested interest in maintaining the 'status quo' will try their darndest to repress, discredit, and sink anything that threatens them, regardless of the benefit to the average citizen.
The inverse is also true: the more a new technology benefits the average citizen, the more opposition it will encounter.
Of course, this only serves to tell the enlightened among us what to check out and buy. If there's lots of people talking trash, there's more often something to it than not.
People hate change.
However, this is not an excuse for an "anything goes" attitude. We still need to work hard to preserve the earth; it is one of our greatest responsibilities./p
When you kill stuff, it stays dead. When you kill all stuff, it's all dead! Weather coming up, after the break.
Hmm. I know a relatively famous (in his field, at least) paleoanthropologist,and was just talking to him about this very thing. I asked him his thoughts about the two competing theories of large animal extinction.
He said that while it was currently fashionable to blame the climate and exonerate aboriginal hunters, he said it makes perfect sense that it was probably a combination of the two.
We modern humans have a definite tendency to underestimate the intelligence, resourcefulness and persistence of our forebears. A good example of this is all the mysticism and voodoo crackpot theories of how Stonehenge, the pyramids, etc. were built. The fact is that ancient people were quite -- sometimes ingeniously -- resourceful at accomplishing what they wanted to do.
Along that same vein, I have no doubt that they became quite expert at killing such things as mammoths, which would feed a whole clan for months (esp. if you dry some of the meat, etc) and provide ivory, bone and fur besides. Mammoth hunting would also have been a great opportunity for clan members to show their skills, bravery and dedication to the tribe -- something of great importance in many aboriginal societies.
Paleoanthropologists are a pretty interesting bunch to talk to.
- Alaska Jack
You can buy a C3 or C7 today if you like. Since VIA seems to be staking out the same low-cost, low-power embedded territory as Transmeta, I wouldn't doubt a similar fate (for the chip, not VIA, which has many irons in the fire). I'm guessing ARM-type architectures are ruling this field (vs. x86 type).
Well, at least I still have my books. And the best thing is, there's time now... all the time I need.
<<Picks up a book, but glasses fall off and break.>>
That's not fair! That's not fair at all! (source)/p
I thought that they really hadn't even figured out how the universe worked. They have stuff like stars that are older than some estimates of the universe's age, and missing matter in the form of dark matter that they can't account for. How are they supposed to simulate the universe, if the model they have is so badly flawed.
The best way I've heard this expressed is Nature doesn't make waste. Nature makes food. (I'd love to claim this, but I can't remember for sure who said it. It might have been Bucky or Amory Lovins. At any rate, all the other species make food, and participate in the food chain and cycle all waste around.
We, as humans create waste that no biological process can deal with. Now humanure can be composted and reused, but there's lots of stuff that is good for no living thing.
That's the big difference. Waste not, want not.
Well, at least I still have my books. And the best thing is, there's time now... all the time I need.
[Picks up a book, but glasses fall off and break.]
That's not fair! That's not fair at all! (source)
[skips a few lines]
Why should I believe you? You're Hitler!
So when will Google Maps be available for this universe?
isn't how much memory longhorn need to run?
#top
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
561 ganesh 13 0 58876 25000000M 1044 S 0 0.7 95.1 68:51 universe
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What if we're in a simulated universe, simulating other universes?
Whoaaa.
Pass the bong, dude.
And if it does, the simulator in the simulated universe simulates other universe?
And if it does, does it include the simulator?
And this simulator...
have you read neal stephenson's "diamond age"? he has one of those, they do computation by fucking wildly (and i mean that quite literally)
I always though that a computer large enough to handle a simulation of the universe would allow us to predict the future, even at individual level if the simulation was advanced enough.
And then I realized that the smallest simulation of the universe would probably be the size of the universe.
It got very confusing at that point.
...with this pocket calculator stuff./p
> Culturecom Holdings, a Hong Kong company
> better known for publishing comic books
It's about time comic books started containing chips so portions can be animated and with story line updates that are downloadable, if you ask me.
At least this was going around when I was at Berkeley:
NEW OPERATING SYSTEM:
Because so many users have asked for an operating system of even greater capability than VM, IBM announces the Virtual Universe Operating System --- OS/VU.
