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Transmeta to Release Processor in January?
Scipius writes "German tech-mag c't reports that Transmeta's new processor will likely be released on the 19th of January 2000. It also reveals the apparent code name: Crusoe." The article's in German, of course. But we'll take a juicy Transmeta rumor - and that's all this is - in any language. Babelfish time!
I'm really glad to see from progress out of this company. Despite the vapourware rumors, that is. Should be interesting to see how the competition goes. Perhaps a real intel downfall?
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
*snicker* .. the rumor kitchen. Mahir, head chef of the rumor kitchen, kiss you!
c't claims that it is thought for notebooks, due to it's low power consumption. Maybe "Crusoe" is cheap also ;-)
If Transmeta is a fabless chip manufacturer, then this will just be an announcement of what they plan to build. Not that I'm accusing them of vaprware, but early chip announcements tend to be more like bad sci-fi than actual news. Think of Intel and their gHz processor - cooled by a desk sized freezer beneath the unit.
Either way, it will be more interesting than the Lucent (might not be a) router announcement.
Well, yes, we'd kind of known that for some time. :-)
The new-news hidden in this article (apart from the codename itself) is that Crusoe is to be aimed at low-power devices like laptops, which is quite a different market to the mega-workstation many people here wanted it to be (perhaps due to dislike for Intel).
'Course, low-electrical-power doesn't mean low-computing-power. Look at the ARM series, for one. Or c't could be wrong, though they usually aren't. Guess we'll just have to wait and see - to use a phrase already worn out in Transmeta discussion...
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Hmmm, I guess I might just have to wait before buying my new laptop. :-)
By the way, is this going to be an entirely new architecture, or is it compatible with some already-extant standard?
(And the obvious question) Will Linux run on it?
(Perhaps that's why they hired Linus, hmm?)
kinda like that biz markie song...
on non-flamer tip transmeta's most recent patent release pretty much let the cat out of the bag. if they deliver i'll be first in line to order!
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Transmeta's home page has been updated. It is apparently Y2K compliant. Does that mean we can't expect to see it change before next year?
Anyone seen they changed the transmeta website ? :-)
how long has this 'new' site been up
their new design really kicks ass!
never seen a website so well designed, and it works with all browsers and it loads fast too. great! kudos to their webdesigner!
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If it's a processor then some software is going to run on it? This could explained, as mentioned in an article above, why they hired Linus.
:-)
Think about it. A *new* architecture, with some really fancy new characteristics but no software? I don't think so. On the other hand, if they involve the opensource community . . . BINGO! a real competitor to Wintel.
Who else would you choose as youre link to the community but Linus. He's the head of development. He can make sure everything runs on this "Crusoe".
I'm not directly tied into kernel development, but you sometimes wonder why some patches don't get included . . .
But in the end, if it's a processor, Linux will run on it. How else can you have a top-secret processor? Who can they really trust as their OS of choice? Windoze? MacOS? BE? . . .
You never know, kernel 2.4 might as well be ready to run on "Crusoe"
cl
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Reply . . . let's get it over with
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Reply . . . let's get it over with.
In English: The rumor kitchen reports that the geheimnisumwobene processor prozessorschmiede Transmeta on the first Comdex day, to which 15 November -- as announced by Transmeta coworker Linus Torvalds already - admits now finally the date for the conception of their long expected processor to give wants. But already beforehand the message penetrated for c't editorship that was to be introduced the processor circulating under the name " Crusoe " on 19 January 2000 (by the way one Wednesday, no " Friday ").
Crusoe is to direct owing to its very low current consumption primarily at the Notebook market (s/c't)
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
So, why is it going to be called Crusoe ??
There must be a reason for this name?!
It's years since I read the story but involved some bloke shipwrecked, washed up on an island, and meeting a native he called 'Friday'.
Hmm...
Or are they just playing with us?!!
BTW: www.transmeta.com has changed! (And no, www.transmeta.com/crusoe.html and www.transmeta.com/crusoe/ dont exist!
