Fujitsu Coming Out With Crusoe Machines 67
Pulzar writes: "Fujitsu will release two notebooks containing Crusoe processors from Transmeta in November, the company said today, bringing the total number of companies coming out with Transmeta-based products to seven."
Re:BogoMips are bogus. (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:1)
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
Such as notebooks???
Re:I'm superficial (Score:3)
I want to see thee very very very simple things:
1. network pipe over loopback under linux (memory to memry + some CPU).
2. standard mysql benchmark test
3. linux kernel compile for a reasonably populated
In btw: I do not want top notch performance as the laptop disks and IO will cripple it anyway. I just want to finally see what a hell are we talking about.
Re:I need enlightenment (Score:1)
Yes -- but you're not running in full energy saving mode much of the time, especially if using an OS like windows that doesn't do very smart things for power consumption. In non-power-save mode, the Intel chips burn a lot more power and get a lot hotter then the transmeta chips in a similar mode of operation, largely because the transmeta chips can scale their clock frequency to application demands, while the Intel chips have relatively simplistic power management capabilities. I've read that Intel has improved their CPUs power management capabilities, but they are still nowhere near as advanced as Transmeta's AFAIK.
Re:I need enlightenment (Score:1)
Oh, I don't know, but I think power consumption is an issue. And, since you asked, here are:
REAL Benchmark Criteria for Laptop Computers:
The Crusoe might not beat the latest flat-out performance figures of the conventional high speed x86 chip offerrings by companies with R&D budgets orders of magnitude larger than Transmeta, but it does address some REAL benchmarks.
Re:Cruseo, not whats it's cracked upto be (Score:1)
I think you need to cool down a bit.
Crusoe's real uses. (Score:2)
Wouldn't it make sense for Transmeta to rush in the delivery of the much hyped webpads that was supposed to showcase the primary benefits of the Crusoe processor?
It seems to be coming to light that the crusoe can't compete with Intel on performance and may not provide enough power savings in a traditional laptop to make a difference, so they need to find a niche market and quickly. I though that was their business plan from the start but it looks like we'll just see some regular notebooks coming out with fairly normal features and eventually Transmeta will be unable to justify their existence to manufacturers or consumers.
Re: quit yelling. (Score:1)
Why should a parent choose not to provide a valuable tool to their child just because it could cause a gap between them and lower incomes?
-I'll never teach my son robotics because the other kids' dads aren't roboticists and it would cause a gap.
-I'll never let my son own a dog because it could cause a gap between him and those that can't have a dog.
-I'll never let my son eat steak because some people can't afford steak and it would just cause a social gap.
please.
_______________
you may quote me
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Transmeta's x86->microcode translation is no more dynamic than an Athlon's or Pentium's is. Let's look at their strategies:
Crusoe
Translate/reorder x86 instructions on the fly in software using "code morphing". The results will be in Cruesoe-native VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) format, which is really just a block of 4 "normal" instructions that are guaranteed to have no dependence on each other/create any hazards if executed in parallel. Recent translations are kept in a cache.
Advantages: - Hardware is really cheap and doesn't consume much power since there is no instruction reordering/translation done in hardware.
- Performance will be good if you have a high hit rate in your translation cache.
Disadvantages
- Absolutely awful performance when you have nearly any misses in your translation cache.
AMD/Intel
x86 instructions are converted into RISC-like micro-ops in hardware on the fly. Most common x86 instructions have a one-to-one correlation to a micro-op, and instructions are reordered dynamically to try to exploit parallelism.
Advantages
- Fast: the worst case translation here is the same as the best case translation on a Crusoe (i.e., it's as if all instructions are a hit on the translation cache, as translation functionally incurs no overhead).
- Instruction reordering should be no worse than Crusoe's best effort.
Disadvantages
- The reordering/translation hardware is very, very complex and takes up a ton of power.
