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Another Transmeta Patent
Arrgh
sent us a link to a new Transmeta Patent
filed for what they describe as "Method and apparatus for correcting
errors in computer systems". That doesn't help much. Now
back to trying to figure out why connecting my cable to my
VCR makes my whole stereo humm. Why can't audio/video be as easy
as Linu- oh, wait...
Audio is exactly as easy as Linux - at least it is for me, because I'm doing my audio with Linux... I can ssh to my stereo... :)
/me sings:
The speaker's connected to the amplifier
The amplifier's connected to the sound card
The sound card's connected to the 4*4x CD-ROM drive...
Hmm. Okay. I won't quit my day job.
ObTransmeta: This post has no tyops.
Transmeta is NOT developing new computers! I predict that transmeta is developing "high tech appliances" like TV/VCR/Media/Stero/HomeAutomation systems. I guess they will be heavily dependant on a high bandwidth connection (thus they are not in a hurry they will take thier time and get it right, and be ready to OWN the market when broad bandwidth comes to home users).
It fits to me, all the high tech chip designers, OS guys, Media gurus. But, my prediction is the end users won't even see the OS, and the will not be marketed as "computers," but "high tech media appliances" insted.
I tried to tell Malda, but he won't listen.
Isolation transformers work wonders. They exist for cable in many forms. You can go from the coax to 300 ohm through those little impedance transformers flat and back again. No more direct connection or ground loop! They also add just another barrier from lightning hits.
The slashdot way of finding an electrical problem in house wiring might involve a voltmeter. In a grounded electrical plug, there are three terminals: hot, neutral, and ground. The hot is what you think it is, neutral is the middle phase of the 220 volts at the breaker box, and ground is the official safe, grounded into the earth, return for leakage from appliances, etc. The neutral is hooked to the ground at one point and nowhere else, usually at the breaker box. If neutral is tied to ground anywhere else, interesting things may happen, like getting shocked by touching the stove, AC hum in stereo, fire, etc.
Another thing to check for is loose wiring. Loose connections happen over the years and tend to get warm and melt things. Not too cool if you don't like fire. Realize that if you check and fix things yourself that electricity is energy. Energy has lots of potential, like inducing seizure like dances, fire, death, etc. If you don't know what you are doing, you might learn the hard way and your family will have always known that it would do you in. They warned you.
Yes, I have heard great things about the Clock Wizard, that helps you install a licenced copy of Time 12.00. Of course, it is leased, and will require you to install an upgrade of Time at a later date.
The VCR-X feature you can get at Shortcircuit City. Only VCRs with MS-VCR-X can play MS-VCR-X movies. No rental fees or late charges! Just hook up your VCR-X up to the phone line right to Mr. Gatus home network of intrigue. Plug into MS-VCR-X today!
sounds like I've been patented by Transmeta again... may as well just hand them over brain, spinal cord, arms and fingers and get it over with. Sounds like they are trying to patent the average troubleshooting IS guy. *grin*
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
That's actually a fairly accurate description of the chip in question--at least AFAIK. The most promising feature of this chip may be the ability to emulate various architectures at speeds comparable to hard-wired versions of the same. John Dvorak of PC Magazine has this to say about Transmeta's "Neon" chip. From the article it's not really clear if the chip is also low-power, but there's no doubt that Transmeta's working on the low-power angle as well. Since the rumors state that the chip will operate using microcode as a basis, I'm assuming it'll be almost completely programmable--though it's beyond me as to whether or not the chip will be directly programmable by users. If it is, it'll be a fun toy. :)
And just for a little levity here, you can find more non-information on the Transmeta home page. View the source for some nonexistent hidden messages.
-W-
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
Just from the abstract, it looks like a generalization of the idea of regression testing. My (shoot from the hip) guess is that the needed this to check the logic of their new processor in simulation, to verify that each iteration of the design result in a functional system, and if it didn't to pinpoint the place where it started going wrong.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
About that stereo problem you mentioned, it sounds like the common effect known as the 60 cycle hum. The US electrical system runs on a 60 Hertz cycle (iirc) and that cycle is sometimes picked up by stereo equipment and broadcast thru the speakers. Theatres usually have a problem with this. The easiest solution for you would be to make sure that your stereo is grounded by using a good surge protector. Most surge protectors now come with a grounded indicator light that should help you debug this problem and they are a good idea for any major electrical equipment you'd like to have around for a while. :-)
--
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us."
Inventor(s):
Klaiber; Alex , Menlo Park, CA
Bedichek; Robert , Palo Alto, CA
Keppel; David , Palo Alto, CA
"The PPCArch simulators are based on a type of simulator originally developed for the Motorola M88K RISC microprocessor by Robert Bedichek for Tektronix [Bedichek, R. Some efficient architecture simulation techniques. In Proceedings of USENIX, Winter 1990.]. Bedichek developed a style of threaded code simulator that used a unique C language and assembly-code macro function to emulate each instruction in the 88100. He was able to decode an instruction once and use the decoded form many times, depending on locality of code reference and size of simulated nstruction cache. He was also able to simulate the 88K virtual machine sufficiently to boot Unix on the simulator. The performance of this simulator was also very impressive: an average of 130,000 instructions per second when hosted on a 2.5MIPS 68020 Tektronix workstation."
--Communications of the ACM, June 1994 v37 n6 p64(6)
An overview of Motorola's PowerPC simulator family. (The Making of the PowerPC) (Cover Story) William Anderson.
Someone does this every time . . .
/. (though not everyone holds this opinion, I'm sure) is that vague software patents are bad. A smaller subset believes all software patents are bad. This is not a vague software patent.
The general idea on
Oh, I did not see you said "I know SW!=HW". My apologies! I thought you were a troll.
I got the impression this was hardware-level... I.E. compare a reference chip (such as a P3) with a test chip (theirs for example)...
Some of the phrasing is interesting though... They talk about "selectable comparable points". That would indicate that the execution of code/code being executed is not identical on both systems, but is intended to have the same *result* on both systems.
-JF
BrainPower - "Jobs for Smart People"
http://www.brainpower.com
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
Why can't audio/video be as easy as Linu- oh, wait...
Linux may be many things, but my experience has been that "easy" is not one of them.
Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Long long ago, I beleve this time last year. I had heard, in Wired magazine, or was it PC Computing.. One of those magazines geeks love so much. I had heard that Transmeta was working on a new CPU, if I recall the article correctly, it was x86, RISC (I think), low power, and was.. programmable.. I'm not sure that has rammafications to "downloading" a new CPU, like re-flashing your BIOS. I think however, it was meant that it's not programmable in the sense of a typical CPU.. but soft-wired, where the whole architechture can be burnt like junctions are blown for an EPROM. But, it'd be cool. I heard that it was named Neon. But then again, who really knows what Transmeta's up to. Correct me if I'm wrong
I disagree and hold myself in contempt, what blashphemy!
Sounds like a way to test hardware emulators. You rack up your Pentium II (running Linux) next to your Transmeta ZZ-Plural (running Linux), plug this thing into both of them and wait for a mismatch. The auto-replay stuff mentioned near the end sounds like a means to determine if the error was transient (bit rot) in either machine, by re-running recent history. If the mismatch occurs again, I'd imagine you log it for the engineers to look at and start up a different test run.
-_Quinn
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.