Yes, I know what's going on in the case. I'm saying that it's highly unlikely that Intel would be pursuing a "ban on imports from VIA". It would be more accurate to say they're trying to get an injunction because VIA may be illegally using patented works. There's clear legal precident for that... but Intel is not the department of commerce, and hence does not have *any authority whatsoever* to ban via imports. That was what I was irked about. Slashdot made it sound like they're trying to ban *ALL* via imports. Not true.
Oh, calm down people. Intel can't tell another company to stop importing. It was probably blown out of proportion by another media hound looking for some sensationalized story. Even if they could ban VIA, they could just create another company, sell to them, rebrand the via chipset and sell *that*.
Keep in mind, kids, that hatching lawyers isn't covered by this patent. You can still grow them, feed them with red tape, and finally put them into your fish tank and watch them duel for the all important "injunction". That goodness for that - I'd be real bummed if I couldn't grow my own lawyers. =)
Okay, that's cool, but you still need to license the use of air with the plant kingdom. I've found that air is an invaluable resource and since they have exclusive control over it, you're going to either need to start cloning oak trees or pay them large sums of carbon dioxide for the privelege. Keep in mind that cutting them down (perhaps as a form of legal revenge?) doesn't go over well - your air supply may be cut off a few years later.. and, well.. we all know what that does to your long-term survival options.
I'd like to point out the popular Atlas IV by Quantum can go in excess of 30MB/s, and at it's slowest can maintain a 17MB/s thoroughput. It's SCSI, and that's the 7200 RPM model. You do *not* want to see their new Atlas 10K 2 model coming out, it's insane. Check out these guys for more details. SCSI is hardly dead. It's also alot nicer on the system - consuming less CPU resources and because it generates far fewer interrupts your computing experience is much "smoother" - especially for video. When my HDD goes into death-access-mode on IDE, it grinds to a halt. Under SCSI I can do other things while waiting for that app to get the data it wants. SCSI access times (not just seek time!) are also generally superior to IDE.
If you got the bucks, SCSI is definately for the power user.
This sounds errily familiar to another cold fusion "fuel cell". They had a revolutionary new power source too. Hmmm, as another slashdotter said "Marketing v. reality? Nah, wouldn't be a fair fight."
You can find my (mostly) complete notes at this link. Executive summary follows --
Transmeta is focused on software, not hardware.
Strategic alliance with IBM for the hardware.
Two product families, both focused on mobile computing.
Linus got his ass kicked by the CEO in quake. =)
code-morphing - 75% of the "processor" will really be in software - translating everything down to the actual processor's internal instructions.
VERY low power consumption, somewhere around 1 watt during normal use. Less than a few milliwatts for "standby" mode. You can leave this thing on for weeks without difficulty. On a battery.
Transmeta website will be live at 2:00 CST, 12:00 PST, and 3:00 EST (for those who can't convert like me. *g*)
Linux will have the code-morphing code added in, as demonstrated on the webcast. However, no kernel patch is forthcoming - yet. Linus will likely make an announcement within 24 hours of this webcast (However, this is my opinion).
thanks for pointing that out. I'm just taking the notes down - later on they went on to describe the processor in more detail and it's obviously not as RISCy as one might think, but it's still a much simpler chip than the x86 family right now.
Q: christopher - slashdot - can this cpu can do multiple vm's? A: Theoretically, yes. We're focusing on x86 right now.
Q: chris //.: Can software change the instruction set of the cpu? A: Hooks are not there at the moment, but drivers and such can. Yes, it's possible, but no we're not doing that right now.
Q: Does this do MMX / 3DNow? A: No. standard x86 only right now. MMX is supported, but not streaming.
Q: Open source code morphing? A: No plans to open source it as part of the product. It's not an OS, it runs only on the crusoe processor. In the case of linux, however, it WILL be open source.
Q: IBM, partner - do they also get access to your tech? Crusoe as a core for the processor? A: They are manufacturing partner, however only transmeta will sell the chips. It will not be a part of the ASIC technology right now.
Q: How much (price)? A: In press release, but 5400 will go from $119 - $329, and the 3120 is from $65 - $89.
Q: Internet appliance (price)? A: *skirting the issue* No real answer. $1200 - $1500?
Q: Linux Journal - Why the secrecy? A: demand on our time. We were doing something we believe was a breakthrough... patents filed... didn't want to talk until then.. didn't want to hype - thought buzz would be better and wait until they had a real product before marketing it. Announcements in the future will be made once they really have it (as in today).
