Transmeta to Release Processor in January? 152
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!
Personally... (Score:1)
Babelfish! Hee hee... (Score:2)
*snicker* .. the rumor kitchen. Mahir, head chef of the rumor kitchen, kiss you!
Re:Personally... (Score:1)
Yeah but would still be 10 years out of date.
For Notebooks! (Score:1)
What about the fab? (Score:3)
Either way, it will be more interesting than the Lucent (might not be a) router announcement.
Re:Processor, Yeah... (Score:3)
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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"...aimed at the notebook market" (Score:1)
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?)
Codename: VAPOR (Score:1)
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!
Update (Score:2)
Transmete website (Score:2)
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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Re:Personally... (Score:1)
If it's hardware . . . (Score:5)
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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The full article bablefished (Score:2)
Crusoe is to direct owing to its very low current consumption primarily at the Notebook market (s/c't)
Re:Update (Score:1)
Why Crusoe?? (Score:1)
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 [transmeta.com] has changed! (And no, www.transmeta.com/crusoe.html and www.transmeta.com/crusoe/ dont exist!
Fabless or not, it's sure to make waves... (Score:5)
Dare to hope? (Score:3)
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 [cnet.com] 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...
Re:Personally... (Score:1)
Re:If it's hardware . . . (Score:1)
Re:Update (Score:1)
There are no secret messages in the source code to this web page.
There are no tyops in this web page.
Re:Update (Score:1)
Better translation (Score:5)
A comment on that article has even more info (Score:2)
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...
Crusoe? (Score:2)
A new platform that runs native Linux and without all the flaws and inherited legacy hardware in the INTEL architecture, sounds good to me
Re:If it's hardware . . . (Score:1)
This processor might be able to run non-native (what ever native means) linux binaries, it might even be able to run the whole thing; linux-x86-on-Crusoe, linux-ppc-on-Crusoe, linux-sparc-on-Crusoe, and obviously linux-Crusoe.
Also, once the plataform is up and ready, sooner or later other stuff (non-linux) might want to be ported, and while it's ported a non-native version can be "emulated" (what ever that means to this processor).
I don't remember the whole discussion on the patent thing, but did it specifically target x86? What about other architectures, even new architectures? This might give Transmeta the upper hand in a place where 64 seems to split compatibility all over.
cl
P.S. I'm making stuff up as I go so don't trust me.
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Reply . . . Let's get it over with.
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Re:Babelfish! Hee hee... (Score:1)
Linus is having a baby! I hope his boys can swim.
"If you can't take the shoddy journalism than stay out of the rumor kitchen."
Truly Exciting Rumor Mill (Score:4)
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!
Why Linux (Score:1)
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...
For the lazy Slashdotter... (Score:1)
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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Expect nothing (Score:1)
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
Re:Why Linux (Score:1)
Transmeta - Linux - JAVA?? (Score:3)
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.
It doesn't work with all browsers! (Score:2)
Re:Processor, Yeah... (Score:2)
English translation (Score:1)
Babeluary
Crusoe, easy to confirm... (Score:1)
VM on the fly on a chip on a wing and a prayer (Score:3)
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
Do the patents really reveal anything? (Score:3)
Re:A comment on that article has even more info (Score:1)
the processor should be able to run self-modifying
code. Naturally, it will be a lot SLOWER because
of the retranslations... If it is in critical timing loops, then just maybe there is a problem
but on the whole, I'd think this is a rosy herring.
Re:Crusoe, easy to confirm... (Score:1)
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Serial Number: 75422458
Registration Number: (NOT AVAILABLE)
Trademark (words only): TRANSMETA
Current Status: An office action making FINAL a refusal to register the mark has been mailed.
^^^^^
Date of Status: 1999-08-05
Filing Date: 1998-01-23
CURRENT OWNERS
1. Transmeta Corporation
GOODS AND SERVICES
computers; computer operating systems; computer hardware; computer peripherals; integrated circuits; semiconductors; printed circuit boards; firmware; middleware;
utility software; and application software for use in connection with computers systems, computer hardware, computer peripherals, integrated circuits, semiconductors, and
printed circuit boards
PROSECUTION HISTORY
1999-08-05 - FINAL REFUSAL MAILED
1999-05-03 - COMMUNICATION RECEIVED FROM APPLICANT
1998-11-03 - NON-FINAL ACTION MAILED
1998-10-20 - ASSIGNED TO EXAMINER
1998-10-20 - ASSIGNED TO EXAMINER
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Does this mean Transmeta Corp. is up a creek without a paddle on the trademarks or does it mean that they can't get a trademark for vaporware?