As for the argument that "normal benchmarks cannot be applied to the Crusoe," don't believe Transmeta's marketing BS. An industry standard benchmark like SPEC9x does use real applications (like gcc, etc.) for longer than a few milliseconds, and should be a good indication of Crusoe's real world, steady state performance.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly like the Crusoe. However, if you're looking for performance on x86 applications equivalent to even a mobile Celeron, you'll probably need to look elsewhere. To me, the real intriguing aspect of Crusoe is the prospect of running "native" applications. Running an os (read: linux) and user apps compiled for the Crusoe architecture would eliminate the need for the "code morphing" overhead, as the packing/reordering of instructions into VLIW format would happen at compile time. Such a system should be very fast (I would imagine equal or better performance per clock to a mobile pentium), and have killer battery life to boot.
Re:I Hope Things Work Out (Score:2)
Anyhow, I look forward to seeing the first Transmeta-based machines hit the market. Should be fun!
Re:INTEL IS INDEED GETTING FASTER (Score:1)
(As appeared in Founderscamp.com)
Think about what "slow" means in this case (Score:3)
Stop and consider some of the most impressive high-tech games of the 1990s: Quake, Flight Unlimited, Mario 64, System Shock. Now look back at what kind of top of the line machines were being used for the development of those games. Quake was wrapped up when 90 and 120 MHz Pentiums were the best you could get, for example. Now suppose you could have told the developers of these games about a chip with:
* A raw clock speed 3.5 times higher.
* A much faster bus (100 vs. 66 MHz).
* A much larger cache.
* A significantly better processor design featuring out of order execution and less need to pipeline by hand.
* 3D video cards at least 5x faster than what was being sold in $100,000 SGI machines in 1995. (Remember, in 1995 software rendering was the norm.)
That machine is a 333 MHz Pentium II with a Voodoo 2 card. Can you imagine the power? Wow, could you develop some mind boggling games on such a box. And most people are just surfing, downloading porn and MP3s, and using Word. Fast forward, and now we have people putting down 400-500MHz as "slow crap." Personally, I'd take a Crusoe that gave equivalent performance to such a machine, especially considering that it would be cheaper and use much less power. Blindly going for more megahertz is not the way to progress.
Re:I need enlightenment (Score:2)
low size/weight are the two most important qualities for most people.
Still the Crusoe won't make that much of a difference until the
power usage of other components starts to come down. I recall that
the Crusoe has some support for reducing usage of other online
components by building a model of their operation ob board. If
successors of the Crusoe can actually simulate other circuitry and so
reduce the chipset count, that would be another big win both for power
consumption and performance.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
done by released Intel processors. Rememebr that the Crusoe is a VLIW
processor which is capable of executing four microcode instructions at a
time. I guess the new VLIW Intels will do the same, but for now the
Crusoe technology is much more advanced than the Intel stuff.
I agree about performance, but the engineering really does live up
to the promised `very cool'. I think the performance delivered in
January was a disappointment: I think they had been hoping to beat
Intel chips of a comparable clock rate.
Re:NOTEBOOKS, DO WE NEED THEM? (Score:1)
So yes, I DO need a laptop (or else I have to drop out...)
Meting out. (Score:1)
One wanted a new computer and a Lego Mindstorms set, the other wanted to learn how to read and vaccinations against polio? And you could afford to do only one?
Re:Have you heard of ... Apple? (Score:1)
teehee
Re:Meting out. (Score:1)
This has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the original conversation.
If a parent can afford to give their child certain tools, they should do it. This will help the child. If other kids get upset, that's their problem. I'm not taking care of those kids, their parents are.
While I don't like the fact that some people are poor in the world, I don't have the resources to help everyone. I *do* have the resources to help my child. I will help him, and continue to help him no matter how upset some brat decides to get about it.
the end.
_______________
you may quote me
Re:hmm (Score:1)
Get a clue.