Q: ?? A: Linus is a software engineer, and a key architect of the code morphing.
Q: Sun Java project - synergy? Hotspot compiler - will you work w/ them? A: They have great tech, but we don't want to speculate on that.
Q: "mobile linux" - official name? A: Linux was an obvious choice for the OEMs to reduce the memory foot- print for ROM. It's part of our overall platform solution... open source is a "yes".
Q: Benchmarking: what is the battery life - if an intel p3 lasts 3 hours, how long for crusoe? A: *skirting the issue* But ours will be better. We'd like to say 2x better...
Q: Benchmarking: what is the raw performance??? Creating your own benchmarks generally means your product sucks on existing ones.. A: *skirting the issue again* Check out our website today... A: Haven't finished tuning the software. Today, the TM5400 is slightly better on standard industry benchmarks.
Q: ZDNET - nobody else is working on a software-based processor? A: There aren't alot of people, IBM has tried... there aren't enough highly-talented compiler people though to do this for many groups.. A: Go ask the other companies.
Q: Where are your OEM partners? Do you have any signed agreements? A: This is a tech announcement. We will not announce our customers, they will introduce their product on their own.
Q: Going public - IPO? A: It's possible. We do expect to do so at some point. We're very well funded at the moment, but transmeta employees are looking forward to it.
Q: Is this product windows friendly? A: Yup. compatible with ALL operating systems.
Q: VLIW, when will we see the instruction set? A: No plans yet. And it wouldn't make sense, because they do not have the same instruction sets.
Q: in 1998, what was the "major change in direction" you announced? A: Something to throw off reporters.
Q: ??? A:...
Lunch time. Ask somebody else for notes past this point. =)
Mobile processing - it's "internet appliance" market will be one product family. The other will be mobile PCs. doesn't sound like crusoe is for the desktop at all.
They started a laptop on fire! =)
Intel is going to use linux for their internet appliances.
Transmeta is going head to head with Intel?
Market forcast with some nicely colored charts. =)
They're going to put a crusoe chip onto a 1 lb form factor. Basically big, flat screen and a finger-pointer interface. Cute.
Longview(sp?) technology dynamically adjusts the CPU speed on the fly. This is transparent to the user. You won't see this (as a user). It seems to be able to slow down while waiting for other i/o components - like memory, to get info to the cpu for processing. I'm guessing this is a next-generation version of APM that's really in-sync with the processor. Then again, this is marketing but at 1 watt consumption, even NO power management would be awesome.
Some guy discussed benchmarking. Since I consider benchmarking to be dropping a machine on the table and seeing how big of a mark it leaves.. I skipped taking notes on this.
It looks like the guy was picking his nose for half the webcast, but it was just blocky pixels to me.:) Now, onto the details --
It's a RISC processor(no tech detail - this is a marketing guy, not a techie). Specifically, it provides complete compatibility with x86 instruction set.
They've decided to put the emulation of x86 instructions into the software. Whether this is in the form of downloadable-onto-the-chip or in memory, I don't know.
Genetic / heuristic programming on the processor to reduce power consumption? The marketing droid thinks it's "a smart processor".
Transmeta will focus on mobile computing
Chip named after Robinson Crusoe because Crusoe was a guy who was very mobile. *snicker*
It's designed to be binary-compatible with many chips.
It's designed to run at low power consumption and with fewer transistors than existing chips.
"Crusoe is the first microprocessor who's instruction set that is implimented entirely in software."
Transmeta has not invented a new cpu. It has designed software, specifically code morphing.
Buzzword alert! "mobile internet processor"
Very simple processor. Later going for massive SMP?
HARDWARE __________________
A 400 mhz processor, linux, 1 watt power consumption, 100kb onchip cache.
Marketing guy is showing a "web pad" now.
TM5400 - processor #2, designed to run Windows. For a notebook, it's gonna run at 700 mhz. 400kb onchip cache, 1 watt power consumption
Marketing buzzword: "internet changes everything"
Marketing: They're betting I want to take the internet everywhere ("computing is going mobile").:) Heh. Sure, just give me a wireless 1mb/s pipe...