The fact is that if the Transmeta CPU architecture is anything like what's in the Transmeta patents, and if they can at least come up with a few engineering samples, if will mean a radical shift in our ideas about processor design. As it stands, the instruction set is what defines a CPU--CISC, RISC, x86, HP-UX, etc., are all involved in defining the processors which use these instruction sets, but Transmeta changes this. The Transmeta idea as expressed in their patents would create a category above this--no longer is it 'an x86 processor', it's 'a processor running x86 instructions'. This is a radical idea, and a radical paradigm shift--we should all hope it comes to pass. If it's a great and practicable design, it shouldn't be too difficult for Transmeta to partner up with anyone from AMD to Motorola. This sort of radical advancement--again, if it comes to pass--makes me wonder what the heck Intel and all their capital were doing designing the inflexible Itanium, which executes its native (and sure to be poorly supported except for network/server apps for at least a year or two till prices come down remarkably) instructions with Alpha-killing speed but chokes on anything else including the x86 with which they were supposed to be compatible to some reasonable degree. Just 2cents from a guy who plans on supporting anything but the Itanium (mmmm, legacy games under 64-bit AMD....)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
In the short term, it could turn out that the product isn't the fusion-powered anti-gravity time-travel device that all the secrecy has led me to expect.
In the long term, even a fantastic product could end up going nowhere. I'm thinking particularly of AMD's woes. Not only has Intel (allegedly) managed to convince some major motherboard manufacturers not to ship their Athlon boards, now they've gotten a major OEM (Gateway) to drop all AMD processors from their product line. And Intel's anti-trust case inexplicably disappeared into thin air.
Even if Transmeta has the coolest CPU ever, do they stand a chance against Chipzilla? Here's hoping...
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
The comm ent doesn't specify what are its sources, but it: :D ).
:)
1. Confidently states that Crusoe works by special hardware translating the instructions and then storing them in a huge cache,
2. Says that because of that, MS-Windows will probably not run on Crusoe. This is because of Windows' habit of altering its code on the fly for reasons of optimization, and
3. Speculates that Linus was hired because Linux is to be [one of the] first OS[s] to run on Crusoe (ok, so this isn't new
It looks like both Intel and Microsoft are facing Interesting Times...
The name Crusoe could be a suggestion at what the developers think of their new chip. Being seperate from the rest of the manufacturers but close enough that it is still reminiscent of what users are comfortable with.
:-)
A new platform that runs native Linux and without all the flaws and inherited legacy hardware in the INTEL architecture, sounds good to me
This is why Transmeta is absolutely cool. Notwithstanding people that can read German (and I'm sure you're plentiful), we've got a one paragraph article that babelfishes really poorly about some bizarrely unsubstantiated rumors and it's going to be a VERY popular slashdot thread, because, well, because it's Transmeta. (Circular logic... cool).
As for real content, I'm surprised by even the rumor that the supposed chip would be a notebook chip. Why a notebook? Linus has said recently that Linux is likely to develop towards embedded applications (it really does perform well there). How let down would we be if Transmeta's first chips were low powered, linux-powered embedded app chips? Really think TV/Network Computers or the like...
Also, if I read the babeled German correctly, they're going to announce the Concept on Jan. 19th. It still could be sometime before we see product (whatever it may be). This should come as no surprise, since TransMeta clearly hasn't employed hundreds of chip-builders lately (someone would have noticed that, I think).
I'm waiting to be awed by whatever they eventually produce, but for now, it's enough to be in awe of the amazing hype and free-publicity. Amazing, isn't it that doing the exact opposite of Microsoft (by spending NOTHING on advertising) is garnering TransMeta (and thus Linus, and thus Linux) a decent amount of press?
Keep it up TransMeta!
If Crusoe is really aimed at laptops, wouldn't Linux be a strange choice for its main OS? :)
Now I know we all like to think Linux is better at everything, but right now it's still a server OS that's rather hard to operate for non-techie users, which makes choosing it as the main OS for laptop a risky vote of confidence.
Wouldn't MacOS make a much better choice, especially considering its recent revival? (iMac)
Well maybe there's already a hidden deal with Apple. Or maybe Linus is developing Linux to take advanteges of Cruso's unique features and be the first OS to run everything. That would be nice...
The rumor kitchen reports that the geheimnisumwobene processor prozessorschmiede Transmeta on the first Comdex day, to which 15 November -- as announced by Transmeta coworker Linus Torvalds already - admits now finally the date for the conception of their long expected processor to give wants. But already beforehand the message penetrated for c't editorship that was to be introduced the processor circulating under the name " Crusoe " on 19 January 2000 (by the way one Wednesday, no " Friday "). Crusoe is to direct owing to its very low current consumption primarily at the Notebook market. (as/ c't)
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I'd have to agree. All of this secrecy is causing quite a large number of people to get really anxious about the possibilities. In all reality we have little reason to belive this "product" will do anything, aside from the patents.