Running under VU the individual user appears to have not merely a machine of his own, but an entire universe of his own, in which he can set up and take down his own programs, data sets, system networks, personnel and planetary systems. He need only specify the universe he desires, and the OS/VU system generation program (IEHGOD) does the rest. This program resides in SYS1.GODLIB. The minimum time for this function is 6 days of activity and 1 day of review. In conjunction with OS/VU, all system utilities reside in SYS1.MESSIAH. This program has no parms or control cards, as it knows what you want to do when you execute it.
Naturally, the user must have attained a certain degree of sophistication in the data processing field if an efficient utilization of OS/VU is to be achieved. Frequent calls to non-resident galaxies can, for instance, lead to unexpected delays in the execution of a job. Although IBM, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, the United States, is working on a program to upgrade the speed of light and thus reduce the overhead of extraterrestrial and metadimensional paging, users must be careful for the present to stay within the laws of physics. IBM must charge an additional fee for violations.
OS/VU will run on any IBM x0xx equipped with the Extended WARP Feature. Rental is 20 million dollars per cpu/nanosecond.
Users should be aware that IBM plans to migrate all existing systems and hardware to OS/VU as soon as our engineers effect one output that is (conceptually) error free. This will give us a base to develop an even more powerful OS, target date 2001, designated as 'Virtual Reality'. OS/VR is planned to allow the user to migrate to totally unreal universes. To aid the user in identifying the difference between 'Virtual Reality' and 'Real Reality', a file containing a linear record of multisensory total records of successive moments of now will be established. It's name will be SYS1.EST.
High performance ain't everything. I already have too many computers in the house, but there's definitely a place for my Fujitsu p2040. With 2 long life batteries in it, and a WiFi card, it's still very light, and lasts for around 12 hours. It gets used every day, carried all around the house and only occasionally needs to be plugged in. You wouldn't try to write software on it, but it's good enough to browse the web and read e-mail.
It's sad that this kind of processor has so much trouble finding a market. My Pentium M laptop ends up getting used less because it's just not as convenient, even though it's probably 4 times faster.
bravo! brilliant trolling! You've reduced every thread to gibberish!
I've used my cell phone to connect to the 'net on occasion. The speed actually impressed me, considering the road those packets were having to travel, but the latency was horrendous. It seemed like the connection would burst data at a high speed for a second or two, then completely pause for a second or two.
Worked fine for e-mail and casual web browsing, but if you're interested in gaming, keep looking.
Fascinating. This is the first time I've pulled out my Fujitsu P-1120 in two months, and slashdot was the first place I went to to make sure I was connecting OK, and what do I see. Sigh. I feel bad for all the folks that will never have the opportunity to buy a P1120. All signs are that Fujitu won't be making a replacement with all the same features, namely:
1. The clearest screen I've ever seen on *anything*
2. TOUCHSCREEN!!!!
3. Size of a small hardcover book
4. Weight of a small hardcover book
5. Runs *cool*
6. Runs forever on battery power
7. No fan, silent except for the hard drive
8. Built in Wifi & Ethernet
9. Etc., etc.
10. Very nice, *useable* keyboard
Heck, I'm thinking about buying another one to have in case my current one ever breaks!
The older folks here may remember the teeny little laptop that HP came out with in the early '90s with the mouse that popped out from the side? I never bought one 'cause I figured they'd eventually come out with a faster model, and then HP just discontinued it. I always berated myself for not buying one when it was available. So when the P1000 series came out, I bought one, even though I really could have used the money for a lot of other things at the time. Two years later, I'm still convinced it's the best $1100 I've ever spent. I don't need a laptop that often, but when I *do* need one, it's the most convenient full featured, yet smallest laptop ever made.
The only downside is that it needs a bit of tweaking before it can play full screen videos, but it *can* play them, and that's all that matters. It's also well supported by Linux and has it's own forum
For most of last year, I used my Sony Ericsson T610 via a Bluetooth connection for remote Internet access. The service was a cheap add-on ($19/month for unlimited use), but real slow. The 610 didn't support the highest-speed modes that Cingular had available at the time, and I've heard it said that they're pretty slow with their high-speed rollout.
