Slashdot Mirror
The Transmeta Conspiracy Part V
Floydian Slip sent us a link to Time Digital which has an amusing 20 Questions with Transmeta. It doesn't say much, but it seems to debunk a few theories. I'm hearing 'RSN' rumors now, but nothing concrete yet. I need moles in Transmeta dammit. I know you're reading, why won't you squeal?!
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Just to clear things up. That is, that there isn't a single piece of Transmeta hype out there right now, though admittedly the buzz is being generated specifically due to a lack of hype.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
There are already asynchronous chips. University of Manchester developed the Amulet2e, a ARM7 derivate, from 1993 to 1995. It is compatible to ARM-v4G instruction set.
Comparison data (I wish I could use tables):
CPU: ARM 710 -- Amulet2e fab process: 600nm -- 500nm transistor count: 570,000 -- 454,000 cache size: 8kB -- 4kB speed: 23 MIPS -- 38 MIPS
Even though the cache is only half as big it's faster.
Another one is the TITAC-2 developed in Japan. It is based on the MIPS R2000 but is not binary compatible.
Comparison for that:
CPU: TITAC-2 -- MIPS R2000 transistor count: 496,000 -- 100,000 core voltage: 3.3V -- 5V power consumption / w/o cache: 2.11W / 1.02W -- - / 2W performance / w/o cache: 54.1 MIPS / 26.5 MIPS -- - / 12 MIPS
The TITAC-2 worked with 1.5V to 6V in environment temperatures of -196C to 100C (-320F to 212F, if I calculated correctly).
Clocked chips have to be clocked slow enough for the worst case (a set of commands that take a really long time before the chip enters a stable state), that's why overclocked / overheated CPUs work fine most of the time but only sometimes crash. These async CPUs get faster when they get cooler. They always run as fast as is possible given the temparature and commands to execute.
Rumors tell that German company Hagenuk will employ the Amulet3 in commercial products this year.
If you want to know more about micro pipelines, null convention logic and dual rail encoding, look it up in c't 17/99 (if you have that issue or want to reorder it and can read German of course ;-)
How's about A MARS TENT, or A SMART NET? the possibilities are endless . . .
In that case it would be a sequel to Java - 'Palava', perhaps ;-)
Wouldn't it be funny if they spent so long underground developing this amazing product to change the world, and then when they finally come up to release it, they find someone's already done it?
Summary: they're loving this hype!
insignificant sig
if ( !(strcmp(temp_string,"TransmetaNow"))) { sprintf(vendor,"%s","Transmeta "); /* Hehe this is a joke. No I have no clue what *\ \* Transmeta does. ;) */ }
>Or they must be at least
>writing a compiler for it...
Steve Johnson (who wrote yacc and pcc) works
there, so they probably have that one in hand.
Note: back at Bell Labs, Steve was Dave Ditzel's
boss for a while when Ditzel and Rae Maclellan
were designing the Crisp microprocessor, whose
branch-folding scheme smacks of the sort of
code-rewriting that the most interesting
Transmeta rumors feature.
Another former Labbie at Transmeta is Pat
Parseghian.
-Tom Duff
They already distributed a press release. It was a page of paper that said "This press release is not yet here."
--
Anyone know how much investment there has been in Transmeta? The article only mentioned $20 mil, which has got to be just a small amount of what has been invested. Software startups eat that much in a year or so. God knows how much more overhead there is with a hardware startup, especially one that is 4 years old and located in the high-rent Silicon Valley.
I guess with the #3 $$$ guy on your side, funding is less of an issue. If they had to turn to investment bankers more, they would definitly have to give some details of what they are doing, and that increases the risk of something slipping out somehow.
Even so, after 4 years, it's probably getting towards the put-up-or-shutup (or shutdown) stage there.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
You get your cadre of engineers, programmers, or whatever kind of personnel you need to work on your project, don't say anything about what you're doing, and hire a really famous person or two (a la Linus Torvalds), and the media will create all the hype in the world for you.
Why is that, you may wonder? Because a) every other company in Silicon Valley and wherever else is/has/will make some sort of marketing campaign, more likely than not (so what makes these guys so special that they won't?) and b) there are few things people love more than rumor mills, conspiracy theories, and random speculation. If you don't say anything about your product, it makes it all the easier for the media to make up stuff (and let's face it, the media is well-known for "creating" stories out of virtually nothing when there's nothing better to report on.
