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Transmeta set to Introduce Crusoe Processor 180

Posted by CmdrTaco from the waiting-waiting dept.
senthilp sent us a nice article about Transmeta which basically wraps up all the loose ends hanging out, and sums up the leading speculation on what transmeta will announce. The officail launch date for Crusoe is Jan 19 (next wed) and Chris DiBona is gonna be there with a richochet on his laptop and hopefully broadcast to IRC what is going down. So anyway, we've only got a few days left to speculate: the leading rumor is a VLIW processor which will be demonstrated in some sort of PDA or Handheld running Linux. But speculation is running rampant: I've heard that they were working on a superior version of The Kernel's Secret Blend of Herbs and Spices, and before that it was a carbon dioxide fueled teleportation device so who knows. grimsaado sent us details on the Crusoe in another story with slightly more realistic speculation.
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Transmeta set to Introduce Crusoe Processor More

Transmeta set to Introduce Crusoe Processor

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  • "Unable to open the requested document - Internal Error"

    And at the bottom:
    "Connecting People with Information"

    :)

  • I wonder what "surprises" Ditzel is talking about with regard to this.

    Pentium killer?
    I do like the design [cmpnet.com]

  • Yawn (Score:3)

    by cdlu ( 65838 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @08:01AM (#1372324) Homepage
    Tell us when the chip actually does come out instead of contributing to the hype around it.

    Funny, though, something tells me it won't replace my 486 cpu anyway... :)
    #include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1); }return(0);}
  • I think I remember reading an editorial at a hardware site some months back about the future of processors. The writer said that a software-based solution would allow for better functionality and more flexibility in excution. I thoght it was a pretty interesting article (sorry I can't remember the URL) but it didn't mention anything about any of these chips, well, "Goin' Mobile", to quote the Who.
  • Is the Transmeta overlord from After Y2K going to make an appearance?

    Actually, I'm happy to finally see what Transmeta has been working on, for a while, I thought they just had Linus on board to improve their IPO standing.

    I'm very interested, however, in a good Linux based PDA, and Transmeta's delivery of it will be great.

    "You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"

  • I was wondering when someone would say this again....I was cleaning out my bookmarks last nite and came across transmeta...and the msg is still in the source (unchanged sadly)....and I say it's the -Kernel-'s secret blend :)
  • Just a bad pun, bro -- pay it no mind :)

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • ...the leading rumor is a VLIW processor which will be demonstrated in some sort of PDA or Handheld running Linux...

    A PDA or handheld running Linux? Can you think of the numbers of geeks who're going to buy these? That just sounds too cool. If it's got enough power to run Emacs and gcc, I wouldn't have to lug around this Dell Inspiron anymore. :-)

  • Well, it will certainly be interesting to see what they've really been up to, considering all the speculation that's been flying around /. and elsewhere. Their secrecy has led hype to grow pretty bad... I think many people are going to be disappointed if the chip doesn't cure cancer and eliminate world hunger, all while reducing taxes and paying off the US national debt. Perhaps it was really created by extra-terrestrial bacteria, and transmeta just reverse engineered it?

    At any rate, nice to know the hype is over and we can see what all the fuss was (even if it shouldn't have been) about. But hey, if it runs Linux, it must be good, right? :)

  • Linus stated in his speech that the chip will be 'essentially software-powered'. And it is supposed to run Windows and Linux applications, though most likely Linux applications faster because it would not have to be interpreted.

    However, what about the other x86 products? I would think they would include those products in the release as well, such as *BSD and Solaris. This would just broaden the market. and of course, these forms of Unix might be able to be ported to the new chipset natively.

    Thoughts?

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau

  • hmm I seem to remember a company that did large scale CPU and was the basis for alot of VLIW research and theuy wrote a book about it

    Anyone Know what I mean ??



    BTW VLIW is not great ARM arch has prover that well designed RISC work very well what will be intresting is the power consumption and Die Size



    regards

    john


    a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
  • I wonder how these are going to be priced? I hope well enough to keep them with in reach of the average joe. Maybe I will hold off buying any computer eq until this evolves a little more..
  • Yeah, It's a well known fact (at least to all the After Y2K readers out there) that "crusoe" is just a code name for Eniabacus. Will someone be webcasting the event? I'd like to see the go-go dancers.

  • Hmmm... With that possible target for use, the mentioned low power consumtion, and the really neat trick of reconfigurable, and the article hints, adaptive microcode, you gotta wonder where the compromise is going to be. I wonder how they will compare to conventional embedded processors like the StrongARM and PPC for speed.

    I feel a little worried by this speculation. I'd hoped that we would be seeing a new high-end server or workstation chip capable of handling code from multiple platforms. Oh, well. This is still pretty cool -- especially with the hinted adaptive abilities. I'll have the fastest PDA for running Tetris in no time!

  • The hype and rumors surrounding Transmeta have constantly changed, but everyone seemed sure it would be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Honestly, I think Slashdotters are setting themselves up for a disappointment they haven't seen since the Phantom Menace.

