Transmeta Astro Processor 195
simpl3x writes "Apparently, Transmeta's next generation processor was demonstrated to some folks the other day at Comdex. Tom's Hardware was at the demo and they had this to say: "The new Transmeta Astro was faster in every demo that we saw than the Pentium 4m 1.8GHz chip that was in the Sony GRX." Cnet had some information on the processor also . I just ordered a tablet to play with, though I ordered the Fujitsu which has a P3m (the Compaq has a bad screen according to the reviews). I certainly wish that something like this were available, and i do hope that the manufacturing goes smoothly. Mo options, mo better."
I was there (Score:4, Interesting)
Though it was small it was:
1) Manned by a really hot and nice chick! (always important).
2) Showed off what has been unanimously voted "My next laptop" by half of my company.
3) Actually contained a chip they let you hold. 1 word: SMALL
Power (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the air veocity of an unladen P4M? (Score:3, Interesting)
Faster in what type of demo? Dropping a Pentium 4M and an Astro from shoulder height? Being hurled from a clay-pigeon launcher? Downing pints of Guiness at the pub? Blah. Tom's Hardware is so bigoted against Intel after the famous Rambus stoush that anything they have to say on an Intel vs. Competitor story is essentially unreadable.
transmeta vs intel and amd (Score:1, Interesting)
desktops?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thoughts on the demo (Score:5, Interesting)
I for one would like to know what they meant by 'better performance' than the intel. Did they compare application startup speeds? Had the machine been running the apps previously? Granted I don't know any of the details, but from personal experience (I'm typing this on a transmeta-based fujitsu lifebook, at 866mhz) the current transmeta chips start applications extremely slowly and then progressively get more reponsive.
I like my laptop and am rooting for the astro! I'm very interested in how they improved the efficiency of their approach.
Loaded Post (Score:5, Interesting)
So they optimized a few apps on the Transmeta, and pit it against a machine that has some unoptimized apps. To quote toms "DVD playback, Office Applications".
Ok were the even the same office and dvd playing apps? I can show you two different aps that do the same thing. One dog slow, one lightning quick. Put them each on machines with the same specs, and one will open faster than the other.
So give us name of the apps used. Start up times, were they optimized especially for the meta?
I would like to see this succeed, but I hate to see the hype.
Puto
Another good idea lost (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, I realise this is due to market pressures and that Transmeta just like AMD and Intel has to keep pushing their chips faster and faster to keep up with Moore's law, but nonetheless I lament that Code Morphing's full potential was never realised. Performance considerations aside, a processor that performed instruction decoding in software would have many more benefits. Support for new instruction set extensions like SSE or MMX could be added with a simple firmware upgrade. A new code-morphing frontend could turn the Crusoe from an x86-compatible chip to a PowerPC, MIPS, or SPARC-compatible chip in seconds (which would be a huge boon to embedded developers). A Code-Morphing core could be used as a testbed for new ideas in CPU and instruction set designs. The populations could have been endless. But alas, with Transmeta abandoning the technology, it's doomed to become "just another neat idea", like LISP machines and the Amiga before it.
what about compatibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that Intel chips are the baseline platform for most business software written today, because of their market leadership position, and they seem to have the performance edge also. And the power-consumption issue is really a red herring, since on most portable systems the CPU is only a minor consumer of power (heat is another problem, but that is something that proper internal design can usually cure) compared with the display and hard disk. So is there really any reason to switch?
What could they do if (Score:2, Interesting)
according to tramsmetazone the thing was running at 500 mhz for the demo
for desktop use with a chip made to run at 2ghtz this would be really impressive.
The lack of sse2 support greatly hindered this chip in any fps demo, where it was brutalized by the p4 (I'm sure even an amd athlon could beat it under those conditions!).
The 'code morphing' technology also uses an astonishing amount of ram, up to 64mb in some cases, so linux users who need all that ram for gnome should steer clear of this chip. I also noticed that compared to a p4 based system, it was quite unstable, requiring a reboot in windows98se after just 2 hours of demonstrations. I have also heard, from reliable sources, that boards using this chip can only run at agp 2x, which again can hinder game performance.
they would obviously overcome these issues with a desktop processor
if they would do this and maintain the low power consumption that would really be impressive. we could all have really fast machines and keep the internal case temps below 100 degrees.
just a thought it would be nice to have a third option for desktop processors.
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:transmeta vs intel and amd (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can shoehorn a whole PC into a palm-sized device, who needs PalmOS? I think that's what Transmeta would like to do eventually. In the meantime, their chips run cooler so they can build laptops that won't burn your penis [theregister.co.uk]
To be fair, I should disclose that I own stock in Transmeta.