I mean, think about it.. Transmeta is a perfect candidate for this kind of "media hype".
~ Kish
Anyway, with regards to the speculated ability to execute binaries for x86, PowerPC etc, that's sort of similar to some of the things Sun's MAJC chip will do, which has also been in development for a long time. The MAJC chip doesn't literally execute Java byte-code but it's easier to translate to than other architectures - you still need a JVM. You can just run C/C++ binaries normally too - so yes, you can port Linux to it. However, what this means is that you don't have to support old versions and you can optimise best for each generation.
Here is a transcript of a live chat with the MAJC architecture lead designer, and they discuss some interesting things. (yes, someone does ask how easy it would be to do a Linux port ^-^)
Like the company, the phrase is entirely vague: "Above the beyond."
Wrong. (Doesn't anyone study Latin and Greek anymore?)
trans is Latin, and means across, beyond. meta is Greek, and means with, among, beyond, after, next. (Don't ask me how it got to mean both with/among and beyond/after.) I assume the name is supposed to mean "Beyond the next"
Hypertrans or Supermeta would mean "Above the beyond", to the extent it would mean anything.
Actually Intel has been doing this all along. That's why the PII and PIII were introduced at such low prices compared to for example the 486 or first Pentiums.
AMD is in a position with the Athlon to compete against the Xeon's as well. Their capable of a larger cache then the Xeon's as well as using a much better bus for multiprocessing. While Intel still uses the same 100 MHZ bus in dual and quad systems for all processor communication the EV6 bus allows for more. In the EV6 bus each of the processors have their own bus to memory and I/O. In addition each bus can be clocked at up to 400 MHZ according to current specs. It is more difficult to implement for more then 2 processors but it can easily support up to at least 32 processors while Intel has to play games with their bus to get up to just 8.
Until Intel changes their system bus significantly AMD will be able to blow them away when the proper motherboards are released. Also this bus will allow AMD to go toe to toe with Sun, IBM, SGI, and Alpha on multiprocessing should they choose to do so.
If you haven't tried it, you haven't lived.
/. we welcome people with all kinds of abacus orientations.
Maybe some narrow types don't approve of that, but I like to think that on
Com'n guys! Untill you tell us something, wild rumors about what Transmeta really does will persist.
What's that noise? (/me looks out window) Uh oh. Black helicopters. Gotta get to the f$0n>3nq[x
Connection closed by foreign host.
What do competitors say?
;)
When the Federal Trade Commission investigated Intel on antitrust charges last year, whom do you think the giant chipmaker cited to prove that it has serious competition in the microprocessor market? Transmeta.
Is it only me or does it feel like the fact that Intel when under antitrust charges has to prove it's got competition uses a company that hasn't produced anything yet (not bashing transmeta, stating a fact). This is an even worse example of competition than the one Microsoft used in court that mentioned Redhat. Even though you could argue about if RH is a threat to MS they at least have a product out on the market. Seems like Intel had a hard time finding their competition
Try reading the article next time.
*Intel* cited them as a competitor.
But flames aside, I thought the same thing. (About Intel that is) Why would they cite Transmeta as a competitor if the only thing they're producing is rumor? And how could the DOJ accept that as a valid argument?
It seems like there may be more knowledge outside Transmeta than we all think...
My wild guess at what Transmeta is up to some form of asynchronous logic design. A lot of the fabless chip companies have been making similar promises with that area of research. Theseus Logic and Cogency are two that come to mind. Clocked logic has its limits and the Intels and Motorolas of the world are going to hit those limits sooner or later. And barring any sudden developments in, say, quantum comptuing, asynchronous logic is the next, ahem, logical step. It's much quicker, much more flexible (didn't surprise me about the emulation speeds transmeta boasted of)and should consume less power, if done right. Transmeta, or their followers, is touting all three benefits. Asynchronous logic design actually has been around for awhile, though its always required a complexity of design that makes it more expensive to pull off. But as clocked logic is getting so complex, it might soon be the time where they'll be equivalent, cost-wise. Then again, Transmeta could be up to something *completely* different. joab
one of the biggest names in the open source community works for a company so closed that they won't even discuss what their product is? Or does?
