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
Re:I was there (Score:5, Funny)
3) [the Transmeta booth] Actually contained a chip they let you hold. 1 word: SMALL
and your sig:
"It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"
I am hoping you've made the astro into some sort of necklace already?
Re:I was there (Score:2, Funny)
*twitch* There's something wrong with a girl manning. ;)
Re:I was there (Score:5, Funny)
Same thing happened in my company... My company is a family run business. Half of the company
wanted it, but then the other half - my wife - said "No, you don't!" No transmeta... for a while...
Well, it seems that 50% wants a Transmeta powered laptops.
Re:I was there (Score:5, Funny)
Which one do you mean, the really hot and nice chick on your lap, or the astro?
Havink printout of picture.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Havink printout of picture.... (Score:1)
Re:Havink printout of picture.... (Score:1, Funny)
Power (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Power (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong link, err... (Score:1)
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:Power (Score:2, Informative)
http://murl.microsoft.com/LectureDetails.asp?59
Note the date.
Re:Power (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Power (Score:3, Informative)
So I doubt it could be easily used to emulate a PPC.
Tom
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.
Re:What's the air veocity of an unladen P4M? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I don't know that! AIEEEE!!!
Re:What's the air veocity of an unladen P4M? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What's the air veocity of an unladen P4M? (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact THG is accused of being pro-everything while simultaneously being anti-every-same-thing. It must be quite difficult to maintain this image.
Guess it comes with the territory of being a popular hardware site and having to make calls that no everyone agrees with. * takes a long hard look at amd-die-hards.. intel-die-hards.. linux/windows/mac/emacs/tcl-die-hards *
Enjoy trolling, AC, at least I have the guts to risk moderation
Re:What's the air veocity of an unladen P4M? (Score:2)
I began reading THG when it was
Apparently they didn't contact AMD about the problem, in which case the article could have been changed from "AMD sucks" to "This MB sucks".
Price (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Price (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Price (Score:5, Informative)
transmeta vs intel and amd (Score:1, 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:transmeta vs intel and amd (Score:2)
Me? I like my Palm with PalmOS thanks. I like my desktop with Linux. I don't use them as replacement, they are complimentary. I do NOT like Windows CE. I want it lightweight, lasting and thin and with apps that make my life really easier when looking at a 6 cm screen.
Re:transmeta vs intel and amd (Score:2)
Who said anything about CE? A "real PC" runs Windows, the *NIXs, and anything else that is compatable with PC hardware. PalmOS, CE, both obsolete, IMHO.
Of course, carrying around a PC isn't really efficient, even if it fits on a keychain. What really makes sense is to have the hard drive on your keychain, and an OS on the drive that doesn't care what hardware it's attached to. Then you can carry not only your data, but your choice of operating system with you wherever you go.
I give such a scenario 10 years to practicality if interface wars don't get in the way. That's a BIG "if".
So; can any of the free *NIXs automagicly reconfigure themselves when the drive is re-plugged into any of the supported hardware? Not bloody likely. Get crackin' on it. The hardware will come around, Microsoft would probably never do something like that, and such a feature would make the *NIXs very attractive.
Re:transmeta vs intel and amd (Score:2)
I mean, I don't care about the OS, as long as the apps are thought out like the best PalmOS apps: Sleek usefull apps that go straing to the point and focus on usability.
I mean ActionNames and the likes. I couldn't care less if they run under Linux, Windows, etc. as long as they behave and look like the fine palm apps. It's concept more than a technology. I particulary like the simple way to install an app , though that is just a tiny detail.
I was lucky enough to see one of these in action (Score:4, Informative)
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.