Re:yum yum (Score:2)
NOTEBOOKS, DO WE NEED THEM? (Score:1)
Re:I need enlightenment (Score:1)
"In contrast, the TM5400 can adjust its power consumption without turning itself off - instead, it can adjust its clock frequency on the fly. It does so extremely quickly, and without requiring an operating system reboot or other slow and involved OS or BIOS operation. As a result, software can continuously monitor the demands on the processor and dynamically pick just the right clock speed (and hence power consumption) needed to run the application - no more and no less - so no power is wasted. Since the switching happens so quickly, it is not noticeable to the user."
It's not just that it can down into Energy Save Mode, but that it can dynamically chagnge the processor speed (and thus voltage) to meet the demands of the applications. It uses the minimum amount of power needed to get the job done. That and the fact that it is freakin small( ~1cm X ~1cm) and freakin fast (supposedly) that keeps me interested in the company.
Playing commercial games (Score:1)
Transmeta's R&D and production capabilities are what? Two orders of magnitude less than Intel's?
Long-term, Transmeta will get steamrollered.
Stop Bashing Transmeta!!! (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5)
sigh If you don't know how a CPU works, please just stay out of the Crusoe pool.
Your nice Intel (or AMD, or Cyrix or other) chip performs all its calculations in software - or just as much as the Crusoe does.
Which is to say, each opcode is broken down into microcode, which is then translated to circutry on the actual chip. Generally, once you get past the opcode level, you stop calling it software.
What the Crusoe has is the ability to manipulate the microcode programming realtime. In a Pentium, or AMD, or any other chip (including those RISC chips that are not really so RISC anymore), that microcode programming is fixed and can't change. In Crusoe, the potential is for the chip to adapt and allocate internal, on-chip resources to the current task.
In a simplified way, when you play MP3s, the chip takes on the characteristic of a dedicated MP3 decoder. When you run SETI at Home, it takes on the characteristics of a dedicated SETI chip. When you run Windows, it takes on the characteristics of Rodney Dangerfield.
The simple fact is that the Crusoe chip offers loads of potential, has a great idea that should be explored, and looks like it came out (in the first batch) slower than the competition, so they tried to pitch the (coincidental) lightweight power consumption.
Incidently, they were right about one thing. Normal benchmarks are not applicable to this category of processor. You can't measure it by running through a set of simple computations for a short amount of time (milliseconds). If you do, it won't adapt. In real life usage, however, you are more likely to be running KWord or Quake III for more than a few milliseconds, giving it time to reconfigure to an optimal setting.
With today's huge advance in hardware, I don't see much use for such "software oriented" chips.
Yeah. Down with software. Firmware's so much better. Gimmie the days of slapping in carts into the back of a TI computer. Who needs magnetic or optical media anyway. :)
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Evan
Re: (Score:2)
Resources. (Score:1)
I am concerned about how schools, state and federal education departments, and school districts allocate their resources. I'm worried about scenarios in which magnet schools and charter schools get a lot of newer resources, while poorer schools, especially in poorer districts, suffer increasing crowding, underpaid teachers and poorer teacher quality. Unfortunately, both politics and the culture of "computers will fix everything" have made giving out laptops and PC's to wealthier schools the easier fix that taking care of basics elsewhere.
In Richmond, CA, last year, a high school had to close due to lack of maintenance funds. They had closets filled with PS/2s and ancient Cisco routers donated by high-tech companies who couldn't be bothered to donate real money. What is maddening is that not only do the schools get nothing useable when they get old PCs, the donating corporations get massive tax write-offs for giving away obselete and unuseable technology, and then congratulate themselves for their largesse.
Re:...um, bold? (Score:1)
Yes, but when I turn on a laptop I tend to use it (Score:1)
That's what the low power consumption is supposed to help with. If you could choose between two laptops, and one of them would give you twice the battery life with the same charge, which would you choose?
Re:Resources. (Score:1)
Those machines would kick ass on what I used learning TurboPascal and TurboC++ (an original HP Vectra = 12 Mhz 80286).