  • Some further speculation (Score:5)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday January 14, 2000 @08:17AM (#1372343) Homepage Journal
    • The patents would not restrict the Crusoe processor to just doing 80x86 instructions.
    • Given the extensive background in multimedia of some of it's employees, it's likely to be a tad more powerful than a standard palm-top processor.
    • Assuming that Ditzel's work in extreme-end, unconventional technology is the least-bit relevent, it's not impossible that he's also looked at wafer-scale architecture, transputer-style parallel-processing, and other fringe designs that are technically superior but were too far ahead of their times to be really -used-.
    • Ditzel is going to be the most listened-to man on the face of the planet, on Wednesday.
    • Chances are, anything Transmeta have made will be faster than equivalent Intel processors, even if they used valves and charge-carrying slugs.
    • "Unconventional", given the presence of Linus, means what it says. Don't expect a clone of an existing device.
    • Any group that can maintain that level of security for as long as they have are no amateurs. Even if they only release a bowl of petunias and a surprised-looking Sperm Whale, count me as being significantly impressed by what -hasn't- happened. They haven't even done official "unofficial" leaks, to boost outside interest. This is a company driven by engineers, not the marketing division.

  • Business strategy: employ famous people (Score:3)

    by Stephen ( 20676 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @08:17AM (#1372344) Homepage
    At the risk of stating the obvious, employing Torvalds was the best move Transmeta could have made. How many millions must he be worth to them in free advertising, before they even have a product?
  • I think what we may be talking about here is the FPGA. The Field Programmable Gate Array is just a huge bunch of transistor "black boxes"; adders, multiplexors, etc.. and a single SRAM bit controls the connections that they make with each other. So the entire chip can be reconfigured to handle particular tasks (like a particular encryption session with the key decoder/encoder hardwired onto the chip -- put the sequence of bytes in on one end and they come out the other, encoded or decoded as you like), or mimmick a particular architecture. I don't believe that they're ready for prime time yet, unless transmeta has done something really slick.
  • If it's got enough power to run Emacs and gcc

    This isn't an emacs flame. I'm just wondering... How the hell would you use emacs with a handheld? I don't think chording on one of those chicklet keyboards would be fun, and that's assuming that the thing even has a keyboard. Round hole square peg?

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...

  • I'm not sure how it could run Linux applications without interpreting them. It interprets the X86 machine code into Cruesoe code. Even if it had the entire Linux kernel on it it would still have to do that, as far as I know.

    Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.

  • Even if they only release a bowl of petunias and a surprised-looking Sperm Whale, count me as being significantly impressed
    Now that would be something to talk about.

  • Compiler technology? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok, how to you build software for these babes? What sort of development tools are going to be available? GCC probably can't do VLIW very well. I bet they have their own custom compiler. I wonder if it will be free, or if there is going to be a steep ``initiation fee'' requiring a major investment in tools.
  • Given that it's called Crusoe, I think it's most likely that the processor will be used for rescuing people from desert islands, so it's probably some kind of GPS device!
  • EMACS on a PDA??? Remember EMACS is about 70 megs total. Thats pretty big for a handheld. A stripped down version, with the email and text editing and multiple buffer fuctionality would be enough. The coding parts are unnecasary. Who needs to code on a PDA? If the PDA is powerful enough to be a meaningful general purpose coding device, and small enough to qualify as a PDA, the price is going to be much higher than that Inspiron you are lugging around. It should certainly have limited coding capabilities, so that you can develop for the PDA itself, but general purpose coding capability to replace a full PC would just make it way too expensive and probably too large to be a worthwhile PDA.
  • That's been there for a lot of weeks, ever since they updated their web page...
  • A mobile sperm whale, nonetheless!
  • And now there really is a secret message on the web site! Check the HTML source. It was the first thing I did...



    And it's not what you think!
    If you transpose every 3rd letter, and rot13 it, then transpose every 3rd letter again you get....

    'Well done, now apply for a job!'

    >:)
    For anyone who doesn't get the joke check out he whole spy thing that was on the front page earlier.

    Kintanon
  • In my opinion there's no contest: If this thing is for real (which I pray to God it is) then Linux might chew Windows up and spit it out. Being a user of DOS-similar apps for 13 years, I simply can't WAIT when Linux becomes standard and everytihng else simply GOES TO HELL. But if this company CAN challenge the AMD Athlons and Intel Pentium III's, then things are going to get very interesting in the way of price wars and the availability of low cost copmuters.

    But what about me? I own an 80286. Yes, you read that right, an 80286 that runs Linux. I use it as a network hub, and it whoops ass (I have better). Linux and Windows both have their advantages, but for some reason, I think Linux is just more dandy (Actually, I'm partial to MS-DOS 6.2, but who cares?). Of course, you must remember, that if Linux DOES become a standard, it is my belief that Red Hat will lead the way. Why do I say this? Cause anything is better than Gnu. ^_^
  • They haven't even done official "unofficial" leaks, to boost outside interest.

    Perhaps all the hype is due to "unauthorized" leaks. Perhaps they plan to surprise us with something better?
  • I don't think that was their only idea ;-)

  • Re:Some further speculation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I doubt it will be more powerful than conventional processors. My guess is that it will be something along the lines of a fast Cyrix MediaGX. The reason I don't think it will be super fast is because it probably uses microcoded instruction sets (as opposed to hardwired logic). It seems to me its strength is going to be its low power, its multi-media friendly design, and its software flexibility, all of which will compensate for its ordinary speed.

  • Why worry about x86? (Score:3)

    by Christopher B. Brown ( 1267 ) <cbbrowne@gmail.com> on Friday January 14, 2000 @08:34AM (#1372365) Homepage
    The thing that sets off my "bogometer" when comments connect together Crusoe, Linux, and IA-32 Emulation is the fact that there shouldn't be a need to do IA-32 emulation if one is running Linux.