Back in November, I switched to the Verizon service with the PC5220 card. Mac OS X supports it natively with no extra software - I just had to input my phone number settings and it worked. For the first two months I settled for the slower 1xRTT service, which seemed to me to be about twice what I could get with dialup and was still better than what Cingular had been giving me. At the beginning of January, Verizon turned on EV/DO in the Boston area, which has generally been an excellent performer. Most everywhere I travel routinely for work is EV/DO enabled, and the card automatically uses it when it has a signal, otherwise it falls back to 1xRTT.
Service for the data-only cards is $80/month for unlimited use. No, you can't run servers with it, but you wouldn't want to. It's a real good option otherwise for a laptop user.
I have a client using the service with the Audiovox PocketPC phones - they love the always-on sync and the capabilities of the device, but they hate the phone itself and are switching to standalone phones for voice (they have two of the PocketPCs now).
"I wonder how much the lackluster appeal of these devices contributed to Transmeta's downfall... or if they just never stood a chance against Intel."
Well, as a TabletPC owner, I can tell you I wouldn't have bothered with Transmeta. I get nearly 4 hours out of my Tablet on a single charge. At that point, getting another hour or two wouldn't have been worth the potential performane hit. (Note: this is NOT an educated opinion, it's a perception. And that's my point, perception is a factor when purchasing something like this.) PC purchases are treated more like investments than "oo that's neat!" impulse buys. I had a lot of trouble settling on the one I wanted.
If anybody's curious, no, I don't have any complaints aobut my TabletPC. It's quite nice to be able to use it while standing up. I walked around the office taking inventory of the computer equipment in my office not too long ago. Just walked into each office, tapped the data right in to the spreadsheet, and it was done. I'm actually kind of surprised TPCs aren't more popular with sysadmins. I think Microsoft should be less enthusiastic about handwriting input and more so on the "you don't have to have a table to use it" aspect of it.
"Derp de derp."
At the rick of destroying my server, I have a post about using a little embedded linux box and a verizon aircard as a router for industrial automation equipment. Link to post on my company web page This is an Aircard 555 using the 1xRTT 115K baud down and ( I hate Verizon ) 14.4 K up. I have a feeling that the newer high speed aircards need to be in a windows box, as I have yet to find anyone who has one working with linux. I would be almost certain that the up speed is also pathetic. This does work well for what we use it for, and I just got back from my cabin in Michigan where we used it along with an Airport Express to serve up WiFi to the kids with laptops. (not that they would notice the beautiful outdoors. Cheers
Does anyone elese notice that a lot of the replies in this thread seem to belong to other submissions? What's up with that?
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I used the verizon low speed service for a long while. It's only $5 a month on top of their service, and it's actually pretty fast. It's marketed as dialup speeds, but it's actually double that (10k realistic throughput).
It's got horrible latency, though, so you can forget gaming. Just to test, I fired up counterstrike to test, and I get latencies between 1-3k, the same as in other games I tested.
Now, this was the low speed service, but I doubt the high speed service has better latency. However, for $5 a month, it was an awesome internet connection for a mobile home.
We had a company that tried to offer this service in duluth. Some guy I work with also worked at this place. We tried it, honestly we tried it. Several different machines, several different cards, sevaral different locations. Bottom line: There was a cell tower less than 100yards away, perfect signal, we'd never lost a cell phone call there in 3 years of living there. Data thruput was virtually nil. DSLReports came back with 98% dropped/lost packets. Didn't work there. Felt bad too, becuase we worked with the guy. The company went out of business. No suprise really, considering.
Does this mean Transmeta laptops will be really cheap now?
[o]_O
We looked into the cell option versus cable, and here were the two show-stoppers for us (Cingular, YMMV):
;)
1. "Not all protocols are supported". No further eludication. Good luck finding somebody who knows if ssh or whatever you might realize you need in the future is supported.
2. "No bulk downloading JPEGS". I *guess* maybe they are saying they don't want you to download pr0n with their service, but I can think of legitimate reasons for wanting to do that, such as mirroring web sites for personal use. (terraserver anyone?
Ha! Joke's on them! Most of my computers were fished from dumpsters.
/p
Sorry I didn't RTFA, but $6 to $10 isn't a lot to include in the total price, so this recycling-tax should be prepaid before it gets out of the shop. I think it'll be more difficult to enforce payment during the disposal.
This extra cost is likely to go unnoticed because a single CPU/RAM/HDD price drop can easily cover that amount.