For power desktop use forget about using this chip, although I'm sure for student or 'dumb terminal' use this chip is suitable.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have any references on the large amount of system RAM you mentioned is needed for code morphing ? I find it hard to believe that 1) you need that amount of memory for instruction translation and 2) that a hardware device using that much memory to emulate a CPU (at CPU clock speeds) can be too efficient both in terms of performance and heat dissipation.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:2)
I'm not semiconductor person, so my understanding may be a bit confused, but I believe that the CMOS technology used for any microprocessor built in the last decade or two has power consumption approximately proportional to its clock speed. If your 2GHz CPU consumes 50W, it will consume about 25W at 1GHz executing the same instructions (i.e., the power consumption due to current leakage is negligible). If you only cared about power consumption, you could just underclock.
The objective is improving the MIPS/watt ratio (or rather MI/joule if you divide out the time units) at a point that still provides enough MIPS to make a product that people want.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:2)
Lack of SSE2 is a bummer but unless you're doing content creation or playing new games it won't matter.
What I want to know is why you can only use it with AGP 2x? That doesn't make any sense unless it has an astonishingly slow bus, which would be a really bad call for transmeta since everyone else is hell bent for lether on something fast. Personally I think this is bull pucky. AGP is just a bus, it's handled by the chipset like everything else. Unless of course TM8000 has integrated chipset, or perhaps just the north bridge.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:4, Informative)
agp 2x was chosen for power reasons, as 4x would have pushed the (relatively underpowered) chipset and cpu too far.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:5, Informative)
Lack of SSE2 is a bummer but unless you're doing content creation or playing new games it won't matter.
Lack of SSE2 will not matter for any games, new or otherwise, because none of them use double-precision floats in any speed critical code paths. It'll hurt you if you want to render with Lightwave on your laptop, or run fluid dynamics simulations, or whatever. Not games.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:3)
People who are disappointed by the arm race to the Hrz in cpus, ram, and video, which result in overpriced noisy pcs, just to do the same stuff than with the previous pc.
Just a look around me and I see many persons interrested in the eden and likes motherboards.(When I asked at the motherboard desk of a big pcshop if they had them, the lady looked so pissed off to say no that I understood that I must have been the 60th that day to ask)
Small, silent, unexpensive. With a transmeta, there would even be some horsepower in it. Enough at least.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't even run X86 natively!
64mb or ram costs 15$ The price difference between the P4 and the transmeta will easily be more than that. Buy more ram!
It hasn't even been released. Kernel 2.5 isn't all that stable, but no one complains because it is a testing/prototype.
The speed of the agp bus has been shown to be inconsequential to the performance.
The rumor is that the demo chip is running at 500Mhz at the moment. Comparing that to the 1.8ghz P4 suddenly doesn't seem so out of proportion does it? I gaurantee you it will be running at at least 1ghz when it's finally released. The final board for it (not the notoriously shoddy reference boards) will perform better as the memory bandwidth will probably be improved.
What if I had done the same review of the Itanium 6 mo. before it was released? It was running at 400Mhz, couldn't run X86 software as fast as a 266, and was practically an unstable toaster oven.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:2, Insightful)
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
For power desktop use forget about using this chip,
Professional Journalist
Repeat after me everybody. "YHBT"
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, in order to reduce the chance that anybody believes that stuff...
The lack of sse2 support greatly hindered this chip in any fps demo [...] can only run at agp 2x, which again can hinder game performance.
It obviously did not occur to you that Transmeta chips are mainly for notebooks and notebooks usually are not intended for heavy gaming. And so, that Transmeta maybe is not targeting power gamers.
Btw, such a notebook would be more usable for games than my desktop PC (Athon 700, 256MB) - and I have no problems with current games regarding a GeForce 4200 64MB.
it was quite unstable, requiring a reboot in windows98se after just 2 hours
Using Window98SE as reference platform for CPU stability. *rotfl*
Aside from that, the chip is in development. Ever heard that this may mean that it may be more unstable than the final version?
I have also heard, from reliable sources
I hope that they are not as reliable as the conclusions in your posting.