    Given a GCC code generator for "native Crusoe," or whatever they'd call the not-involving-emulation instrution set, it ought to be more sensible to run Linux natively on the chip, as that should be faster and more efficient since it takes direct advantage of the CPU's facilities.

    That can be made more adamant if we're talking about PDA applications where it's likely that applications are "embedded" and where it's pretty certain that source code to the applications would be available.

    If you look at some of the major proprietary applications, it's still the case that they may be recompiled for alternative architectures. Applixware is available for Alpha as well as IA-32. Mozilla is getting deployed on various architectures. StarOffice has been available for PPC. That may not represent an exhaustive list, but a PDA is not likely to have an exhaustive set of software installed on it.

  • One thing we do know (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 14, 2000 @08:35AM (#1372366)
    ... is that whatever it does, it uses small amounts of screaming-fast DRAM. Transmeta has been pretty busy in the DDR SDRAM standards process, and their focus has always been on single-bank-to-controller applications at insane speeds (like 400 MHz!)
  • Even if they only release a bowl of petunias and a surprised-looking Sperm Whale, count me as being significantly impressed.

    Now that would be something to talk about.

    Especially if the sperm whale thought the convention floor looked big and round and decided to call it "ground", and wondered aloud if it was friendly...

  • Testing a chip such as the Crusoe can be a real pain in the a--, not to mention the brain. Developing an OS for it is even worse. So my speculation is fairly simple. With Linus involved, what better test could there be than to have a fully operational hand held Linux system, complete with cool hardware, a full set of development tools (gcc, egcs, etc.), a browser, etc.?

    BTW, having followed Transmeta in the news for quite a while, I agree with some of the various article writers that Transmeta has all of the ingredients it needs for huge success: strong financial backing, partnering with established companies a focused product, a hugely competent technical staff, and enough name recognition to get the media attention required to explode into production.

    Hmmm. Interesting thought. I wonder if /. has enough karma points with Linus to get CmdrTaco and Hemos up close and personal on launch day... Think I'll send a message with that suggestion to the good folks in Transmeta's Business Development [mailto] department. There. Done. BTW, anyone care use the link and make the same suggestion?

    Rob, Jeff y'available?

  • A mobile, confused sperm whale hoping that the earth is friendly? :)
  • One rumor is that the VLIW chip is fed by an instruction-morphing cache, where other processor instructions (x86, Motorola, etc.) are turned into VLIW instructions and run natively. If this is true, then you wouldn't *have* to build software for the Crusoe -- it will natively run any software for any other microprocessor they've designed it to handle.

    My speculation for 1/18/2000 -- Transmeta showcases a PalmPad-like device that will run PalmOS, WindowsCE, Linux *and* MacOS, all in their own maximizable window. Just a guess. :)
  • Sliced bread is actually a pretty stupid idea. It gets stale so much faster ... and what's the point anyway? Are people to busy to cut their bread themselves?

    But on a more serious note: I also kinda expect them to do something really lame, like introducing another Pentium clone or something like that (maybe with some support for PowerPC or Alpha built in). Let's hope I'm wrong ... (and you too ;-)
  • And of course, it's also a hardware JIT for Java, which fits the oldest rumours about Transmeta... that may have been their original plan before they decided that Java wasn't taking off fast enough to bet the company on.
  • he probable checked teh signiture on the image file, the only thing is that picture has probable been on file for a while.
  • Funny, though, something tells me it won't replace my 486 cpu anyway... :)

    Yes, something tells me that too. I don't think that's the market that Transmeta was aiming for and that's great, IMO.

    -Brent

  • THIS IS WHAT TRANSMETA IS DOING (MODERATE UP PLS) (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 14, 2000 @08:48AM (#1372378)
    Based on what I've heard from inside sources: the FT article is dead on the mark.

    Listen to the logic: there are processors designed from the ground up for high-powered workstations (Intel Itanium, Sun SPARC, DEC Alpha).

    There are processors designed from the ground up for personal computers: AMD Athlon, Intel PIII/Celeron, etc.

    There are processors designed from the ground up for embedded computing: StrongARM, MAJC, etc.

    Now, please, name me one processor designed from the ground up intended for laptops.

    You can't, can you? Intel and AMD retrofit their desktop processors for laptops. Every other component is now specially designed for laptops - think IBM harddrives, LCD displays, etc, etc. The end result is that the CPU is the (physically) biggest item on a laptop MB and it consumes the most power.

    Transmeta Crusoe, the first processor x86-compatible processor designed specifically for the laptop, will allow laptops to be smaller, lighter and run for longer all with less battery power.

    The logic is infalliable. The market is untapped. If their processors are fast enough, in 2 years Transmeta may be the Intel of laptops CPUs.
  • Are you going to serve web-pages off it and need better uptime than WinCE will provide?

    I think it'd be handy to get uptimes that are longer then the battery life. After all, why should you have to reboot when you don't need to? :)

    -Brent

  • unspecified partner (Score:4)

    by nevets ( 39138 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @08:53AM (#1372380) Homepage Journal

    I submitted this too, but someone beat me to it ;^)

    A couple of days ago, a friend of mine that works for IBM told me that he is working on a project with Transmeta. He said even Linus Torvalds is working on this project. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me "cool stuff" with a smile. He is also under NDA, so he couldn't give me any more information but it will all be release to the public soon. With the article stating "unspecified partner", putting 2 and 2 together, is this partner IBM?