Some thoughts..... (Score:3)
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 [thehungersite.com]
Re:Babelfish! Hee hee... (Score:1)
Re:What about the fab? (Score:1)
You don't need a fab to build a microprocessor. Many CPU's are built using third party fabrication resources such as the MIPS microprocessor.
Re:Some thoughts..... (Score:2)
I realize that, but while Transmeta people seem to keep their mouth shut because they really enjoy their work, do you really think some mid-level manager is going to care?
Here Dave, make sure we have enought people to staff the canteen to server X people from 15 January.
Oh, Okay Jim, what's happenening?
We've just signed a new contract with some manufacture, but you can't tell anyone.
- Infact you should probably have some factor in there for the motivation of them, too.
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com [thehungersite.com]
Re:Some thoughts..... (Score:1)
Re:Babelfish! Hee hee... (Score:1)
Re:If it's hardware . . . (Score:1)
Transmetta's fab (Score:1)
What's all the fuss about (Score:1)
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!
Re:Why Crusoe?? (Score:1)
Or they may be implementing "advanced Friday cache architecture". =)
Primarily For Notebooks?!?! (Score:1)
Re:Some thoughts..... (Score:1)
That said, Transmeta's filed patents hint at technologies to make applications run
considerably faster than they do now, at a given clock speed. So if you're willing to run them
at standard speed, you could, we imagine, run the chip rather more slowly than your
average PIII and thus make a big saving on power.
Re:It doesn't work with all browsers! (Score:1)
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Re:Crusoe? (Score:2)
will crusoe=gilligan?
:)
Re:Processor, Yeah... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Fabless or not, it's sure to make waves... (Score:1)
Re:For Notebooks! (Score:1)
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
Re:"...aimed at the notebook market" (Score:1)
Why not wait until the next generation of chips, or the next next? I heard thoes cpus 3 generations are mad sweet...
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
Re:Update (Score:1)
This is the biggest news story of the week... it should be on the front page :^)
Steve
replies (Score:2)
No boards (nevertheless!), and faster despite cheaper (x, 11,11,1999)
(Enlish butcherization)
Re:Primarily For Notebooks?!?! (Score:2)
Many OEMs (correctly, I think) see notebooks and even desktops derived from notebook technology like Gateway's Profile as the wave of the future. It's likely that conventional "desktop" technology will die off over the next few years.
This will be a good thing - computers will get smaller, quieter, more power-efficient, more flat-panel-ready, and finally, the huge gap between notebook and desktop computing costs should close considerably.
Notebook technology is the future...
Question... (Score:1)
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
Apache and linux (Score:2)
Re:Why Crusoe?? (Score:1)
The Gilligan's Island theme keeps going thru my head: "Like Robinson Crusoe / as primitive as can be.. / as primitive as can be.. "
Not that I'm dissing Transmeta here (hey, maybe they're using a very simple "primitive" instruction set).
Hopefully, their sales force will provide a nice "three-ee hour tour/ a three-ee hour tour"..
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Re:Do the patents really reveal anything? (Score:1)
Re:A comment on that article has even more info (Score:1)
Windows generates code and executes it, which is subtly different to having self modifying code. This is done for things like Blt routines... the code for a particular ROP is generated on the fly. I believe the SGI software OpenGL implementation for Win32 generates scanline routines in the same way, taking into account the relevant renderstates.
And, of course, the context of this discussion is the TransMeta processor, which is said to generate native code as part of its emulation strategy.
Do you have a problem with self-modifying code?
Re:Truly Exciting Rumor Mill (Score:1)
And the side effects of the silent publicity are cool too. Any time Linux can get in the media in a non-negative (if not positive) way, I'm probably going to support it. TransMeta has been doing that, so yay!
Re:Fabless or not, it's sure to make waves... (Score:2)
Imagine Java running natively... ease of development and native speed.