Well, unless you can ensure two things: non-repudiation (can't claim they didn't) and authenticity (they are who they say they are) online voting can't happen. Period. Just remember: Texas was the first to start using digital signatures as legally binding. =)
Yeah, well, quite some time ago I did alittle experiment to see how bad the moderation system was. Click the User Info thingie above this post to see what I mean. But anyway - don't give the moderation system much credit. Just read my posts, and if you like what you see keep an eye out for other posts of mine.:) I like to follow Enoch Root and a few others. Even some of the trolls can be humorous, from time to time. Otherwise, if you wanna discuss karma and moderation in more detail, kick out an -email to me and we'll talk.
Nah, but BAW is pretty cool too.:) I'm just out having fun on slashdot. It's pretty funny - I got 12 moderations to this post... hehe. Gotta love that.
You're not me, silly. And it would take exactly 621 posts for me to be moderated down enough to irk me. This is why the idea of "karma whoring" is so silly - I really, honestly don't care. I'm only responding because I'm really bored at work today.:(
I got my own e-mail right here from Rob Malda saying "Signal, if you post one more comment about me, I'm gonna add code to make sure you never get past +1!" Well, let's test that theory...
I'm auctioning off this original e-mail in exchange for karma points on slashdot. =) The bidding starts at 20.
"Excellent Smithers. Soon we'll be able to give away these power-consuming cards to the hapless souls and then charge them through the nose for the electricity! *evil laugh*"
Why, we'll have them eating out of our palms! With free internet access and Quake3 the power industry will be booming in no time! *evil laugh*
Well, yahoo has hundreds, nay thousands, nay hundreds of thousands of "uniquely indexable pages" in their database. It's a web of links. How does one define unique?
Really, this article says nothing. Unless it states (and it does not) *exactly* how they mean "unique" I'm not going to take this seriously. A more interesting statistic (and one I haven't seen updated in awhile) would be what the information conversion ratio is between the "RealWorld" and the web - ie: how much information that you can find in a library can you also find online in it's entirety. That is a more accurate measure of growth than raw page numbers.
Keep in mind the bag must be open for this to be effective and the wound must be about the size of your chest... in which case learning to program is probably not your highest priority. =)
Now, I know you guys aren't taking this seriously, but with the money you've laid out I might expect some amount of responsibility. Why have we gone through multiple stages of voting? How can we be assured this isn't some kind of hoax? Slashdot seems to be near the epicenter of all kinds of debates and the opinions made by it carry weight within the community. As I've previously mentioned, this is going to frustrate and alienate many people who feel "left out". And you'll note that now we've gone from any selection to just a few. I find that suspect - I don't know how many people voted for "RMS" and "Richard Stallman". Did we combine them? How can you assure us of this?
In short, what have you done to ensure that who we vote for *really is* who we get? Where are the exit polls to give independant input?
Oh, Poor katz. Got flamed again, I see. Gosh, that has to hurt, the heat licking your heels, the concept of a public forum where we can debate your works in real time and have the posts be of equal significance (often greater) than the article you posted. Has to hurt, doesn't it?
Jon, get over it. This is an open forum. There's gonna be about 50 posts on this thread alone we call "trolls" who will say that you're naked and petrified. What's worse, some of them will even say "you suck!" a dozen or so times. Veterans of the internet get used to this - especially those that also post in places like Usenet.
This community is very critical of the technical correctness of one's work. We also don't happen to have an incredibly huge interest in politics or the little tedious things other people seem to find so interesting (like politics and the oh-so-common "I'm right and you're wrong" syndrome). We're going to flame you. Often, and in depth. Some of our more outspoken members might keep it more impartial and just point out the flaws, but we're human and there are still some of us with these so-called "emotions" that come into play. You're not the first, and you won't be the last. Now can you PLEASE stop saying "oh poor me" and just get on with the article? If you wonder why you're so hated, it's because you disregard our feedback and then expect us to like you! People hate being ignored.
Oh my god, somebody copied Rob's code again! Look - it's over there, somebody copied an idea of his! That page has banner ads on top and links on the left-hand side of the page. THEY COPIED ROB! Oh my god - there's another site - cnn.com copied Rob too - they have STORIES on a page along with IMAGES! Oh no, OH NO! And look - even the politicians have ripped Rob off - they're using OPEN FORUMS and FREE SPEECH!