    Steven Rostedt
  • In the world of business real "unathorized" leaks are in general quickly identified as such. That is to say: they end up being attributed to "an unnamed source at Xyz Inc. stated blahblahblah, from which we can deduce with a high degree of certainty The Company In Question must have organised the leak because blahblahblah".

    In the case of Transmeta, all we appear to have seen is (old) patents and massive speculation by people who don't actually know anything besides what others have speculated already.

    Note: All the speculation may wel be correct, but that is another topic.

    --

  • ...and Chris DiBona is gonna be there with a richochet on his laptop and hopefully broadcast to IRC what is going down.

    Anyone have any clue where he'll be 'broad'casting this? I'd like to set up an 'automated client' (read bot) to fire it off to other networks (EFNet).

  • Re:Some further speculation (Score:3)

    by GregWebb ( 26123 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @09:05AM (#1372383)
    "Unconventional", given the presence of Linus, means what it says. Don't expect a clone of an existing device.
    As with Linux, his other major work, you mean?

    The guy's obviously a very good programmer and Transmeta having hired him suggests he knows what he's doing at a hardware level, too, even if he's just been designing microcode or abstraction layers. But to say that his presence makes an unconventional result a near certainty is crazy. How do we know this guy? Because he wrote a Unix clone.

    Greg
  • Perhaps it's me, but besides the high geekfactor (and that's a factor you can't always ignore ;-D), what's the use of a multiuser handheld, a handheld or other small device looking like it running linux? :) To me: not an aweful lot.

    Perhaps it's not the linux history of Thorvalds what brought him to transmeta but the technology knowledge he has.
  • Crusoe is an anagram of source. I dunno if that's why it was chosen or just a coinky-dink.

  • You heard it here first (Score:3)

    by dbrutus ( 71639 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @09:10AM (#1372386) Homepage
    They aren't looking to just go after Intel but rather will have a surprise announcement of Multi processor Crusoes being launched by Apple running OS X server and emulating PPC faster than Motorola can make the chips run. 800 Mhz dual processor boxes running a *BSD variant that is easier to administer and cheaper than equivalent NT boxen (no CALs guarantee a price advantage).

    The tip offs? IBM, a Motorola rival producer of PPC chips is producing the Crusoe but IBM's own PPC chips would compete with Crusoe if it were truly an embedded only chip. There's no advantage for IBM to do that.

    Apple also plays into this with its stealth update of Mac OS X server to 1.2. With delays on other fronts (Pismo, the P7, Mystic) it would have been a natural to hype the upgrade to their server software at MacWorld SF but they didn't go for it. The stock price was hammered because of the lack of news.

    A Transmeta tie in would give Transmeta an instant market for chips in a controlled hardware platform that has a good reputation for quality. This would ease Apple's supply problems for chips since they would suddenly be able to go to Crusoe whenever Motorola fell down on the job. It would also reinvigorate Apple's stock price by showing a business strategy that's been assembled piece by piece for the past year+, hidden in plain sight. It's just the sort of 180 degree coming from nowhere gotcha that Steve Jobs would love.

    DB

  • Re:VLIW (Score:1)

    by Xenu ( 21845 )
    Sounds like you are thinking of Multiflow.

    The pioneers are the guys with the arrows in their backs.

  • That's the first time I've seen "screaming fast" and DRAM in the same sentence.

  • Ask yourself: what is different about the assumptions of hardware computer architecture in an era of open source?

    Answer: you can presume that the user has not just the binary code but the source code

    Premise: programmable logic can optimally execute algorithms for which source code is available

    Impliciations: Rather than using pre-defined, general-purpose execution units, the proper OS could compile open source directly into linked transistors on a programmable chip (e.g. Crusoe) in a JIT-like process when programs are loaded for execution. By more efficiently using transitors, applications would take less power (like Crusoe rumors,) and the one-time-each-runtime compilation burden would make this design most useful in single-task environments (like the embedded tasks in Crusoe rumors.)

    Is this interesting enough that I should elaborate further?

    --LP

  • Why is this "Flamebait"? Offtopic, yeah, funny, mildly, but certainly not flamebait in any sense of the word. Stupid moderation like this contribute to the stench that slashdot has become.

    Don't forget, that the purpose of moderation on slashdot has only 2 results. Either you mark someone up, or you mark them down. The description, although interesting, does not affect anything, and therefore, really isn't important enough to get worked up over. Okay, so maybe the post should have been marked "off-topic" instead of "flaimbait" But the end result is that the post loses one point no matter what, so it doesn't matter at all what the description is. If it needs to be marked down, then any moderation choice that removes a point is good enough, even if it doesn't describe the exact problem with the post.

    If you could use the discription to actually do something, like say, in your preferences, have posts marked flaimbait marked down another point and posts marked off-topic marked up a point so that you'd see them, then yes, it would matter. But there's nothing like that implemented now, so why worry about how posts are marked down. Lighten up and enjoy the posted on slashdot instead of getting so anal over how someone marked a post down.

    -Brent
  • Wouldn't it be more adequate then to annouce the thing on Friday?

    -------------------------

  • Crusoe's Order Code is... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Perl
  • If their processors are fast enough, in 2 years Transmeta may be the Intel of laptops CPUs.

    Not just laptops though. If the chips are as small, fast, and energy-saving as described in the ft article [ft.com] then you will see them in just about everything that will be performing computing and IP functions in 2 years.