One common problem with prepaid tax (like petrol) is they took the money, used it on something else, and turned around to say they don't have enough money for roading/accident management.
Hence it's important for the authority to not only impose the tax, but also acknowledge it, so that consumers can simply put the computer/TV out on the street for collection and the authority must fulfill its duty to dispose them appropriately.
It works; the latency is bad, but not as bad as satellite. I get about 450ms ping to most servers in my country (US).
:)
The bandwidth is limited by two things: Network throughput and network load. I believe that the fastest (non-major-city) cell phones go up to 155kbps (I get 15.2 max kBps.) I'm using Sprint because, when I researched it a year ago, they and Verizon had the fastest networks for this sort of thing. Network load just means that if there are lots of people on the same tower as you, your connection will not run at full speed. I've rarely seen that happen with mine.
Run a search on different types of cell networks and make sure you have a signal with a fast one. I used to use Nextel, and it was like 1/5 the speed of dialup with 1000msec latency and downtime. That was on the old analog network.
Also, you know you can buy powered signal boosters for every type of signal? If you're in the boonies and want more signal, you might get one of those.
Email me if you want, put slashdot into the subject
Another issue that hass not been mentioned is good old ISDN. Great latency and if he has a phone line he can probably get it. The bandwidth is on par with these mobile solutions and blows away his old dial-up speeds.
>Work out an agreement with them and then have them setup a line-of-sight wireless (wifi) link to your place.
Err, how practical is this? Sure its possible, but if the AP is a couple miles away youre going to have to pay for some professional radio people to point these things at each other. I see this suggestion all the time and I doubt anyone can just do it. Considering the FCC limitations on ISM band he cant just set up two towers, but haveto build a very, very tight line-of-sight channel which I'm assuming requires some significant radio experience to pull off. A mile is a long way away, and if he's too far for DSL we're talking multi-miles here.
I don't think Transmeta's problem was choosing a bad niche; everybody wants lower power chips. Rather, the problem IMHO was that their innovations didn't provide much advantage over Intel and AMD chips. The Transmeta chips are too slow for general purpose usage when the competitors are so much faster for just a bit more power.
The ideal situation would be to place the burden on the market in such that there is an incentive to reduce costs.
Therefore, if manufacturers have the burden, they will have to charge customers indirectly by increasing purchase price (after all, customers pay for everything in the end).
And if manufacturers carry the direct burden, they will also have the desire to lower disposal costs. Instead of a flat $6 for disposal costs, the manufacturer will want to lower it as close to zero as possible.
This becomes a win-win. It costs the consumer in the end (as it always does), but manufacturers have a strong incentive to minimize the disposal costs.
At the end of the day, I'll speculate that this could be a profit center for the manufacturer - the resale of whole components and quality recycled raw materials could wind up making them money.
I Personally have felt for quite awhile that transmeta has technologies that have serious profit potential, but its all about marketing, and in America, as it is often said on here, few people care about effeciency. I would love to own a transmeta laptop, so that the next time i fly oversees and sit next to some kid with an alienware laptop, i can laugh at him when his battery dies after 45 minutes and enjoy my movie, games, or even just solitaire for the next 8 hours.
The future lies in effeciency, or marketing I suppose, but hopefully effeciency will start to win some converts, especially as the big chip makers start hiding their processor speeds instead of putting them in bold. Intel now has to convince a public that has been brainwashed on MGHz madness that maybe they were not completely right about the whole pentium 4 thing. Maybe now is the time for transmeta to find some people interesting in licensin. I sure hope they survive, its the little guys that make the big guys stay on their toes.
One way or another, the customer is always the one who pays, it is just a question of "how much?" and "when?"
My preference is that the fee be levied as far down the "value chain" as possible - probably at point of sale, like it is for the states with recycle fees on soda containers.
Charging the fee at point of sale does a couple of good things:
1) The customer knows what they are paying for, it isn't hidden away in the total price. This knowledge helps to prevent the fees being raised as an arbitrary form of taxation - income tax gets taken out of most people's paychecks before they ever even see the money, thus obscuring the direct impact of the tax. I wish to avoid that happening with any new taxes.