Rob, please... this mp3 thing affects absolutely nobody. I could make the claim it's not unlike my own mp3db program and no doubt winamp could say the same. Or xmms for that matter. Or how about the dozens of geeks that were bored and wrote their own perl scripts? This is just noting the obvious.. it has no implications on the majority of readers here...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I know what's going on in the case. I'm saying that it's highly unlikely that Intel would be pursuing a "ban on imports from VIA". It would be more accurate to say they're trying to get an injunction because VIA may be illegally using patented works. There's clear legal precident for that... but Intel is not the department of commerce, and hence does not have *any authority whatsoever* to ban via imports. That was what I was irked about. Slashdot made it sound like they're trying to ban *ALL* via imports. Not true.
Oh, calm down people. Intel can't tell another company to stop importing. It was probably blown out of proportion by another media hound looking for some sensationalized story. Even if they could ban VIA, they could just create another company, sell to them, rebrand the via chipset and sell *that*.
Keep in mind, kids, that hatching lawyers isn't covered by this patent. You can still grow them, feed them with red tape, and finally put them into your fish tank and watch them duel for the all important "injunction". That goodness for that - I'd be real bummed if I couldn't grow my own lawyers. =)
Okay, that's cool, but you still need to license the use of air with the plant kingdom. I've found that air is an invaluable resource and since they have exclusive control over it, you're going to either need to start cloning oak trees or pay them large sums of carbon dioxide for the privelege. Keep in mind that cutting them down (perhaps as a form of legal revenge?) doesn't go over well - your air supply may be cut off a few years later.. and, well.. we all know what that does to your long-term survival options.
If you got the bucks, SCSI is definately for the power user.
Apparently the concept of humor continues to elude you.
This sounds errily familiar to another cold fusion "fuel cell". They had a revolutionary new power source too. Hmmm, as another slashdotter said "Marketing v. reality? Nah, wouldn't be a fair fight."
thanks for pointing that out. I'm just taking the notes down - later on they went on to describe the processor in more detail and it's obviously not as RISCy as one might think, but it's still a much simpler chip than the x86 family right now.
Q&A section (part 5)
/.: Can software change the instruction set of the cpu?
...
PARAPHRASED
Q: christopher - slashdot - can this cpu can do multiple vm's?
A: Theoretically, yes. We're focusing on x86 right now.
Q: chris /
A: Hooks are not there at the moment, but drivers and such can.
Yes, it's possible, but no we're not doing that right now.
Q: Does this do MMX / 3DNow?
A: No. standard x86 only right now. MMX is supported, but not
streaming.
Q: Open source code morphing?
A: No plans to open source it as part of the product. It's not
an OS, it runs only on the crusoe processor. In the case of linux,
however, it WILL be open source.
Q: IBM, partner - do they also get access to your tech? Crusoe as
a core for the processor?
A: They are manufacturing partner, however only transmeta will sell
the chips. It will not be a part of the ASIC technology right now.
Q: How much (price)?
A: In press release, but 5400 will go from $119 - $329, and the 3120
is from $65 - $89.
Q: Internet appliance (price)?
A: *skirting the issue* No real answer. $1200 - $1500?
Q: Linux Journal - Why the secrecy?
A: demand on our time. We were doing something we believe was a
breakthrough... patents filed... didn't want to talk until then..
didn't want to hype - thought buzz would be better and wait until
they had a real product before marketing it. Announcements in the
future will be made once they really have it (as in today).
Q: ??
A: Linus is a software engineer, and a key architect of the code
morphing.
Q: Sun Java project - synergy? Hotspot compiler - will you work w/ them?
A: They have great tech, but we don't want to speculate on that.
Q: "mobile linux" - official name?
A: Linux was an obvious choice for the OEMs to reduce the memory foot-
print for ROM. It's part of our overall platform solution... open
source is a "yes".
Q: Benchmarking: what is the battery life - if an intel p3 lasts 3
hours, how long for crusoe?
A: *skirting the issue* But ours will be better. We'd like to say 2x
better...
Q: Benchmarking: what is the raw performance??? Creating your own
benchmarks generally means your product sucks on existing ones..
A: *skirting the issue again* Check out our website today...
A: Haven't finished tuning the software. Today, the TM5400 is
slightly better on standard industry benchmarks.
Q: ZDNET - nobody else is working on a software-based processor?
A: There aren't alot of people, IBM has tried... there aren't enough
highly-talented compiler people though to do this for many groups..
A: Go ask the other companies.