    Expect this to include not only cell phones and PDAs (of course), but also watches, cars, TVs, cable-boxes, home phones, MP3 players, gameboys, etc.
  • Maybe this is much bigger than we're thinking. How about an entire wearable computer?

    Josh
  • The thing that Windows has, which Linux doesn't, is MS Word 2000. To those that get Word attachments, the fact that there may be some vaguely similar software packages for Linux does not, regrettably, cut it.

    Having a faster/cheaper CPU does not establish anything about superiority of OS platforms.

    There are any number of pieces of Win32-only software that people have, unwittingly, married themselves to, where it would take a messy divorce to extricate themselves. This list might include:

    • Visio
    • ERWin
    • MS Access
    • AutoCAD
    • Microsoft Project
    • Word
    • PowerPoint
    • Excel
    • Outlook
    • Lotus Notes Client

    There may exist vaguely analagous software on Linux, and more and better in progress. That doesn't mitigate the messiness of the "divorce."

    If Transmeta were producing a chip that provided support for things like:

    • Segmentation in the style of Multics
    • Hardware-supported garbage collection, useful for either JVMs or for Lisp variants
    • Something otherwise better than merely expanding chips from 32 bit addressing to 64 bit addressing
    I'd agree that there could be something fundamental here to, in the long run, change computing.

    When all that it seems to bring is power consumption reduction, space reduction, hopefully faster performance, and perhaps less damage to the wallet, that's not really news. Every generation of CPUs since the 8008 has provided some mixture of those improvements.

    Unless "Crusoe" offers more than that, I can't get overly excited.

  • Driven by engineers, eh? Like Fujitsu and Ericcson and your-favorite-example-here (all huge names in personal computing in the US, right?)? In the past, that has usually meant a superior product, which flopped on the market. When I think of a personal computer company which is marketing driven, I think of Microsoft, and possibly Intel.

    I'm not sure that a product in a market with network externalities can make it without placing marketing uber alles. It'll be fascinating to watch.
  • Robinso Crusoe ... traveler ... Stranded on a desert Island

    CPU for palmtops ... take them anywhere ... and always

    thats where i would put my money

    "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT"-Death
  • There are chips designed for laptops. They are called PowerPC chips :) Motorolla/Apple/IBM have always wanted to design two chips in parallel, one for the power desktop, on for use in low cost, low power consumption, low heat generation situations. The Second Generation PowerPC chips were the 603 and 604, where the 603 was the ideal laptop chip and the 604 the power user chip. The Third Generation PowerPC chips were developed the same way, but the low power consumption model was so damn good Apple never used the other, hotter, chip. (This is why the G3 chip was used in Laptops from the get go and why Intel always has to wait about 6 months after doing a new chip before they can get it small and cool enough to use in a laptop.) I don't know what happened with the fourth generation powerPC chips that only the G4 is in widespread use. ---matt wecksell
  • I see a lot of statements and speculations about this potentially being a PDA (or other ultra portable device) running a version of Linux or Win or something. What I'm wondering is WHY does it have to involve an already existing operating system?

    I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before by Linus himself or elsewhere, but why does a project involving Linus have to involve Linux? Is it possible that he could be working on a customized o/s for an all new platform? Is it possible that he might be working on other things altogether?

    This is not a flame and I'm probably misinformed, but I havn't seen any references explicitly stating that Linus is working on an o/s and for that matter, Linux.

    Furthermore, judging by the information on the patents filed by Transmeta, this appears to be a radically different processor design. This might need an equally radical approach to software development, especially in the compiler and o/s departments. Maybe Linus is stretching his wings at Transmeta and doing something completely different.

    -- kwashiorkor --
    Pure speculation gets you nowhere.

  • Not! Back in 96 when Transmeta hired Linus he wasn't famous. I've heard he's a genius on the x86 architecture. So much for the obvious.
  • To quote someone: "post or moderate? Post or moderate?"

    Well, I'd have to disagree with you there, Norm.

    I've heard that the LCD is the single biggest power hog on there. But you're right, I'd like to see a less power-hungry cpu. But I don't need no stinkin' multimedia device.

    What I'd like to see is someone manufacture an older cpu (as I can't really justify needing more than a P166 (if even) equiv in my laptop, and would gladly trade battery life for speed. I suspect that many would agree with me) using modern fabs, thus making them small, cool, and power lean.

    Make the back of the display white/detachable/translucent, so that I can use ambient light when availible.

    Basically, if you look at the triumvariate (hoping I'm using the word correctly) of display, speed, and batterylife, the display and batterylife have been mostly constant througout the evolution of the laptop, whilst speed has steadily increased. I don't want that. I'd rather see steady increases in batterylife, and only incidental improvements in the other two.
  • The thing that Windows has, which Linux doesn't, is MS Word 2000. To those that get Word attachments, the fact that there may be some vaguely similar software packages for Linux does not, regrettably, cut it.
    Having a faster/cheaper CPU does not establish anything about superiority of OS platforms.

    There are any number of pieces of Win32-only software that people have, unwittingly, married themselves to, where it would take a messy divorce to extricate themselves. This list might include:

    Visio
    ERWin
    MS Access
    AutoCAD
    Microsoft Project
    Word
    PowerPoint
    Excel
    Outlook
    Lotus Notes Client
    There may exist vaguely analagous software on Linux, and more and better in progress. That doesn't mitigate the messiness of the "divorce."