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Perhaps I should have bolded or italicised the word "potential" I used throughout the message. I figured that simply leaning heavy on the qualifiers would show my opinion. It's hard not to outright say: "Crusoe looks like crap on a die".
Personally, I remain unconvinced that Transmeta will ever be a real sucess story. A little publicity, some OEM support, and they will (IMO) probably fade from view.
BUT - the concept is good. I just don't see it as having been translated to a practical product.
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Evan
Re: (Score:2)
What's the point? (Score:1)
The cost of that, however, is that a large portion of operations occur in software which yields for slower performence than the competition.
With today's huge advance in hardware, I don't see much use for such "software oriented" chips. With processors going faster and more efficent and power sources becoming larger and smaller, this might make such processors rather unuseful. Won't you say?
This may be fashionable now(wow! This is a Linus firm!) but we may want to think a little bit ahead.
Wondering (Score:1)
Sales of Crusoe have doubled... (Score:2)
Re:I Hope Things Work Out (Score:1)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Still makes it vapourware...
yum yum (Score:2)
(Ok, StrongARM perhaps, but you know what I mean).
new range (Score:1)
Maybe they will be a cheap solution for poor students like myself to be able to afford
Re:hmm (Score:3)
Indeed, but if you can get the chip to run cool enough, you won't need a fan. A traditional CRT monitor uses so much power that there's no point using a low power chip on such a system. But that's not their market. They're being aimed at the portable market -- notebooks and webpad type devices. Yes, LCD screens still suck large amounts of power, but advances are being made in this area (hopefully LEP screens will have low power requirements). Also, consider the CPU in a set top box (e.g., a satellite or cable decoder box). How many people would put up with them if they needed a noisy fan in them? With its low power requirements, a Crusoe is ideal here, a market that's inaccessable to Intel and AMD (with their current offerings).
BogoMips are bogus. (Score:2)
For example a K6 will have a BogoMips value roughly twice that of the clock Speed in MHz, whearas a Pentium will have a BogoMips value of about 40% of the clock speed in MHz.
Only use BogoMips when comparing processors of the same type.
Re:Cruseo, not whats it's cracked upto be (Score:2)
[root@formatter kde2]# cat
Sep 25 15:32:50 localhost kernel: Calibrating delay loop... 1464.73 BogoMIPS
And thats on Pentium III 733. Do you think that my Pentium III is 3 times faster then yours? I really don't think so!
Try to compare it with standard tools - then flame!
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Re:Stop Bashing Transmeta!!! (Score:1)
TM CPUs
s/Transmeta/TriMedia/g
power economical, whine, whine, whine (Score:1)
Furthermore, power is cheap. There's a lot of oil out there, when that runs out there's coal, then there's nukes and by the time the uranium runs out, we'll have worked out how to make solar power ready for primetime! People should be concentrating on making computer chips faster and more powerful, not bothering our asses with this load of tree-hugging hippy crap!
Re:Japan only. (Score:1)
Re:I Hope Things Work Out (Score:1)
Re:I need enlightenment (Score:1)
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
Obviously, the benchmarks are faulty... I shouldv'e guessed, right?
And regarding your attempt-to-be-cinical remark as to me preferring hardware over software... I'll just advise you to get rid of all those nasty graphic cards, sound cards and all that disgusting ancient firmware technology that can(should?) be replaced by nice software.
Good luck.
I HAVE to find me a good quote...
Re:hmm (Score:1)
PIII ~8 minutes.
Crusoe ~10 minutes.
Average battery life:
PIII ~2 hours.
Crusoe ~8 hours.
So for a roughly 20% performance hit, you get roughly 400% battery life. That's not bad, if you ask me.
_______________
you may quote me
Re:...um, bold? (Score:1)
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
Eeek!! It's me...
Pictures of these notebooks here... (Score:2)
PC Watch: Fujitsu LOOX S/T [impress.co.jp]
And here:
Fujitsu LOOX [fmworld.net]
Hope this helps...
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
Perhaps 'efficency' doesn't just mean power consumption. If you're making a small disposable consumer device, cost is often far more important than performance.