Q: Where are your OEM partners? Do you have any signed agreements?
A: This is a tech announcement. We will not announce our customers,
they will introduce their product on their own.
Q: Going public - IPO?
A: It's possible. We do expect to do so at some point. We're very
well funded at the moment, but transmeta employees are looking
forward to it.
Q: Is this product windows friendly?
A: Yup. compatible with ALL operating systems.
Q: VLIW, when will we see the instruction set?
A: No plans yet. And it wouldn't make sense, because they do not
have the same instruction sets.
Q: in 1998, what was the "major change in direction" you announced?
A: Something to throw off reporters.
Q: ???
A:
Lunch time. Ask somebody else for notes past this point. =)
(( Missed part of the webcast due to work ))
End part III, on to tech details
- Transmeta corporation ______________
- Transmeta hired a new CEO - Mark Allen of Netscape fame.
- Transmeta has 200+ people on staff.
- Manufacturing is overseas in Taiwan
- IBM partnership!
- Paul Allen invested in them.
- Buzzword Alert: "technology innovator"
- Transmeta will not sell directly to end-users. It is OEM only.
- Transmeta has modified the linux codebase with their code morphing tech
End part II. Opening to Q&AEnd part I
Well, unless you can ensure two things: non-repudiation (can't claim they didn't) and authenticity (they are who they say they are) online voting can't happen. Period. Just remember: Texas was the first to start using digital signatures as legally binding. =)
Yeah, well, quite some time ago I did alittle experiment to see how bad the moderation system was. Click the User Info thingie above this post to see what I mean. But anyway - don't give the moderation system much credit. Just read my posts, and if you like what you see keep an eye out for other posts of mine. :) I like to follow Enoch Root and a few others. Even some of the trolls can be humorous, from time to time. Otherwise, if you wanna discuss karma and moderation in more detail, kick out an -email to me and we'll talk.
Nah, but BAW is pretty cool too. :) I'm just out having fun on slashdot. It's pretty funny - I got 12 moderations to this post... hehe. Gotta love that.
You're not me, silly. And it would take exactly 621 posts for me to be moderated down enough to irk me. This is why the idea of "karma whoring" is so silly - I really, honestly don't care. I'm only responding because I'm really bored at work today. :(
I'm auctioning off this original e-mail in exchange for karma points on slashdot. =) The bidding starts at 20.
"Excellent Smithers. Soon we'll be able to give away these power-consuming cards to the hapless souls and then charge them through the nose for the electricity! *evil laugh*"
Why, we'll have them eating out of our palms! With free internet access and Quake3 the power industry will be booming in no time! *evil laugh*
Really, this article says nothing. Unless it states (and it does not) *exactly* how they mean "unique" I'm not going to take this seriously. A more interesting statistic (and one I haven't seen updated in awhile) would be what the information conversion ratio is between the "RealWorld" and the web - ie: how much information that you can find in a library can you also find online in it's entirety. That is a more accurate measure of growth than raw page numbers.
Keep in mind the bag must be open for this to be effective and the wound must be about the size of your chest... in which case learning to program is probably not your highest priority. =)
In short, what have you done to ensure that who we vote for *really is* who we get? Where are the exit polls to give independant input?
Jon, get over it. This is an open forum. There's gonna be about 50 posts on this thread alone we call "trolls" who will say that you're naked and petrified. What's worse, some of them will even say "you suck!" a dozen or so times. Veterans of the internet get used to this - especially those that also post in places like Usenet.
This community is very critical of the technical correctness of one's work. We also don't happen to have an incredibly huge interest in politics or the little tedious things other people seem to find so interesting (like politics and the oh-so-common "I'm right and you're wrong" syndrome). We're going to flame you. Often, and in depth. Some of our more outspoken members might keep it more impartial and just point out the flaws, but we're human and there are still some of us with these so-called "emotions" that come into play. You're not the first, and you won't be the last. Now can you PLEASE stop saying "oh poor me" and just get on with the article? If you wonder why you're so hated, it's because you disregard our feedback and then expect us to like you! People hate being ignored.
** END RANT **
Rob, please... this mp3 thing affects absolutely nobody. I could make the claim it's not unlike my own mp3db program and no doubt winamp could say the same. Or xmms for that matter. Or how about the dozens of geeks that were bored and wrote their own perl scripts? This is just noting the obvious.. it has no implications on the majority of readers here...