For power desktop use forget about using this chip
Who claimed that it is intended for power desktop use. Well, however, you may have found the single one usage it is not applicable resp. thought for.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:2)
Unlike Windows users, Linux users have a choice: there are plenty of low-footprint GUIs and desktops around there for Linux.
Of course, a machine that doesn't have enough memory to run Gnome will find running Windows XP even more taxing. Given current memory prices, all this is academic anyway: even a bloated system like Windows XP will fit onto any laptop built with this chip.
Re:I was lucky enough to see one of these in actio (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it does use LESS power (Score:4, Informative)
Wow... and according to tramsmetazone the thing was running at 500 mhz for the demo (against a speedstepped pentium) WOW.
Re:Yes it does use LESS power (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they state that the Sony was running off of AC, therefore speedstep shouldnt be active and the P4 would be running at the full 1.8 GHz.
desktops?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:desktops?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:desktops?? (Score:1)
7 computers and not a single UPS? And you call yourself a nerd! :)
Re:desktops?? (Score:1)
NEC announces PC on 1GHz Crusoe TM5800 [digit-life.com]
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.
disk/memory not CPU influence startup time (Score:1)
Re:disk/memory not CPU influence startup time (Score:2)
I would readily believe the transmeta chip takes significantly longer to start an application than the intell chip.
limerick (Score:5, Funny)
Compared to Intel it's really just betta.
But how long can it last
When Intel's big-asst
Let's hope Intel declares no vendetta.
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.
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, could you link us to the stats that show the AMD Athlon uses less power than this new transmeta chip?
Unless of course you worded that very badly and you mean that the transmeta consumes less power. In that case, you have to remember, this is NOT an athlon competitor, its competing with the P4m and P3m. Does AMD even have a decent mobile chip?
Now that we're done with that point, let's move on to the next point, about code-morphing and talking about changing the chip "to a PowerPC, MIPS, or SPARC-compatible chip in seconds" For one thing, assuming you would want todo this in a laptop, can you even imagine the problems with hardware? Can you point me to a motherboard, video card, sound card, or heck, even recent ram manufacturer that makes one component that works on x85,PPC,SPARC and MIPS platforms? Exactly, it would be a complete pain in the ass. As for embedded developers, they would face the same problem, I can't recall many recent embedded products. Chances are they've built that much on a simulator before they start purchasing chips anyway, they know what they need.Forget using it "as a testbed for new ideas" again, do it in simulation.
Transmeta "abandoned" the technology because it posed no benefit to thier target market. People have already thought of all of your ideas, and if they were feasible they would have been done. Should I just assume you were trolling?
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.
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:2)
I'm sorry, could you link us to the stats that show the AMD Athlon uses less power than this new transmeta chip?
Unless of course you worded that very badly and you mean that the transmeta consumes less power.
Okay, granted, the guy's post wasn't written in the clearest possible prose. Still your interpretation is far more convoluted than what he wrote. "which incidentally happen to consume a little less power" clearly refers to the subject "imitators". "Athlon" qualifies the "imitators". The "Athlon imitators" are clearly transmeta.
Your interpretation has the phrase
"which incidentally happen to consume a little less power" refer to "AMD" as a subject, which then leaves the word imitators in a sort of limbo. Furthermore, the number of the subject and verb don't match up in your case.
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:2)
It seems worded clearly enough to me.
endpost
Multiple architectures turns out to be very hard. (Score:4, Insightful)
This turs out to be much more difficult than it first appears. There are a number of low-level architectural features - especially in the memory interface, but elsewhere too - that are very difficult to emulate if you've built a processor using different assumptions. This means that while you might be able to emulate a PPC/MIPS/SPARC on a Crusoe - or even on a PC - by dynamically recompiling code, the only architecture that would perform well would be one with a good match to your actual hardware. The original Crusoe chips were designed from the start to emulate Intel processors, and this new chip is presumably in the same boat.