    If Transmeta were producing a chip that provided support for things like:

    Segmentation in the style of Multics
    Hardware-supported garbage collection, useful for either JVMs or for Lisp variants
    Something otherwise better than merely expanding chips from 32 bit addressing to 64 bit addressing
    I'd agree that there could be something fundamental here to, in the long run, change computing.
    When all that it seems to bring is power consumption reduction, space reduction, hopefully faster performance, and perhaps less damage to the wallet, that's not really news. Every generation of CPUs since the 8008 has provided some mixture of those improvements.

    Unless "Crusoe" offers more than that, I can't get overly excited.



    Can we say 'Translation' boys and girls? I'd say that a PRIME possibility will be the ability for this processor to execute code from a multitude of different architectures and win32 probably isn't that hard to emulate very near flawlessly. So you got the stability of running the linux kernel, the application set of Win32 and the speed of the G4, all in one cute little penguin shaped box. Wouldn't that be just TOOO SWEET!? >:)

    Kintanon
  • Except that the screen drains a pretty hefty part of the battery and that the StrongARM you mentioned is perfectly suited for a laptop.
  • That's assuming you can reprogram the FPGA quickly enough to be able to task switch the hardware. To make up for the reconfiguration time, you'd have to guarantee a significant speed up vs the (likely higher MHz) hardwired processor. And you'll also have to amortize the cost of the JIT.

    So yes, possible, but I'd need some convincing before I buy it as feasable.
  • Transmeta needs a fab; IBM is a logical partner. But--a thought: IBM would have been in this partnership for a year or more; would knowledge of the coming Transmeta products have been a reason that IBM has gone all out for Linux?
  • The best and worts thing that Transmeta has done is not tell anyone what they're doing.

    They're creating incredible hype generated by people who expect the best thing since the first protein, which gets Transmeta's name around in preperation for both product release and IPO.

    But when they do release what they are going to release, it can not possibly be as good as everyones expectations which will at least in some way hurt the company and their image.

    What they are going to release will be great, from a certain point of view, but don't get too angry at the company if you've been misled to think that it will stop the world from turning.

  • Here's one problem I see in your theory:

    Apple also plays into this with its stealth update of Mac OS X server to 1.2. With delays on other fronts (Pismo, the P7, Mystic) it would have been a natural to hype the upgrade to their server software at MacWorld SF but they didn't go for it. The stock price was hammered because of the lack of news.

    The MacOSX Server 1.2 release is not being hyped because it is regarded as the end of the OSXS product. By the time a new version is absolutely necessary, the "commercial" OSX release will be out, and both Client and Server will be based on the same OSX kernel/networking layer (Darwin) and display technology (Quartz), just with slightly different configuration (possibly something like the old "MacOS as a client"/"MacOS + AppleShare as a server" product line demarcation). The actual 1.2 update is not breaking any new ground, just addressing some reliability issues and making the product compatible with G4 so that Apple can start selling server hardware again.

    This doesn't invalidate all of your speculation, just the part about why Apple left the MOSXS 1.2 news out of the spotlight.

  • What I think about when I see the combination of cheaper processor and order-of-magnitude less power consumption is: SMP laptop. That's what I want as a software developer. Sorry to all you who say that we don't need faster/stronger CPUs; I say 'until I have instant compiles, it's not fast enough' (meaning disk, bus, memory, CPU, the whole lot. I'm GREEDY!).

    Anyway, think about it. 10x less power consumption. To me that doesn't mean I work on battery for 10x longer, that means I can have up to 10 CPUs with the same power draw (& heat, too? I'm not too certain if those necessarily go hand-in-hand).

    Furthermore, since (as other people have pointed out here) this chip wouldn't theoretically be limited to the x86 CISC instruction set, couldn't these processors be tailored for graphics/sound/whatever processing? So what if we have a computer with 8/16/64 processors in it, and dynamically allocate them to take care of the different processing jobs you have: graphics, sound, and data processing. In graphics intensive/sound intensive, use 40% of your CPUs for data processing and 60% for DSP (video and sound). Or some more optimal mixture.

    This is all just hand-waving, but MAYBE it'll come to pass. Or is this just total non-sense?
  • Well, when I was working for ARM, the was a VLIW
    project going on...
  • The recently announced Oxygen Project [mit.edu] at MIT refers to the RAW [sciam.com] processor as part of its design. The chip will rewrite its internal wiring using logic gates and microcode, compiled in some HLL. Sounds like chips are getting so big that it isn't worth the effort to customized them anymore. Just install FPGAs in everything and change the configurations as needed.
  • Something still makes me think that the fact that CRUSOE is an anagram for SOURCE had something to do with picking Crusoe as the 'code' name.

    Perhaps they're open sourcing processor/chip development.
    --
    '...let the rabbits wear glasses...'
    Y2035/38 consulting
  • In the February Popular Science, they said that the new Amiga machine had a TransMeta chip in it. Popular Science named no specifics, however, I think that this must be the chip they're talking about.
    Phyrkrakr
    "God doesn't play dice"-Einstein
  • Translation does not help to provide simultaneous execution of applications from multiple OSes unless you have a virtualizable operating system (ala IBM mainframe VM, or PC VMWare) that provides an operating system model that everything else runs on top of.

    Making worshipful cow eyes to the effect that it would be just TOOO SWEET! doesn't establish anything about one's ability to do that. The matters patented, such as Memory controller for a microprocessor for detecting a failure of speculation on the physical nature of a component being addressed (US5832205), [ibm.com] might be helpful in making an emulation a bit faster, but does nothing to support the software side of the matter.