2) If the fees were directly assesed to the distributor or manufacturer, then they would be inflated with each step in the process just as the price of the system is. In effect, paying the fee at point of sale is like paying the "wholesale" cost but charging the manufacturer the fee would result in it being marked up to "retail" pricing by the time the end-consumer pays for it, possibly even doubling the original "wholesale" fee level for no added benefit to the environment or the consumer.
Exactly. The problem is that for hazardous materials, what is best for a single entity (person/company) is not what is best for the entire community. This is what is known as the "tragedy of the commons". For those who aren't familiar with this phrase, it's worth-while to read about it.
This is a problem inherent in the capitalistic system. I'm not advocating socialism, but pure capitalism is not a valid economical system as these problems so simply demonstrate. A mixture (which both the US and most of Europe already has - although definitely in different percentages) is a reasonable compromise./p
Looks like they will want to snap up a bunch of developers from the PearPC project!
Your empahsis this in order to convince people that this deal is bad?
I think quite the opposite, because I know Culturecom pretty well.
Culturecom Holdings, under which they've companies sells comics books, publishing press and magazine; they also manage properties, and they also have a technology company, which releases its own Linux distro (China 2k) for use in their line of Linux specific workstation and terminal server selling to China since 1998. Their distro originally released for office use and now porting to embedded system. Buying transmeta's production line is a sensible and wise choice for a proactive technology company devoted to Linux business like Culturecom.
I don't know others, but I feel good to hear that a company devoted to Linux business since boom still around and kicking and decided to enhance their Linux business.
Disclamer: I worked for Culturecom even before they started their Linux business.
I live on one side of a shallow urban brook that has many good points: ducks, geese, carp, turtles and the occasional heron. Unfortunately, it has a tire in it about every 40 yards or less. 1/4 mile upstream on the other side is the municipal physical plant that accepts recycling. They charge to take tires.
The conclusion seems obvious. Hell, I don't even have incentive to volunteer my time to fish them out if I will suffer the insult of paying to deposit the fruits of my good citizenship.
http://www.hammerrevolution.com/ --;
This is a field where you must not only have a good product, you must also have a solid market AND a solid marketing team, AND you must avoid bad PR like the plague, AND any major players (like Intel) must not deliberately sabotage efforts to compete, AND your plant can't be struck by major earthquakes.
(Why are all the major chip makers in Taiwan, Japan and America ALL concentrated in areas with high tectonic activity? Is there something in the fault line they use in the production line?)
The bottom line is simple. A chip fabrication plant can cost tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, skilled chip designers can command hefty salaries, many of the key markets are 0wn3d by monopolies of questionable legality who flirt with unethical practices to keep their position, and software developers reinforce this by targetting established, high-volume platforms and that means no new products get support.
Of course, Transmeta didn't help its case. Its Linux distro was late, the first batch of chips was buggy, they didn't sell to anyone outside of the "big players" (and "big players" only really buy from other "big players", because volume bought and sold = profit), and they only produced an 80x86 layer for the Crusoe, rather than using the capabilities to cross market boundaries and therefore create volume by getting into many niche markets.
Also, their design was poor. Intel beat them on power consumption in a very short space of time, and this is Intel we are talking about. At the same time, people knew there were problems with 80x86 scalability (hence the work on SMP and hyperthreading), but Transmeta didn't look far enough ahead to build a multicore product, when they were already building a design from scratch and had ample opportunity to make such changes.
(In comparison, AMD and Intel have to engineer such features into an existing design, which is always much harder and likely to be much slower than working from first principles. AMD's and Intel's route also offers much better odds of bugs being found in the design, at a later date, as their architecture was never intended to be multicore.)
So, I don't hold Transmeta blameless in this. They may have been pushed over the edge, but they still chose to walk along the cliff in the first place, knowing it to be a dangerous spot, and knowing that the view wasn't even that good there, to make it worth the risk.
One of these days, I hope to see a company start up that takes the time to be truly innovative (and not just fake it), takes the time to get things right, and makes a product so damn unbeatable it wipes the floor with everything else.
It does happen. True, AMD is no start-up, but they were hardly giants in the 80x86 world. With the Opteron and their 64/32-bit crossover architecture, they've demolished Intel's Itanium and even convinced Microsoft to switch to them for 64-bit stuff. Given the longevity of the Wintel duopoly, that took a good plan and a good effort.