Re:Update (Score:1)
because MacOS is closed (Score:1)
Re:It doesn't work with all browsers! (Score:1)
NT anyone? (Score:1)
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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Re:What about the fab? (Score:1)
BTW, as far as Transmeta's PR budget goes: it's Linus' salary. They get enough coverage out of the fact that they employ him (and give kernel.org the server space), that they can come out with an enormous IPO even if all Linus does is answer his Email all day. (NB: I'm not trying to imply that that's what he actually does... I'm sure he would not be comfortable in an environment where he was wanted only for his celebrity PR value.)
Re:Primarily For Notebooks?!?! (Score:1)
Hell Packard Bell is out, IBM is out of direct-sales, etc.
Laptops still offer a nice profit margin.
Hell, if you're PC Magazine, you can then compare the $1599 iBook against a $2499 IBM ThinkPad and beleive it's fair!
Pope
Other reasons "low power" is a win (Score:2)
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).
Re:If it's hardware . . . (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure it's just rumor (Score:2)
Re:If it's hardware . . . (Score:1)
Bingo on the emulation. If we wre to explect a native Linux on this platform, we could also expect a large chunk of new, untested code in the kernel; something Linus has been heavily against in the past.
Re:Update (Score:1)
Re:Processor, Yeah... (Score:1)
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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Re:Other reasons "low power" is a win (Score:1)
Re:Fabless or not, it's sure to make waves... (Score:1)
Re:For Notebooks! (Score:1)
They are at least cheaper than servers or high end workstations for which something like a Xeon or a high end Sparc processor might be reasonable.
Re:Fabless or not, it's sure to make waves... (Score:1)
I also did not know... (Score:1)
Go fig!
Joe
ChozSun [e-mail] [mailto]
Re:Dare to hope? (Score:1)
The most visible of these moves is that they have dessimated their customer/tech support group. In restricting their products to Intel-only, it's likely they're shipping pretty much the same thing in every box, CPU/motherboard wise, with all motherboards made by Intel. This will definitely cut support costs, simply because support staff needs only know one or two PCB variations.
It's also a retreat back to what Gateway's confortable with. They were one of the last major companies to start using non-Intel products, and they're one of those with the least internal development around (which they have also cut back recently).
This isn't to say that fear of Intel, or even Intel themselves, hasn't hurt the Athlon introduction some. But that's not the only explanation; the Super7 introductions were plauged with chip and software issues for some time. Some vendors will want to believe that's not an Athlon problem before they jump on board.
It's also a standard cost-benefit thing; is Athlon compelling enough to jump now versus later, or as a flagship, or whatever. Maybe? If the Transmeta fulfills its design goal of delivering a 4x cost/power advantage over some comparable state-of-the-art chip, it'll catch on fast. Especially on laptops, which, being fairly well self-contained and made by larger companies, are less succeptable to fear of Intel.
Re:Primarily For Notebooks?!?! (Score:2)
smaller: Ok, I don't see the big deal here really, my tower isn't to big, and I *like* room inside to put whatever I want... Be that, 5 pci cards and 4 harddrives, or load it with fans if I desire....
quieter: Once again, the sound is already negligable on most desktop/towers. The small gain is not, in my opinion worth the cost of swapping to laptop-type technology.
more power-efficient: For the average home user who runs one system, the power the computer is drawing is not an issue. A business might like this, but I still don't think it is worth it.
flat-panel ready: Huh? Ok, I think you may mean one of two things. You could mean the whole system will be in one small, flat panel. In this case this is the exact some poit as "smaller" and I've already addressed it. Or, you may mean flat panel monitors will be supported. Well, this is an absurd notion to think we should change the whole computer architechture for a problem that should be addressed in the video card.
Anyone who wants a very high performance desktop picks and chooses *each* component to get the absolute best in all parts-- soundcard, video card, motherboard, processor, and even the case is scrutinized. If what you suggest were to come to fruition, all of this power is lost. We would be stuck with what dell, gateway, compaq, or whomever threw together in an attempt to get our business. I have never once been impressed with a large company predesigned computer, and I don't want to be forced to have one.
Perhaps some history (Score:1)
Re:Some thoughts..... (Score:1)
Until recently, when memory prices started gaining ground, these Taiwanese fabs were practically paying companies for their business. I have a client that developed relationships with two fabs in Taiwan to produce their first analog product and the market never had a clue during the entire product development process until the day of the press release.