    The only way your theory is "prime possibility" is if Transmeta has actually been working with developers of something like VMWare. If they have, then there could be some synergies.

    If not, then all we have is a somewhat faster chip. Plus, of course, a bunch of members of the Cult of Linus, all worshipful, but with no actual merit to their worship...


  • "The Web pad will have been designed with an unspecified partner, those sources speculated"

    aren't the over-the-top specs people have been whispering about the new apple handheld just begging to be running on top of a transmeta chip?

    hell, darwin's based on BSD, why not a new Apple PDA based on linux?
  • All this speculation is worthless. When January 19 comes and the world receives its very first Mobile Internet Toaster, maybe you'll understand.

    The only reason you care anything about the unveiling of yet another 'innovative' processor is because Linus is there. Be a rebel, think for yourself; if a toaster company pulls a media stunt, treat them like they didn't. Beat the system
  • I think the point is the "open source"-ness of it. Developing cool PDA apps would be easier on a linux/GNU based PDA than on WinCE/Visual Studio etc. Personally the coolest thing about the Palm platform is all the cool little apps the people come up with. The Palm is the perfered hobbist PDA. If there was a linux/GNU/open-source based PDA it would be the ultimate geek toy to muck around with.

    With wireless IP (ricochet [ricochet.net]) and CDPD... it could be a pretty cool world... code up a paging/alert type app that monitors your servers and stuff... or whatever...

  • The basic problems out there are not hardware problems; they are software problems.

    Crusoe may be pretty slick and fast stuff, but is merely hardware. It doesn't, simply by sitting on a PC board emitting heat, solve software problems.

    IBM picked Linux because they figured they could sell software services out of the deal. I don't see Crusoe in that picture.

  • Wait a second! What is that graphic that you reference http://img.cmpnet.com/eet/news/00/january/1096ditz el.gif [cmpnet.com] ? some kind of leak from transmeta or something? or just something that someone drew up from the patents?
  • The first patent doesn't seem like a big deal, at first. Translating x86 instructions into other instructions is what every Intel processor has been doing since the PPro. In fact, the PPro includes microcode that handles this conversion, allowing dynamic bug fixes by re-decoding x86 insts to not use the buggy native RISC inst (but only like 3 people on earth know how to do it, due to fear of microcode viruses).

    However what would be cool is if the translation layer was general enough to allow it to run many different instruction sets, perhaps even simultaneously. You could run apps compiled for any platform on the same machine at the same time. Finally, every geek's dream come true: The ability to run WinNT and AIX on the same machine at the same time! ;)

    I suppose VLIW in itself is interesting, more as an anomaly than as a technological marvel.

    I guess we'll see on the 19th, but for the meantime it's more fun to guess.
  • You buy stock. Stock goes up on vaguely Linux related news. You sell stock. You roll in dough.
  • I wonder if this question would have been marked up if the moderator had read the article which explicitly stated that IBM will be making the processors for Transmeta...

  • If everyone else kept really quiet about product development and maintained the level of secrecy Transmeta obviously have, then they would have shouted their faces off about what they are doing right now?

    Just wondering...

  • how can you say transmeta is not driven by their marketing department? This secrecy has been the marketer's dream... everyone in the technosphere has been debating their merits endlessly. People have attributed to them everything from an Athlon-killer to a giant reality-altering abacus [geekculture.com].

    engineers, maybe. but marketing-savvy, too.

  • The chip will rewrite its internal wiring using logic gates

    I have yet to see a single piece of evidence to suggest that Crusoe will necessarily be able to "rewrite its internal wiring"; the Transmeta patents suggest that the machine has a fixed native instruction set, and that other instruction sets are handled by binary-to-binary translation, by software, of code for other instruction sets.

  • Premise: programmable logic can optimally execute algorithms for which source code is available

    Premise: the Transmeta patents are patents on stuff they're actually going to do with Crusoe.

    Implications: the chip won't necessarily have any programmable logic whatsoever; software running on the chip, in the chip's quite-possibly-fixed native instruction set, will translate other instruction sets into the native instruction set and run it.

    Is this interesting enough that I should elaborate further?

    Interesting? Yes.

    Relevant to Crusoe? I suspect not. We'll probably find out on the 19th, but I suspect all the folk who've been going on about FPGAs and reconfigurable hardware blah blah blah will have to eat their words....

  • > To say that his [Linus'] presence makes an unconventional result a near certainty is crazy. How do we know this guy? Because he wrote a Unix clone.

    The kernel may have been a clone, but the open development method was totally new, for something as complex as a kernel. (386BSD may have been open-source, but it was not openly-developed). Now there are many projects run similarly (gnome, kde, mozilla, ...) but in 1991 it was a novelty.
  • Another point is that IBM is so large and complex (incoherent?) that its different divisions often have competing products. E.g. AIX, OS/2, Linux and Windows NT are all sold by IBM.

  • As I pointed out, reconfiguration time of the FPGA (or microcoded hardware variant) is much less relevant when you have a single-task device (cell phone, PDA, embedded whatever). You are correct that for a multitasking, multiuser device, reconfiguration time would be too large to make the tradeoffs worth it.

    --LP

  • Uh, not *Quite* (info on FPGA) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Apologies if I'm belabouring a point here, or if I misunderstood your explanation. I thought somebody might appreciate a further explanation.