Re:Multiple architectures turns out to be very har (Score:3, Informative)
Also, because CISC breaks down to multiple smaller operations easier than RISC, CISC is much easier to get performance advantages with code morphing.
not really (Score:2)
Huh? The Lisp machines were poorly engineered: they expended way too much silicon on things that didn't need hardware support. That's why they failed. Current processors could benefit from a little more support for dynamic languages, but not like the Lisp machines.
I'm not sure what kind of distinctive technical features you see on the Amiga. It was a nice machine, but much of what made it nice is completely mainstream now.
A Code-Morphing core could be used as a testbed for new ideas in CPU and instruction set designs.
It is: that's what JITs essentially are. And if you want a VLIW backend, you can get a VLIW processor from Intel.
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Another good idea lost (Score:2)
Everything that is stated is untrue. Are the moderators asleep?
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?
Re:what about compatibility? (Score:1)
But i was under the impression that "WINE is not an emulator". Doesn't this mean it doesn't have to emulate x86 instructions? I honestly don't know, i'm not an expert, but that's what i thought.
Second point: CPU is not that minor a consumer. According to pcmag, it's about 2 watts during average operation for most PIII's and 4's, and at peak a P4 can draw 30watts at once. So if you're looking at a spreadsheet it's a minor concern. If you're doing something processor intensive it becomes major. Which means there's certainly a market for it, though it might not be for standard business type stuff.
Re:what about compatibility? (Score:3, Informative)
As for power consumption, the three major power consumption parts of a computer are the monitor, the cpu, and memory (the constant refreshing). Laptops already use an LCD screen to avoid the huge monitor hit. Reducing CPU power *is* a big deal as well. Switching to a memory type that didn't require constantly refreshing would be a big save too, but all known memory of that type is horridly slow (cmos, flash memory, etc), so you can't fix that real well. So, focus on the CPU is a huge deal. Especially when all excessive is wasted energy, and then a fan on top of that is even more.. Not to mention having a laptop that burns your lap.
Re:what about compatibility? (Score:3, Informative)
It's called SRAM, and it's wicked fast. You may be familiar with it since it's beed used in caches for decades. The S stands for Static, in constrast from Dynamic styles of logic (i.e. DRAM which includes SDRAM, DDR, etc.)
The reason why we can't use it for main memory is cost. DRAM is easy to integrate into extremely dense layouts, it's basically one transistor per bit in a grid arrangement. SRAM usues about 6 transistors per bit and is not nearly as easy to arrange into nice regular patterns like DRAM.
Re:what about compatibility? (Score:3, Informative)
Flash memory and EEPROM would take less power because they retain data when power is cut, but it has a shorter lifespan and is much slower. Magnetic core memory would also take less power for the same reason.
Re:what about compatibility? (Score:2)
Built-in accessories such as fibre-channel and/or gigabit ethernet currently also consume significant power.
Sometimes the power supply circuitry gets a bit hot as well, but only when it has to deliver ridiculous ammounts of current to a power-hog chip.
For example, current pentium mobile chip power supplies are supposed to be designed for upwards of 20 amps. This is at the core voltage, which varies depending on the speed-step state. IIRC the low setting is 1.15 V, and the higher setting is around 1.5 V or so. The maximum current case occurs at the higher voltage.
It's hard to pass 20 amps through a transistor or current sensing resistor or inductor without a little heat getting generated. You end up using 5 or 6 big transistors for the swithcing, and one or two big inductors, and very low resistance current sensing resistors. And you have to make the copper traces really wide, and use extra vias. To tell the truth, it's kind of a PITA. And if you, the engineer, screw up, the whole thing could catch on fire or fail in some other spectacular way.
MM
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Re:what about compatibility? (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh, but I bet there are very few people in the world (outside Intel Corp) that know the IA32 instruction set better than Transmeta's favorite poster boy, Linus. The guy's amazing, as if I had to mention that here. With people like him on board, I bet TMTA can do a pretty good bug-for-bug rendition of a P4. And hey, if not, it's just a firmware update, right?