And is funded by an ex-microsoft founder? Thats money from MS Windows licenses that you're buying your groceries with Linus!
My predicition is they go the same way as MicroUnity and the MediaProcessor, remember that?
Hmm. Now, I'm going by memory here, since I don't have the magazine handy. But last month's Scientific American (or the month before's) had a big whack of articles on the Oxygen computing environment being developed at MIT. One of the keys was a self-modifying chip that would reconfigure itself when you downloaded software onto it to get a massive speed advantage - you're limited in that you can only have your PDA act as one thing at a time (web browser, MP3 player, whatever) but because it remakes the hardware when you load the code you get incredible optimization.
t ml
The little dribbles we're hearing about Transmeta's product sounds like it could be the same type of technology but on a larger scale. If it's so great at emulating the i386, perhaps that's because it'll have an "i386" template and rewire itself to use that when it runs 386 code? Pure speculation, of course.
Hey, wait a minute - sure I have the magazine handy! It's right here: http://www.sciam.com/1999/0899issue/0899agarwal.h
Joe
This was burried, but valuable. Thanks Chexum.
:)
Subject: Re: OpenGL mini drivers?
Date: 1999/03/31
Author: Dave Taylor
I think that Sean Baggaley pitched in with Russ Williams' pet anti-OpenGL sentiments because they're both British. It's obvious. I mean, come on. Evil empire. Elitist snobs. Still bitter about the "colonials" on the other side of the "puddle." Duh.
I love the D3D vs OpenGL struggle. I love the consistently inconsistent visuals you get from playing 3D games on today's PC's. I wish Microsoft and SGI would reduce each other to charred cinders with patent infringement lawsuits.
John uses OpenGL because he can afford to. He can lose hundreds of thousands of sell-throughs and be perfectly happy. Christ, he could throw every copy of Quake 3 in a wood chipper and sell the chaff to the government for use in hideous anti-personel weapons against the Serbs, and he would still make a killing on the royalty advances. This has always been John's modus operandi, whether he was turning a monster dime or a modest dime, and we should be thankful. Others follow suit because John's products become the IHV's benchmarks, so the IHV's improve their drivers and hardware to work with John's games, and so other game developers can eventually switch over. I think this is a better system than following Microsoft's lead just because one of their over-worked engineers or megalomaniac managers decided to arbitrate a new standard.
There's an alternative. You don't see anyone hotly debating whether to use DirectDraw. You don't see video glitches on games that use software renderers. They just work. They just deliver exactly what you specified and never crash. Sure, you have to come up with innovative gameplay and/or excellent artwork, but the technique has been a solid technique for hit-making from Myst to Heroes 3.
I am quite happy for the 3D cards and API's to beat each other black and blue while the real engineers either deal with what's available or quietly work on the solution to this whole mess.
Here's a fun multiple-choice quiz. What do you suppose that long-term solution is?
- A. Waiting for Nvidia to come out with the TNT N (as N gets large).
- B. Waiting for 3DFX to come out with the Voodoo N (as N gets large).
- C. Waiting for Matrox to come out with the GN00 (as N gets large).
- D. Waiting for ATI to come out with the Rage * (as * gets goofy).
- E. Waiting for OpenGL to get caps bits.
- F. Waiting for D3D code to be easier to read.
- G. Waiting for someone really brave to come out with a general-purpose processor w/ an open architecture that is suitable for high-performance parallel processing so that we have complete control over every pixel and get a consistent, high-quality, fast, innovative graphic experience.
I leave it to you, noble reader. (but if you pick anything but G., then you have gooey fluff where your brains should be, nyah)
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
When my friends and I sit around and speculate what we would do with all that money (if we ever became even a tenth as rich as Paul Allen), someone always comes up with the idea of hiring the smartest technical people that we could find, putting them in a building together, letting them do whatever they wanted and seeing what they came up with. Call it giving back to the community.
Transmeta has been around for years and has not officially produced anything. They buzz/hype builds up and then dies down on a cyclical basis. Transmeta is clearly enjoying it - they could kill this type of hype easily if they wanted - but they don't. I think this is directly attributable to their sense of humor.
Maybe this is Paul Allen's way of giving back to the community. If this is the case, then the joke is - there will never be a product.