:)
From the patents we can derive quite a lot about what "it" is supposed to do, however because patents are public information, "it" might not be what transmeta is really doing. Transmeta is being really secretive thus the information in the patents is what transmeta wants us to "know". To take it one step further, transmeta could be working on anything, and the patents could be an attempt to mislead those who copy or stop them, or the patents could be on an auxiliary technology (ie. supporting chipset).
My friend and I joke about what transmeta is really doing, we have concluded that they are making chips that will power the next generation of washing machines. Don't expect anything from transmeta. I'm not saying they are making vapor, I'm just saying that if you don't expect anything you will be nicely supprised when they make the awesome chip you never expected
Isn't this going to be capable of becoming a JAVA OS.
If it stores the machine instruction set in a local cache and runs it from there.. Well that seems to be exactly what JAVA would need to have a Java-Chip.
Considering it's low power consumption it would make an excellent candidate for the jini - appliance environment as well as the PC. Add to that the potential JAVA chip concept and you have the Jini Project from Sun sitting in your lap.
My IE 5.0 loads the page 5 MINUTES and then CRASHES! There must be an EMAIL WORM on the page! I think I have to install a SERVICE PACK from BILL!
According to my sources, that processor-related patents are just side-effects of tests of the new caffeinated beverage they're developing...
Babeluary
Just search for transmeta on the uspto.gov web site among the *trademarks*... (BTW: it can be long known from the maniac rumour monger yours truly here in this Linux Today article...)
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
So Transmeta are finally going to be ready to *say* something. The funny thing is that their patents are quite revealing about what they're up to - a speeded up version of the self-modifying FPGA technology that has occasionally spawned 'new era' claims. I'm not saying that their chip is just an FPGA, but that the effect is meant to be much the same: a metamicrocode that can be optimised in near-real time by a JIT-like (or is dynamic compiler a better term than JIT?) compiler and scheduler.
Please though, don't beleive all the speed hype. Remember, it was a year ago or so when 1GHz sounded astonishing, but now it's almost boring for those chiller guys. The thing is going to be *flexible* not *necessarily* fast.
Curiosity killed the cat, but who ever saw a cat reading a patent application?
.sig thingy
As has been pointed out elsewhere (comp.arch I think), the patents that are available on the net reflect what Transmeta was doing a couple of years ago, when the patents were filed. So don't be sure that they are central to their current plans.
Had anyone else heard the rumor about the Transmeta chip being low power consumpion before? I sure hadn't, and to me, it doesn't mesh well with the idea that it can run multiple instruction sets.
Surely this would require a large amount of memory, and isn't (fast) memory something of a killer for low powered devices?
If Transmeta can produce something that emulates other architectures, and uses a comparable amount of power to the low power versions of those architectures, it has to be one of the most impressive breakthoughs ever.
I do worry though - you know what they say -
Okay, I made up the quote, but I think it is slightly accurate at least, esp. in the early generations of a design.
What else.... Oh yeah.
If they are really going to announce this in January (or at Comdex), I don't think we will see it in use anywhere for a couple of year. If Tranmeta had contracts with fab plants somewhere, someone would have said something by now.
I doubt very much if you can go down to your local chip maker, and say "We want you to switch your plant to making our funcky new designs - forget about this multi-billion dollar contract you have", so they can't just get manufacturing facilities like that. It takes a long time to build a fab plant, too, and it's not like you can just convert a derelic factory to a state of the art chip fabrication plant.
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com
Didn't I hear a rumor a while back that transmetta was talking to IBM about having them build whatever it is that they are developing? I very well might be mis-remembering, so take this with a grain of salt.
Soft instruction sets ? That's gonna make it really easy for compiler writers - NOT.
If you want to see truly excellent processor technology take a look at the ARM processors.
www.arm.com
Very low power, very fast and modular.
For innovation look at the clockless designs they've prototyped - they're really funky - fast and use next to zero power.