    Every single synchronous digital circuit in existence can be reduced to a "cloud" of asynchronous logic (i.e. some arbitrary many-to-many mapping), followed by a clocked register. The register contains the state of those outputs.

    Cascading many of these together makes for fast, pipelined circuits, as long as the "clouds" are small enough for their total propagation delay to be less than the clock period of the registers (plus some setup and hold time, etc.)

    An FPGA is a whole matrix of logic cells feeding into what can arm-wavingly called "routing logic" - in that sense the previous poster was right. But the important thing about FPGAs is that each cell (which is used to implement logic functions) isn't conventional digital logic at all (as you find in PLAs or PALs, for example, which implement AND-OR trees), but an SRAM lookup table, typically of 4-bit width.

    In other words, by precomputing and filling the 16 outputs of a 4-bit-wide SRAM you can implement ANY arbitrary logic function! You simply read from the truth table, and instead of trying to optimise it using logic, you put it in memory!

    The advantage of this is (1) constant speed (every function is constant time) (2) extremely regular (=dense) layout and (3) fairly easy to implement for something like a VHDL synthesis system.

    Hope this was of some use ... reply if you want to discuss/argue anything.

  • IBM picked Linux because they figured they could sell software services out of the deal... reaping their value-add without simultaneously feeding/creating a monster/competitor as they did with Microsoft.

    That's my point, but to comment on your other contention, a low-power single-chip implementation of the standard Wintel motherboard would solve a huge software problem. Suddenly, everything we run on desks and laptops could run in a handheld. Not saying that Transmeta is doing anything like that, but I can imagine useful hardware. I would imagine that IBM would really want to make a big splash in handhelds if they had an opportunity. Their fab is a sunk cost so that's just icing.

  • Yah, I'd agree that overall, programmable logic seems a tad unlikely given the fixed native instruction sets described in the patents.

    The premise that source code is available and an OS can take advantage of that fact may still be useful for JIT compiling with a VLIW-type processor. I can't figure out how this'd make a substantial improvement over object code; maybe this is an intellectual dead-end. Can you?

    --LP
  • My speculation for 1/18/2000 -- Transmeta showcases a PalmPad-like device that will run PalmOS, WindowsCE, Linux *and* MacOS, all in their own maximizable window. Just a guess. :)

    And wouldn't that piss VMware off ;-)

    Chris
  • what's the use of a multiuser handheld, a handheld or other small device looking like it running linux? :)

    Imagine a future where, when 'the server' goes down, the technician pulls a spare server out of his briefcase plugs it in, and you're rolling...

    Imagine having a permanently running file/mail/web/etc. server in your pocket with a permanent wireless connection (is that an oxymoron ;-) to the Internet... remote administration? Who needs it, I've got my server with me.

    And yes, I know this is an extreme example, and I know that it wouldn't be like I represented it, but you just have to look at the last 30 years of development in computer/electronics technology, and it doesn't look all that far-fetched.

    The fact of the matter is, we can't really imagine exactly what it will be like in another decade or so, but there are no actual disadvantages to having the same computing power:
    -in a smaller package,
    -consuming less power, thus
    -generating less heat, thus
    -making less noise

    regardless of whether you carry it with you or not. I'd be overjoyed if my personal server (a Pentium 166, sitting on top the cupboards in my kitchen, whirring/humming away) could sit next to my paperbacks on my bookshelf.

    Chris

  • Re:Why worry about x86? (Score:3)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Friday January 14, 2000 @09:50PM (#1372477) Homepage
    "Given a GCC code generator for "native Crusoe," or whatever they'd call the not-involving-emulation instrution set, it ought to be more sensible to run Linux natively on the chip, as that should be faster and more efficient since it takes direct advantage of the CPU's facilities."

    This put me in mind of how Apple migrated people from the 68k to the PPC architecture. If you think about it, it's entirely possible now that we could go and, over time, migrate our x86 ISA applications to a perhaps better VLIW or other ISA....

    This is very, very much a change from the everyday.

    An ISA architectural shift like this would immediately make something like the K7 an expensive paperweight, in terms of the technology it represents. Win2k in VLIW for a cool new proc? It might not happen. But if I can get a proc that runs Linux ultra, ultra fast, and which has a cool software emulation mode for x86 apps.... Folks, we have a winner!!!

    Heck, if this chip has been architected correctly, it'd be very, very simple for Linux/Cruseo to start up a x86 emulation "virtual processor" using the processor's own features, and make something like VMware another piece of expensive legacy-ware. There are just so many possibilities! :-)

    ---
  • It seems obvious to me that the whole reason they hired Linus is to port the Linux kernel onto their architecture. They could hardly run Windows on it since Win98 doesn't even run reliably on half of the x86 motherboards out there. However the Linux kernel is small enough and "knowable" enough to make a reliable port feasible (especially in Linus' case since he's supposed to have reviewed every single line of code in there). And ask yourself: How much are they paying Linus? And how mnay people would it have taken (and how much would it cost) to port any other capable OS onto Crusoe?

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction

  • The thing that Windows has, which Linux doesn't, is MS Word 2000. To those that get Word attachments, the fact that there may be some vaguely similar software packages for Linux does not, regrettably, cut it.

    I just happen to have a nifty little script called from pine that views those horrid Word attachments.

    Excel

    Gnome's spreadsheet application opens/writes Excel documents by the way.

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