Paul Allen hasn't had much to do with MS (other than owning stock) for years. Besides, even if that article you linked to made the statement, "Microsoft invested in Transmeta"(which it didn't), that's not proof. That's some journalist making a statement.
Transmeta's website code (letter-for-letter).
Pay careful attention to line 3.
0. <HTML>
1.
2. <!-- There are no secret messages in the source code to this web page. -->
3. <!-- There are no tyops in this web page. -->
4.
5. <TITLE>Not yet the Transmeta home page</TITLE>
6. <BODY>
7. This web page is not here yet!
8. </BODY>
9. </HTML>
Not necessarily very insightful or anything, just a tad amusing...
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Or maybe Paul is finally tired of playing second fiddle to a bumbling fool and sees trasnmeta as his way to overtake Bill.
F /...
Unlike Bill, Paul has some pretty amazingly diverse investments and interests. Even if the mighty Microsoft were to fail he is covered in so many ways he wouldn't have to worry about falling out of the top ten richest people in the world.
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
I believe so. Look in the program linux_logo (Ships with Linux-Mandrake 6). Using vi, I found the lines where it has the processor name and the cute little tag-line. Intel-GenuineIntel, Cyrix-CyrixInstead, etc. Funny, there is a Transmeta line. Transmeta-TransmetaNow!
-- Terry
Transmeta has managed to keep the lid on quite tight.
:-) /. moderation to level 5 would get them talk,,,,,)
And good for them.
I'm betting that the reason the lid is on tight is simple. Money.
There is a Bonus-payout on announcement date clause that the payout goes downhill the more information that is leaked.
So:
If tounges don't wag, big money, big prizes.
If the tounges DO wag, a sliding scale to zero.
With a bouns on EACH check as a reminder that the phrase "Silence is Golden" has meaning)
Now play a new game....how much would you have to pay someone to talk
(Perhaps auto-magik
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Ok, lemme give you some background to this firstly... About 6 months ago i had a very interesting chat to a fellow i know that is one of the most paranoid people i have ever meet, during the chat he came out and told me that intel had developed a trully AI cpu, so i figured that this is possible, but not probible.. so i just went on with my averages days rat race...
:)
Now, with all this talk about what transmeta is doing, although i do like the idea about Paul Allen paying them to play in a building and see what they come up with, i dont think so. So what the hell, lets thing about this now, you want a processor that can do X86 and all the other types of processers, what is one kind that could trully manage that.. A living one, one that could identify and implement instuctions relivant to each diffent type, if/when it is asked to.
Im not saying this is what there doing, im not saying that intel have a trully AI Chip, but wouldnt it be bloody neat if they did.. Bring on Judgement Day! (For all those Terminator 2 Fans out there)
I wonder who will notice the transmeta page is up first when it does come up, and if it will last long when the slashdot effect hits it
The Reality in which we choose to live in really sucks
Methinks such folk should scale back their expectations a bit. After all its only ones and zeros. Tiny little switches on a hunk of silicon. It will be cool, but not immediately world-changing.
I'm sure we all know that ideas are some of the most valuable commodities in the world-- why else would the slashdot community care so much about privacy? But ideas don't do anything on their own until you have some hardware to prove the idea. Do you really want someone else to take your idea before you prove it empyrically?
The only project that compares in secrecy is the Manhattan Project, and that definatly changed the world. But more importantly, it changed the way we thought.
The Manhattan Project's idea was, "Atoms can be split and produce a lot of energy." What if Transmetta has another very simple yet profound idea? "It's only ones and zeros"? Maybe it's NOT ones and zeros any more. And therein lies the reason for secrecy.
There are two reasons for extreme secrecy. Either you really do have something important to hide (think Manhattan Project) or you want to drum up interest (think GeForce 256). But if you're just drumming up interest, you need to let a few crumbs slip. Transmetta's air-tight secrecy is not worth its cost of implementation if they're not actually hiding anything worthwhile.
In short, I think they're really onto something. It will probably change the way we think about Silicon, ones and zeros, and so on.