The best example of this would be the current/upcoming console wars. With Sega/Sony/Nintendo consoles having 200/300/400 Mhz processors respectively, Microsoft claims it will have a 733+Mhz monster. I wonder which ones need fans?
Re: (Score:2)
hmm (Score:1)
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Re:Stop Bashing Transmeta!!! (Score:2)
1. I do have experience with Transmeta CPUs.
2. Cooling is a more and more difficult problem for CPUs that consume a lot of power.
3. The P4 consumes a lot of power, generates a lot of heat and therefore needs a big noisy fan and heatsink to stop it from melting.
4. The Transmeta CPUs do not have this problem, as they consume less than 5w max, and usually less than 2.
5. Large fans make a lot of noise.
6. Having a noisy fan in the same room as your audio system is bad as all the quiet passages are wiped out with white noise from the fan. Just do a search on slashdot for all the debates on audio codecs and ask yourself "Does it matter, if I have a loud fan trashing the audio quality anyway?"
7. Putting your finger directly on a P3 chip may well result in third degree burns. DO NOT DO THIS.
8. In my experience, performance of the TM CPUs is adequate for the tasks they have been designed to tackle. These are not Xeons, they are designed for notebooks and internet appliances.
Hope that helps to clarify what was a rambling statement with no HTML formatting to make it legible.
Re:Sales of Crusoe have doubled... (Score:2)
Linus has proved his worth and has a reputation that could hardly be sullied. Maybe he took the job at Transmeta for the money and the challenge of what they were trying to do, not whether they would produce something useful.
Till I see a Crusoe powered notebook or appliance for sale it is still vapourware.
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
When you say that a large portion of the operations occur in software, are those on the instruction level, or on a lower level?
If it is the instruction level, it would be interesting to try to improve on the instruction code that transmeta provides.
Re:TM5600 getting faster and faster... (Score:1)
...um, bold? (Score:2)
Wasn't it stated somewhere that, due to code-morphing, the Transmeta chips would have about 80% the horsepower of a regular x86 chip of the same MHz?
I hope this wasn't something PR said. I'm a fan of Transmeta's stuff, and I'd hate to see 'em make promises they can't keep.
Re:yum yum (Score:1)
yes! (Score:2)
I need enlightenment (Score:2)
Intels chips use 1-4 watts in full energy save mode. The Crusoe Gets between 0.789 and 2 watts in its energy save mode. Amazing. http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/m
AMD's chips use as little a 3 watts in energy save mode also.
And has anyone seen any REAL benchmarks? You know Sandra any thing to compare it besides Window Desktop Idle, MP3 Playback and DVD playback. For all we know it could run just as fast as a winchip or a Cryix (but be a whole lot cooler)?
In Transmeta OWN report, when they compare Office 2K scores, it took the P3 chip 0.133 hrs (8 min) to compleate the benchmark and the Crusoe 0.164 hrs (10 min). Thats a prety sizeable difference.
Sanchi
TM5600 getting faster and faster... (Score:2)
But Dave Ditzel, Transmeta's CEO, has said that Crusoe-based notebooks will perform just as well as competing chips in real-world circumstances. A 700-MHz Crusoe 5600 will perform just as well as a 700-MHz Pentium III, he said.
Weren't they saying not so long ago that the 700Mhz TM5600 would give `comparable performance' to a PIII at 500Mhz[1]? Looks like their Code Morphing{tm} software is morphing the marketing figures as well as the x86 code...
[1] And the Transmeta Vaio Picturebook [slashdot.org] is going to be of `similar performance' to the 400Mhz PII in the current Picturebook, using a 500Mhz TM5600...
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
"With processors going faster and more efficent and power sources becoming larger and smaller, this might make such processors rather unuseful. Won't you say?"
On the contrary. I would say that insanely fast processor speed coupled with increasing power consumption would call for a chip that is slightly less fast and a LOT less consuming.
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