They're also Intel's biggest headache - having inherited the rights to the StrongArm they don't know what to do with it. It craps on all their processors and is CHEAP!
Does anybody else find it odd that this processor is being touted as "primarily for notebooks". If it is really the revolutionary beast that it is rumored to be, it would make much more sense to have it first on desktops than a notebook. Years after, when it will have replaced the Intel processors, we'll see it on notebooks, just as we have Intel compatible processors on notebooks now.
Targeting at the low-electrical-power market does usually mean that it isn't (yet) competitive in the high-computing-power market. It makes sense to sell your new product into the niche that suits it best, just to get a foothold and some income before you try for a more difficult area. If it can take on the high-power end adequately, there's not a lot of point in restricting it to a particular market segment.
The Arm is reasonably powerful now, but wasn't always : before StrongArm, it was computationally powerful for it's price and wattage, but not really comparable with 486/Pentium.
There are two replies to this article that are rather interesting. Follow the links containing:
No boards (nevertheless!), and faster despite cheaper (x, 11,11,1999)
(Enlish butcherization)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Here's a question for people who know more than me:
Suppose Transmeta actually does have a really cool new chip. Obviously they are going to need some help developing software (compilers, etc.) for it. I assume that's where Linus fits in. But seeing as the trend these days is to get Linux to run on everything from the Palm Pilot to old 286's, don't you think that Linus would be at least slightly interested in developing a Linux kernel for this thing...
So my question is: does he have a Linux kernel? Can he develop code for it and keep it secret from the rest of the community? Is 2.4 going to support this chip?
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
According to netcraft, transmeta runs apache and linux (Who would have guessed ;-) ). But it runs apache 1.1.1! Isn't that risking it a bit, even if there is nothing to hide on that box?
and only runs on Apple hardware
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Remember that Microsoft's Paul Allen is one of the major investors in Transmeta. And I definitely remember seeing somewhere that the Transmeta CPU is supposed to run Windows NT as its primary target.
My guess would be that they are writing a new HAL and recompiling the performance-critical parts to native code. You can afford to run MSWord in emulation. Even your soundcard driver won't mind too much.
Now all that remains is to get a few CPU-hogging killer apps like Lightwave or Adobe Premiere to recompile to Transmeta native code. A really fast JVM would make a Transmeta box an attractive middleware application server, too.
But I am definitely looking forward to a linux kernel that can execute both i386 and transmeta executables...
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
A lot of /.'ers hear "low power" chip and think "laptops." Don't be so limited.
Obviously, low power chips are good for any battery-powered applications: PDAs, cell phones, devices we haven't thought of yet.
Low power chips are also important when you have a lot of them. Say, for the sake of argument, the Transmeta chip is very well suited to parallel processing, maybe massively parallel processing. You'd have a lot of such chips in one box. You'd want low power chips, both to reduce power consumption and to ease the cooling requirements. I presume low power chips also generate less EMF.
For example, along these lines, low power chips are useful in the telecommunications market. I've been associated (loosely) with some hardware that needed to be redesigned to have more fans. One customer was the electric company's third biggest customer in that city (and you've heard of the city and the two bigger customers).
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
I'm pretty sure it's just rumor. If they were actually close enough to start constructing the chip itself, they'd have a patent for that. Once all the patents are in order I'll start considering the truth of these rumors.
Indeed. Your point is well-taken.
On a purely historical note, however, the ARM series was, at its inception, more than comparable with the x86 processors of the day; that'd would've been about 1987, I guess.
ARM Ltd was spun off to develop the processor and aimed at the embedded market in particular, resulting in the less spectacular mid-range chips such as the ARM6 core; as you note, it took Digital's involvement in the StrongARM project to make another high-end processor.
Of course, no ARM ever ran the x86 instruction set, which is where (we think) this may differ...
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... that they are running a Shoutcast server.
Go fig!
Joe
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ChozSun
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The author who wrote Robinson Crusoe also wrote Gulliver's travels, which was a play on the word Gullible, since most people believed that his stories were true. Robinson Crusoe was one of these stories since travel journal stories were popular at the time. Keeping this in mind I have to wonder if this is just another rumor being passed off as truth.
Hasn't anyone else wondered if there is a connection between Linus' change of attitude towards minor kernel numbers and his work at Transmeta?