-Ted
Actually, they used to all be bald. That was their original product, the perfect toupee. They only moved on to Warp Drive when the Department of Defense confiscated all of their production models for the "Shatner Turbo 2000" as part of their secret, Super Soldier progam due to debut on Octob$ %$%@#$%@#!$%$%@#$%
@#!$%$%@#$%@#!$%$%@#$%@#!$%$%@#$%@#!$%$%@#$%@#!
NO CARRIER
Does this
Nothing! And doesn't plan to!
See, you 'allegedly' pour a bunch of money, 'hire' a bunch of famous programmers, and nobody does anything. Tell nobody anything, bake at 375 degrees of buzz, and sell it to someone else for a huge, huge number.
Now, take THAT even LARGER amount of cash, all the developers (who haven't been working anyway) and start ANOTHER company that does what you want to do in the first place, but couldn't afford and didn't want to share with the venture capitol folks, while laughing at the morons who bought the original worthless company on hype.
I only hope that I will not be assassinated for revealing the secret!
Zipwow
(this would be sarcasm)
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
As a designer who worked for Transmeta until last week, I am risking my very life to bring this information to the /. readers.... I can safely say that the primary product shipped will be Warp Coil Drives that will allow man to travel faster than light. Transmeta's secondary product (the one I was involved with) will be Nachos that never go stale...
01101100 01101001 01101110 01110101 01111000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011
But it's not vaporware. It may be very hyped, but there's a big difference. They haven't created any hype, haven't said much, haven't even said exactly what it does.
Rumors from the media do not create vaporware. Saying you're going to release a product in 6 months and taking 2 years does. To take a quote right frim the article...
What's with all the tiresome secrecy?
Ditzel shrugs it off as nothing more than common sense. "We don't like the notion of vaporware. We're just trying to say, Wait and see what we have to say."
Funded by one of the richest men in the world. Only rich people can afford to fund high risk projects. This is probably so high risk it isn't producing anything. Motivation for the top programmers who work there to succeed - None. As Linus once said 'Do you think I would have trouble finding a job?' (or somthing like that). They'll just burn up the VC and move on. I wouldn't mind living that kind of life...
If you rearrange the letters in "Transmeta, Inc", you get "Intranet Scam." Sounds like a good investment.
Other possible letter rearrangements
Martian Scent
Instant Cream
Semantic Rant (sounds like a good name for a band)
Manic Rat Nest
Transient Mac
Men In Scat Art (ugh)
_______
2B1ASK1
Dr Mr Ditzel
I would like to work for you on the basis that there is absolutely no evidence your company is currently developing anything.
Because I am very smart, I have deduced that the average daily work load per employee must be nill.
Assuming this low-stress slow-paced work environment would give me unlimited time to post to slashdot, I would be willing to spend a period of one year at your company before moving on to a future life of playing video games and eating corn nuts while living in the basement of my mothers house.
Regards
Che G.
P.S. I apologise to all posters of slashdot as I know they may not want to read this but I find getting jobs using my resume and a telephone very frustrating. I hope posting application letters to message boards will eventually land me "the Big One".
These alien corpses take *way* longer to microwave than anyone expected....
Ghod, but it seems like I have been following this story for a long time. With all this hype it seems certain whatever Transmeta comes up with will be something of an anticlimax. But I also expect there will be lots of meat, just perhaps different meat than many hope for.
Still this long buildup of suspense seems almost calculated to create more buzz. Of course Transmeta says differently -- the article quotes Ditzel as saying "It's not a ploy! We're sort of enjoying all the speculation, but we try to ignore things and hope it goes away."
Right. I believe that. Uh huhh.
Still it is beginning to seem like there is a hard core of the faithfull who wait with bated breath, hoping for a silicon messiah to come out of Transmeta and lead us to the promised land where Wintel fades away and Open Source reigns forever. Methinks such folk should scale back their expectations a bit. After all its only ones and zeros. Tiny little switches on a hunk of silicon. I will be cool, but not immediately world-changing.
But, with any luck, My prediction is one hundred percent wrong...
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
BTW, I think few people saw this: http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=4614616 79
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
I work in sales right now (until I'm done with school and get REAL job) but Transmeta was one of my accounts for a while...and even though I suck at my job, I can get most people to chat about what they do-but NEVER there....They would give me only information about their operating enviroment, but just enough to get a solution in place....
"Most of my heros won't appear on no stamps..." Chuck D from Fight the Power