As you probably know these fabs went through huge capital spending programs to get leading-edge process technology only to be left hanging with much more capacity than they could utilize. As a result people were able to approach them early on and get long-term manufacturing commitments at reasonable cost.
Experience tells me that in order to go this route you have to have someone in your organization that has very strong relationships with the Taiwanese, be they transplants from Taiwan or they have a history of working in that environment. Does anyone know if such people exist at Transmeta?
Re: Linux kernel versions (Score:1)
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.
Re:Question... (Score:3)
The Linux connection (strongly hinted at by Jim Collas, former President of Gateway's Amiga division, when I spoke to him about the various AmigaNG rumors) is, of course, Linus himself. But the coolness factor is this: here we have a CPU, running emulated instructions as fast as some version of the Pentium II/III, and doing it cheaper and with much less power. Only the first one is new work -- it's easy to find CPUs that run faster than PII/IIIs using less power (PowerPC, for example). The thing is, the x86 code runs at 1/2 or so of the native Transmeta CPU core speed, perhaps based on the limits of their dynamic recompiler, the loss of abstraction in binary code, etc. What about native code?
The modern trick in all this, same thing Sun's doing with MAJC, is to make the idea of a VLIW processor legit by never tying a system to native binaries. You run x86 or Java Byte Code or whatever through a translator, and when the machine architecture, and thus instruction set, change, you build a new translator, everything's hunky-dorey code wise, and you get to forget entirely about hardware legacy. But Linux and other open source stuff doesn't have a binary legacy problem, period. So there's no problem in coding Linux native, and if you did this, Linux would run twice as fast, relatively, as any closed source OS on this platform. The need for Linus on this would be building a mixed code manager for Linux, so that the kernel could cooperate actively with the dynamic translator and run your choice of x86, native, or other code modules (full-speed Java, etc).
This is the last layer of HW abstration. Some day, all CPUs may be built this way.
Bigger is better! (Score:1)
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...)
Re:Perhaps some history (Score:2)
OK, just notice you're from Canada. You're forgiven, my son. Being from Canada is a good excuse
Re:Perhaps some history (Score:1)
Re:Primarily For Notebooks?!?! (Score:2)
Smaller: My case is ~2.5 feet tall, and is mostly empty (but useful) space.
Quieter: 11 fans and 2 hds do not a quite computer make.
blah blah blah....
Anyway, you're missing the point. In fact, you're so far from the point I had to hike out to send this.
PC's were in the same position a few years ago that you claim notebooks are in now. They were expensive, proprietary, difficult or impossible to upgrade, etc. Guess what? Things change. Now their (fairly) cheap, (mostly) open and (relatively) easy to upgrade. The same will come to pass in notebook tech as it migrates to the desktop. People will demand that their waffle sized computer have slots for their shiny new NV11, and some company will comply. Then they'll want to be able to upgrade processors, and another company will comply. And so on. If you're still looking for over-priced lock-ins, try the workstation market.
Anyway, you can't stop it; the lower-end of the market demands it. The iMac is a laptop (Powerbook mobo's, etc) in a big colorful case, and people love it. Some are starting to complain about the limited upgrade path (i.e., none), and hopefully Apple will do something about that. The reason they're doing so well is that most people don't care about proprietariness; they want a computer that works, without having to know anything about it. That is what this tech will give them (though it's not really at any advantage over the current systems in this). However, this does not mean that we will *all* be using iMac's (see above paragraph).
So, in five years, you'll see basically what you do now. Compaq, Gateway, Apple, etc. selling all-in-one miniPC's for the average consumer, while those of use with more refined tastes will order our Abit mobo's and Transmeta processors and slap together monstrously overpowered notebooks. I fail to see the downside. (Esp. if I can get dual processors, firewire and an NV1x in something I can take to LANparties in a backpack.
translating some of the talkbacks... (Score:1)
feed this url http://www.ix.de/newsticker/forum/go.shtml?read=1
through babelfish [altavista.com]
Re:Some thoughts..... (Score:1)
http://slashdot.org/articles/98
http://www.redherring.com/mag/issu e60/intel.html [redherring.com]
Abstraction layer (Score:1)
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.
Well, try your imagination (Score:1)
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.
www.virtualcrack.com (Score:1)
-b