Any start-up could do just as well, or better, because it wouldn't have the legacy hardware to build around. They could do a clean design that merely supported legacy code. Transmeta started down that road, but for some reason chose only to camp a little way down it and go no further.
The "ideal" processor would work just as well as a CPU, GPU, network processor or processor for a disk array, as then a manufacturer can go to a single vendor, buy in even bigger bulk, and save money on all aspects. Your computer would become a Beowulf cluster, in effect, with specialization in software. It would be cheaper to build, and would mean that the same system wou
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That should be "fare-thee-well dept."
That is very complimentary to my idea of making everything hardware done 'natively' Make an OS module. Make it compatible with such and such hardware. This would make everything insanely fast, quite possibly more secure (if say, the OS is firmware inside a card, updates can be applied like that to fix problems.)
We've got modular cases, why not do modular computing?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You say they had the best battery life before Pentium M came out. And then you say they were very slow.
So knowing these two things, how do you make the leap to best MIPS/Watt? Your laptop would have to be some combination of faster and longer battery life to win. Yet you say it was very slow. Would a comparably slow Intel machine have as long battery life?
Intel's current offerings destroy that laptop in MIPS/Watt. Intel's P3 mobiles released right after the first Transmetas bested the Transmetas significantly. And the Pentium M obliterated it. And now the ultra low volt Pentium Ms?
You're greatly mistaken.
I do agree Transmeta perhaps lit a fire under Intel to make more power-efficient chips. But they ceased to be competitive on power-efficiency or MIPS a long time ago. I won't be sorry to see them go.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I had high hopes.
Pretty Pictures!
for free
Well, if they go out of business, will they still be able to afford web hosting for all those web pages and images and such? Or will their entire web site get replaced with a cryptic message?
FWIW; I'm an embedded firmware and hardware developer amoung other things, and HAVE worked with their hardware:
I evaluated transmeta's chips in 2003, I think.. it was for a target product that needed a low power consumption. When we got their development kit and the heatsink was huge, I knew they were in trouble. I KNEW they were in trouble when we tried to return the multi-thousand-dollar kit to look at some other options they had.. and they wouldn't listen.
If you're working in the embedded world, you're probably in a well defined area:
- Low power, low speed micros. These are usually under 20mhz, sometimes faster. Cost a couple bucks and have everything under the sun integrated. Some have micro RTOS's developed for them, most don't. This market is mature and owned by people like Atmel, Microchip, Zilog, and a hoarde of other people making variants of chips like the 8051. Transmeta didn't stand a chance there. Those chips consume almost no power at all and cost nothing.
- Midrange micros for pdas and other appliances. This is where I thought transmeta had a chance, but then along came Intel with the XScale architecture and they made it work and work very well. This, not the pentium M, is what killed them I think. XScale is cheap, well supported, and very low power.
- Above-midrange; Transmeta might have had a shot here, but their power consumption and support was much worse than the x86 compatible Nat Semi Geode (now owned by AMD?), and offerings from Via (C3 MiniITX). Price? No competition.
- Notebooks. Pentium M ended this one. So did the G4 chip from Motorola.
- Desktop high end CPUS. Nobody ever expected them to be competitive.
Looking back, it seems like their market ran away from them whereever they looked. Unfortunate, but not unforseeable IMO.
..don't panic
I'm an American and it makes me sad to see American technology sold to Chinese companies. When China decides to stop funding Americans' debt-laden lifestyles we'll all end up working for them. And to think that the right-wingers blamed Clinton for allegedly "allowing" a Chinese spy in Los Alamos "give" nuclear secrets to China. What a farce that turned out to be. But when it's them doing the giving it's OK. Sorry to rant about this, but China is getting ready to eat our lunch as long as the big corporations are able to start using Americans for their new-century 3rd-world labor they could not care less.
Ooh, your powers of computation are exceptional. I can't allow you to waste CPU cycles here when there are so many crimes going unsolved at this very moment. Go, go, for the good of the city.
dinner: it's what's for beer
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
Sun's MAJC: dual core VLIW FP monster...gone
Transmeta: also VLIW...going
Intel: Itanium VLIW FP monster...stagnant once HP's base converts from PA-RISC and Alpha
It seems that no VLIW architecture to date has really been successful against PowerPC, SPARC, and AMD64. Is it the compilers? Too nontraditional?