Compared to the development time of the 2.1 kernel, the following pace is downright breakneck; 2.1 was released in 1996, but 2.2 and 2.3 were released in 1999, and 2.4 might appear by year's end. Would a port to Crusoe (the Transmeta platform) be justification for kernel release 3.0, despite being one port of several? At this pace, 2.9 is surprisingly close.
Forgive me if this seems naive or just dumb. I am not a kernel developer, and I do not work for Transmeta - ha! I wish I did.
Two comments.
smaller is better
The other reason why smaller isn't really better is that if you put your components in a huge enclosure (like the Supermicro SC801-A ) you've got oodles of room for fans, elaborate vapor-phase cooling devices, PCI cards, drives and alien technology.
more power efficient is better
I agree with the original poster. I didn't realize how much it was costing me to leave The Beast powered up at night. Answer: Enough to make me turn it off before I go to bed.
The other reason why it's good to be power efficient is that it's easier to overclock a processor with low-voltage requirements than a processor with high-voltage requirements. (At least I think that's right...)
...through babelfish produces some humerous results: "Linux is an as far as possible stink-normal Unix."
& g=19991110as000&msg=95
feed this url http://www.ix.de/newsticker/forum/go.shtml?read=1
through babelfish
Heres a random thought...
Computer languages are really just a useful convention providing an abstraction layer that a compiler translates to machine instructions. In some applications, I wonder if its possible to eliminate an abstraction layer with the transmeta architecture and "compile" to a customized instruction set instead of a given machine instruction set (virtual or otherwise)
e.g. Suppose I wanted to create a router. Instead of writing source code that is translated to machine code which is translated by the transmeta chip. Could I write an instruction set that defines "router" instructions?
Practically speaking, current compiler technology / language specification isn't setup to handle this paradigm, at least with my limited understanding. But why not have a X-window instruction set and a html instruction set? In a way, the protocol becomes the insruction set.
Of course, if you do this, I think you'd might be tying yourself to machine architecture again -- hmm, maybe not...
Well, what do people think -- flame away.
Imagine yourself shipwrecked on an uninhabited semi-paradise island on the Pacific knowing there were similarly shipwrecked wickedly wonderful geekgrrls on a neighbouring island but there were no physical means of getting there... Since you only managed to rescue the only items of any importance to you - a notebook and a solar panel - you'd want to waste no time setting up a chat connection to that real-paradise island.
Before setting out on that perilous Pacific cruise you had read on Slashdot about someone called Gilligan Bates (also known as Billigan) - a former billionaire who had found himself stranded on that very same island a few months earlier. Like you, he had also managed to hang on to his beloved laptop. But his was a new Pentium model running Windows Y2K. The bloated OS ran - when it wasn't sporting a blue screen - barely half an hour per recharge; and it always took more than half a day to get the battery full anyway. Worse, since everything from MS-Office down had been integrated into one humongous bundle most of that productive half hour got spent on operating the HD, and running MS-Diagnostics after bluescreens. Not that Billigan was even interested in the grrls across the straits - he was too small and limb to have found the courage to even wave at them - but he was desperate for a Word from the outside world on the situation of his declining worth. Well, the value of his declining stock fortune anyway. But none of the proprietary protocols newly-integrated into his software had been adopted by the near-by islanders so he couldn't even communicate with anyone. Before banging his head against a trunk of a palm tree til the final bluescreen got to _him_, he had carved one final message on lid of his laptop. It said: "These bloody savages, so obviously happy and care-free, must have been using free software and open protocols that weren't included in my all proprietary preload setup. God, oh god, I miss the preloading civilization! And cause I'm getting ever smaller and limber by the hour, I can't even reach the bananas any longer. The end is nigh..."
Thinking about the poor Billigan makes your grin ever wider. You plug in the solar panel, boot a few days old revision of MandHat and in half hour you've created a wireless LAN and started hacking your way through your favourite project while chatting with the increasingly interested geekgrrls from the other island. You look at the power gauge and, after an hour it tells you're at 90% and holding steady. As you start recompiling the kernel and one of the geekgrrls has started to become intimate online you laugh aloud. Not because the grrl told you that there aren't any bananas on their island, but because you know it really paid off to get that cheapo laptop with a curiously named CPU - Crusoe.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
This is only for the true fiend among us, but it just might satisfy your hunger. You neglected to include your email address, but I promise I'll send you some personally next time, okay?