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, there wouldn't be any issues with hardware, except for driver support and maybe the video card. Remember, transmeta's chip will use a transmeta motherboard. Support a transmeta motherboard, you're done. As for sound cards, they're PCI devices, they could care less about what platform they are on. I can use the same sound card on Alpha/x86/Sun/SGI whatever. Of course, driver support is a new issue. Video card typically have a small amount of BIOS code on them to allow for video output before the OS loads. That is the only thing that would pose a problem. However, since the Cruse could switch from x86 (which most video BIOSes are written for) to say SPARC right after the video initialized, it wouldn't pose too much of a problem. Remember, this is just changing what opcodes the processor interprets, not anything hardware wise.
Good to hear TM is getting competitive. (Score:3, Interesting)
It may very well be that Java applications run as fast as "native" x86 code on TM chips. I wish they'd show JVM and CLR benchmarks on different CPUs. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that TM chips have an extra edge in less optimized code, such as that produced by JITs. HP did some research on code morphing from PA-RISC to PA-RISC (yes, that makes it much easier to do comaprisons, find bugs, figure out optimizations, etc.) that ran some code faster than running the binary natively. It performaed much better compared to native execution when the native binary was compiled with fewer optimizations.
Thier technology certainly is an elegant solution to deaing with ISAs, particlarly ones that have such high decoding overhead. I wish they also exposed an instruction set that was lower overhead for thier code morphing engine. Maybe something like RTL (HP calculator libraries are compiled to a RTL for portability) or a memory machine ("infinate" registers) like the DIS virtual machine from Bell Labs.
Re:Power (Score:4, Interesting)
If it is as fast as Pentium 4s and has low power consumption, it sounds like it could be a contender for PowerPC replacements/alternatives.
Re:Laptops (Score:3, Interesting)
This is changing. Only tradition and price enforce the box+CRT+peripherals paradigm. The market has already proven very receptive to friendlier form-factors like the iMac and Shuttle PCs.
High-powered "desktop replacement" laptops have been a rapidly growing market lately. Many companies will give you a laptop or a desktop as your main machine, but not both. Many colleges require you to own a computer but even those schools are increasingly requiring that computer to be a laptop.
Hmm. And I seem to remember various news blurbs about laptop sales growing faster than desktop sales.
Anyway, I'll never use a laptop since the ergonomics are so bad. But outside of that, it's nonsense to say they can't replace desktops if you remember that this year's laptop is faster than last year's drool-over-the-floor power rig.
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Dum de dum.
Re:Power (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If MS, Intel and AMD ever really do Palladium.. (Score:1, Interesting)
support all that Palladium stuff?
Re:what about compatibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I doubt you know that much about Linus. (:
If you skim the <linux-kernel> list for awhile, every now and then some Linux bug'll turn up that has to do with APIC programming, or SMP bus locking cache behavior, or processor flags during NMI, or some such, and even though I don't know much about any of that stuff, I can tell Linus is usually right on top of it. I remember in particular a thread maybe a year or two ago where someone had come up a memory barrier optimisation that could theoretically make a spinlock release op just a teensy bit faster. But then Linus had some misgivings about it because he remembered an erratum for the Pentium Pro where it might reorder memory accesses incorrectly. After a bit of back-and-forth with an Intel guy, they all figured out that the stronger memory barrier was in fact necessary for certain early-stepping PPro chips, so oh well, better luck next time. If I remember correctly, by the end of the discussion I still didn't quite understand the exact memory barrier semantics required by the unlock or the PPro bug in question. (:
One gets the feeling rather quickly that, kernel-in-C or no kernel-in-C, Linus is your guy for low-level implementation of IA32 protected mode.
H. Peter Anvin (also of transmeta) seems quite good at that stuff too, particularly things like chipset and BIOS conventions (and old musty BIOS bugs / misfeatures to watch out for). For instance he seems to actually understand how the A20 gate works, and (more importantly) how to enter PM without tripping any bugs / differences across x86 motherboards. Now how many people in the world of whom you can say that?
Well, between the three of them TMTA should be all set. I wouldn't doubt the knowledge of sandpile.org staff either.
SSE2 and Power = Speech Reco. for Telephones (Score:3, Interesting)
The people of slash dot need to think beyond their desktop's sometimes and think about how a system will be used by users of servers, and not desktop's. I was really looking forward to the release of this chip, until they decided not to support the SSE2.
Oh well...
It is not enough to not know what I don't, but better to always to know what I do.