Actually these days I think chipset issues (OS drivers and hardware bugs) are a lot bigger problem than CPU support. Chipset, mobo and BIOS vendors all seem to have major QA problems and woe to the OS that doesn't work around them all properly.
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.
Re:what about compatibility? (Score:1)
The Intel instruction set is fully documented. The systems guys who cut OS code refer to the documentation in much the same way that I'm sure the Transmeta guys did
The Windows API on the other hand is famously not fully documented
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.
sse2 and agp 2x (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What could they do if (Score:1)
Benchmarks aside (Score:3, Insightful)
The Crusoe is cool, but since it is sorta a "niche" product, it never really got the penetration I had hoped to see. Hopefully Astro will be viable as an option for main-line PC makers. (IBM, Dell, etc...)
A bit deeper (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but Tom fails the mention the two 200W peltiers and liquid helium bath...
I don't know about you, but liquid helium spilling on my pants doesn't really brighten up my day.
-Chris
Re:A bit deeper (Score:2)
Re:A bit deeper (Score:1)
Re:A bit deeper (Score:2)
Hey man, you should take whatever action you can get.
Laptops (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
---
Dum de dum.
College kids (Score:3, Insightful)
We have limited desk space for big monitors. And lots of us like to take a computer to class with us to take notes on, etc. Many people plug their laptop into the wall and use it as their primary computer as well. And do [try to] play games on them, etc.
So even if "most people" don't use them as portable supercomputers... plenty do.
Re:Laptops (Score:2)
Due to budget cuts at a large corporation who will remain nameless, 4000 IT-type people are now being limited to one computer each, with a preference towards laptop with docking station at work. (Choice of IBM X, T, or A series) This rule applies to all but a few hundred developers, who generally are allowed a Sun, sgi, or Mac in addition to their IBM laptop.
With networked storage and 60GB laptop drives, desktop replacement "laptops" will soon rule the corporate market, IMNSHO.
Re:Laptops (Score:1)
VIA C3 (Score:1)
Semi-OT: Is Linus still with Transmeta? (Score:2)
Re:Semi-OT: Is Linus still with Transmeta? (Score:2, Informative)
Whee (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Good to hear TM is getting competitive. (Score:2)
The competition is getting downright dangerous [cnn.com].
multi-cpu Transmeta wins watts-per-clock-cycle war (Score:5, Informative)
Consequently, it multi-processor transmeta systems will outperform single processor Intels dissipating the same amount of heat. This also translates to higher reliability. If the memory busses are done correctly, having inexpensive multi-processors may alos provide significant performance enhancements over a single CPU. (for example, if memory bottlenecks dominate then multiple simple processors that are stalled witing on memory will ustilize every memeory fetch perfectly, whereas a pipelined single processor will waste a large fraction of the memory fetches making it slower).
A schematic of the current trends look something like this.
.......ioo......
|...........i.t..
|..........i.t..
|..........it...
H.........it....
E........it.....
A........i......
T.......i......
|.....io..o.....
|....io.........
|___i____________
Speed--->
o = Transmeta
i = pentium
t = former trendline
If MS, Intel and AMD ever really do Palladium... (Score:3, Insightful)
And from what it looks like with these chips, moving to TM chips won't be any hardship at all.
Palladium Will not effect sales (Score:2, Informative)
Re:If MS, Intel and AMD ever really do Palladium.. (Score:1, Interesting)
support all that Palladium stuff?
Re:If MS, Intel and AMD ever really do Palladium.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies are no stupid, especially the ones that are in a fast moving industry and have proved to survive for at least 20 years.
Heat issues... (Score:3, Informative)
Will this new processor let me have my laptop on my lap without burning my penis like this guy did [cnn.com]
more links (Score:3, Informative)
Astro is a Dog (Score:2)
His Boy Elroy
Daughter Judy
Jane His Wife
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.