-b
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Would anyone on Slashdot give a damn?
My guess is probably not.
Can you say "vaporware"?!? I knew you could!
>Besides, I doubt Itanium will be "poorly
.18 micron and tweaking it a bit is the pressure Athlon puts on Intel. Without AMD, we'd be waiting a long, long time to see Intel advance anything for consumer-oriented processors. Intel simply doesn't care about innovating in the consumer market. Keep on wishing, but Itanium ain't for us--it's for the same market that purchases UltraSparcs and current-generation high end Alphas.
>supported", on the contrary there has never been
>any new ISA with the kind of support Itanium has,
>like it or not.
Price points have already been discussed, and of course this being Chipzilla it's likely that prices will be higher than we've been led to believe. Like it or not, Merced will be squarely for servers and high-end workstations for a while. Meaning, most desktop apps will not be available on Itanium for a while--Willamette is supposed to be the successor to the current P!!!, not Merced and McKinley, so there's little incentive for most desktop consumer-based companies to port all their apps to the new architecture when the new architecture is for servers. Face it: what Intel wants to do is feed us the same old stuff while devoting most of their R&D to an architecture too expensive for 95% of us. That's why the only reason Intel has sped up their schedule for evolving consumer P!!! to
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
That's my birthday, and how appropriate:
One chip to rule them all
One chip to mock them
One chip to bring them all
and in its circuits overclock them
Wait... so what does that make Linus?
Preferential Voting: easy as 1-2-3
Linus already has children, he was proudly showing off his daughter at Linuxworld in San Jose.
Mike
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
I'm not much of a kernel developer myself, but this is my understanding of the pace of development (from interviews, linux journal, etc.):
Linus seems to say that the reason 2.2 development slowed down was because of all the new attention linux was getting--new developers and all. He wanted to 'play it safe' while in the spotlight so no mess ups would ruin linux. (love the media, huh?)
But now that linux has decent SMP, RAID, etc. it's relatively safe to 'go breakneck' with the development.
Besides, linux will run on Crusoe under the x86 emulation if not in it's native tongue.
Your right, this secrecy thing is starting to get kind of annoying. But you are wrong about what they are *really* doing.
Back in the 40's, at Roswell, New Mexico, an alien spacecraft crashed during a storm. The reason was that their flight control computer crashed when "Mega-Shift Galactic Traveler" (hmmm...) crashed into a green screen of death. So, anyways, the military finds them and brings them to a base and... ooops... I can't talk about it. To make a long, twisted, secret story short, the aliens just said "wait".
50 years later, in the 1990's, the aliens come back to life as executives at a startup chip designing firm, which, for the sake of taste, will remain nameless. They say they want a new computer system that will run anything without crashing, so they enlist the help of the planet's best computer programmer, who will also remain nameless. Unfortunately, according to their plans, they attract alot of attention because of the programmer they hired. Quoted from a private interview, one of the aliens stated, "We want a chip because the earth is despicable and we want out." Other than this, they were unavailable for comment.
They had to give the press something, so they gave them the plans for their original computer that left them stranded here.
They eventually design and manufacture their chip, which becomes a big hit in the portable computer market, though it left people wondering why. "Wasn't this supposed to be powerfull?" they all said. What they didn't know is that it was designed to be portable so they could bring it back to their mother ship without needing a big space-semi. They also didn't know that it received the majority of it's design inspiration from the 4004. Yes, that's right, the 4004.
It looks like the aliens are in for a long stay.
(That's kind of a "trans-mental" story, don't you say?)
Regards,
January
Well- looking over the thread...some theories.
1) Website: Why Crusoe? This is obviously a marketing thing...it is NOT a codename. And what does it mean? Well, Crusoe was stranded on an island all by himself- but he recreated his lifestyle using the materials at hand. Draw your own conclusions, but I think it is basically saying- "Don't worry about the rest of the world...with our processor you can recreate everything you need..."
2) Patents: if anybody actually read some of the patents (hobby, anyone??) that Transmeta has filed, you can read between the lines and see that they are definitely working on something that involves wrapping one processor inside another one- or "simulating" one processor on another one. But I actually think they are going one step further- instead of simulating a processor, why not have a processor that is "generic" enough that the software is conned into thinking that it IS the processor. Comments?