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More Transmeta Rumours
id writes "JC has
some rumours about Transmeta
including one that suggests that the chip will be software upgradeable,
so new instructions could be added at a later date to keep
pace with other vendors " Most of it is stuff we
already know, but it notes that the chips will be
expensive, even though they will be cheap to produce, as
well as talking about it being software upgradable.
Some of the information is alarming if its true, though I doubt its veracity. Custom sockets and RAM could easily kill this CPU. The development of a socket is a very non-trivial task and custom RAM requirments can be very pricey. As for this not being a cheap CPU there is almost no way that it could be. Intel may be a few times larger, but there volume will more than make up for it.
Upgradable microcode sounds more useful than it probably is. Sure, you can add new instructions to keep up with the competition but only for a short while. Eventually some architectural feature will stand in the way and while the microcode may due the feature it won't do it efficiently.
Intel has the bucks to do arbitrary architecture changes just to keep the competition on its toes.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Just remember this when Transmeta actually comes to market.
Intel does not produce the fastest, smallest, lowest-power-consumption or coolest (thermally) chip on the market.
Outperforming Intel is not going to work - others are already doing that with only middling results. To beat Intel, you have to match their performance for less than half of their price. AMD matches the performance but doesn't offer enough cost savings to deliver the TKO punch.
Users want very fast and very cheap. Unless Transmeta addresses this, their impact will be negligable.
if they cannot be at least as fast as intel, at the same price, I cannot see big numbers of people moving in there direction...
Why?
First, there is the cost of proprietary hardware, which people are willing to swallow if there is a DISTINCT and LARGE advantage... What is the advantage here? Low power (you can buy a cheap Powerbook, they run in the less than 10 watts range), and emulating a few instruction sets. Now, that is not an easy thing to do from our point of view, but for Joe Public: who cares?
It is fairly clear that x86 is going to dominate for at least several more years (in the celeron and K7 forms, etc), and so that is what people and business will continue to buy for their desktops. Of course, there will be the imacs, the SGI boxes (no longer MIPS anyway), and all the niche chips...
So they can buy a proprietary, more expensive (or just as expensive), and slower chip from transmeta, or go with Intel brand stuff... Now as (non)reliable as intel or AMD might be, it's what people have now, and it works... i cannot think of a reason to go slower, and more expensive when you will be running the same software?
now, as for the emulation, its a good idea, and most of the folks buying high-end equipment don't care much about price, but the one thing they do care about must be there: performance.
where is the market for people who want to run 2 or 3 archetectures SLOWER than what is on the market? it isnt there!
However, if this chip can run its own instuction set, with some OS, faster than what is currently out there, people will buy it because its faster. Simply that.
that OS? if the master himelf does the porting, and this really flies by intel/sparc/PA-RISC, then it has a chance, a big chance, but IMHO, more niche than anything else...
so ends the rant...
noy [another random lurker]
What would be cool would be to have a complete OS kernel in flash ROM, or actually on the CPU die itself.
No sig.