A comic end to a great chip..?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
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THE MORE MEMbERS WE HAVE THE FASTER TROOLING WILL BECOME THE NATIONAL PASSTIME
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Let's see, since I actually worked at Transmeta up until about 2 months ago and I still know the guys who work there, I'm pretty confident in saying that they are NOT out of business!
As far as I know, they are still churning out silicon. I don't know where Business 2.0 gets this trash.
BTW, their chips are pretty competitive now. It's a bit late, but you never know.
.. or the reporter at Bussiness 2.0 doesn't know his bussiness..
Here's one little tid bit that will put those of you who invested at ease.. Transmeta is the one doing the design for the Cell processor.. yeah that amazing thing. Yes, for the Sony PS3.
Check back in a year.
Now move along and get a better story to read.
-- Robi
There's already a chip which can directly execute java, if that's what you mean, check out the picojava chip.
I guess that's the way it goes in the IT business, never is the first-mover rewarded...
what else can you say. it was expected.
With no Intel, AMD would have no major competition in the desktop sector. They would be free to stop spending so much money on R&D, stifling innovation. Don't get me wrong, I like AMD over Intel, but this is because of the innovations in their product... innovations brought on by the heated competition between the two companies. I hope they both do faily well... well enough for one to keep offering good products at prices that won't break the bank.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
I'm sure that VLIW-compilers are great at arranging operations for compiled programs, but what about interprented/virtual-machine-based programs?
Could one of the reasons be that Java really doesn't run that well on Itanium/VLIW?
Wonder what will happen to this thing? It's based on Transmeta Tinside chips.
Me (Blog)
I remember saying this as soon as the chips were announced.
But then again, I also said Apple would be dead by now too.
Perhaps this is illegal, unethical, or immoral. Perhaps it never even happened, but the truth is that it's very hard to challenge major players when you are starting from scratch.
I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons, especially since I'm spreading ugly rumors I have no way verifying.
With the jaugarnauts Intel and clones AMD or IBM pumping out a new chip one to three times a year, a commodity chip catches up to a custom CPU in price, performance or power in a fews years. A custom company generally on has the resources to ship a new generation every 3-5 years. Moore's Law gives a 5-10x price/performance increase in that time period. I've seen this happen dozens of times in Silicon Valley. Where are the Convexes, Masspars, Thinking Machines, HEPS, and twenty other custom CPUs?
In the case of a VLIW machine, theoretically, it's a fast beast- but you have to have a good compiler of whatever type (JIT of x86 or Java, Native Code, etc...) to actually see the full advantage of the architechture. Currently, most of these compilers produce less than optimal results so they end up not showing their true potential.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
(Now I see why Rob Malda says slashdot could be dying. A swamp of americans shouting, screaming and spitting without knowing what's going on. Americans. Heh.)
Culturecom truely is a company most known for its comics business. But it has deep pockets, and is also known to buy this and that business, extract the most money out of it within 1 yr or 2, then leave users dying in the cold. Its 'chinese2000' is one of the best known "Linux distribution" in Hong Kong, and one of the ugliest.
- First version is an incomplete rip of redhat. What is incomplete? Even trademarks / logos are not completely replaced! Redhat sued it later and it has to pay lots of money.
- Next version is another rip, seemingly from (at that time called) mandrake. Between these 2 versions, their bundled office are not compatible!
- No more. No 3rd version. Users either accept the fact that there is no security update, or just format it.
And one of the saddest is that, it hired one of the oldest and most respected open source pioneer in China, yet didn't produce anything really useful.
There are still good companies in Hong Kong, but not this one.
... buy their IP and use Crusoes to reduce their HVAC and power costs? Don't need a fab, just have them design chips and boards that fit Google's requirements then have someone else fab 'em. There might be savings if you go with multi 100k runs...
Sure, running stripped mobos is cheap, but if those mobos are 80-160w each the price of power (especially in California and Europe) as well as neutralizing all that heat must be pretty steep..
Ehh, just thinkin out loud..
will need another chip. Now, their personal clusters uses transmeta chips. Bad news for keep-it-cool team. http://www.orionmulti.com/
---- Where is my mind?