[I]The "technology" that Transmeta developed is essentially a VLIW processor that can be micro-programmed to interpret the IA32 instruction set. By removing the hardware for direct decoding or execution of the complex IA32 instructions, the Transmeta chips save power.[/I]
A separate firmware layer lies there to interprete the x86 instructions. The VLIW processor core can only understand VLIW instructions given to it by the firmware.
[I]Unfortunately, for Transmeta, this "technology" is neither new nor hard to duplicate. The Opteron (AMD) and the new Pentium IV (Intel) are both VLIW processors microprogrammed to execute the IA32-64 instruction set.[/I]
They're not. While both the K8 and Netburst do decouple decoding, they decode into internal micro-ops which are more RISC-like than VLIW. Although Banias and K8, with micro-ops fusion, do resemble a bit of VLIW, but can hardly be called that.
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[I]The "technology" that Transmeta developed is essentially a VLIW processor that can be micro-programmed to interpret the IA32 instruction set. By removing the hardware for direct decoding or execution of the complex IA32 instructions, the Transmeta chips save power.[/I] A separate firmware layer lies there to interprete the x86 instructions. The VLIW processor core can only understand VLIW instructions given to it by the firmware. [I]Unfortunately, for Transmeta, this "technology" is neither new nor hard to duplicate. The Opteron (AMD) and the new Pentium IV (Intel) are both VLIW processors microprogrammed to execute the IA32-64 instruction set.[/I] They're not. While both the K8 and Netburst do decouple decoding, they decode into internal micro-ops which are more RISC-like than VLIW. Although Banias and K8, with micro-ops fusion, do resemble a bit of VLIW, but can hardly be called that.