Author Topic: crusoe processors... (Read 445 times)

iceydee · « **on:** December 10, 2002, 02:05:56 AM »

stumbled upon this site while looking for security pages for linux.
http://www.transmeta.com

those processors seem absolutely awesome! low voltage, low clock frequency (but still capable of processing as if it was a P4), low heat (doesn't even need a fan) and cheap... and still fully x86 compatible.

apparently Ron Howard (Microsoft) and Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) is behind this company.

anyone else heard about those?

iceydee · « **Reply #1 on:** December 10, 2002, 02:12:10 AM »

heh... check this out

Innominate · « **Reply #2 on:** December 10, 2002, 06:23:15 AM »

There was a whole lot of hype surrounding them not too long ago. A whole bunch of notebook manufacturers decided to use them in thier notebooks, and then decided not to.

They do seem like the ideal notebook CPU, though I'm not sure what it was that caused them all to change thier minds.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #3 on:** December 10, 2002, 06:48:43 AM »

They were woefully slow compared to other laptops. They also didn't have the volume gaurantees necessary. And... they had to run a proprietary OS. They weren't as cheap as the palm pilot, but offered little more.

It basically fell through the cracks.

It may actually come back for a spell. But there is another product called "Banius" (SP?) that I think will stomp the hell out of it.

AKDejaVu

iceydee · « **Reply #4 on:** December 10, 2002, 07:10:23 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by AKDejaVu
they had to run a proprietary OS.

really? as I understood from the website it could run any windows flavor and any linux.

well, the idea was really good and hopefully there'll be something good out of it.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #5 on:** December 10, 2002, 07:42:21 AM »

The crusoe had less processing capability because it was supposed to integrate with the OS and have the OS handle certain functions. That meant that things had to be specifically designed for it. x86 was emulated.

The problem is, Windows support didn't come in until later. There is an obvious application with the new notepad phase, but there was no support for it 2 years ago when this processor debuted.

Oh... and at the time they were dropped from consideration in the laptop market, they couldn't match the P-3's low-power performance.

AKDejaVu

mipoikel · « **Reply #6 on:** December 10, 2002, 02:33:44 PM »

and here it comes anyway..

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/tabletpc/

iceydee · « **Reply #7 on:** December 10, 2002, 03:05:42 PM »

that's a 1Gz crusoe on that HP though. maybe that one performs better than it's predecessors.

Vulcan · « **Reply #8 on:** December 10, 2002, 05:54:04 PM »

No the 1Ghz Crusoe sucks too. Performance is shockingly slowed when compared to the P3 based tablets.

We've been playing with a few tablets, HP/Compaq backed a dog this time.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #9 on:** December 10, 2002, 06:11:06 PM »

This is the one to watch out for... next year some time:

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20020910comp.htm

AKDejaVu

bloom25 · « **Reply #10 on:** December 11, 2002, 01:45:54 PM »

Transmeta is an interesting company. They have Linus Torvalds, and John Carmack (sp?, creator of Doom games) working for them. They developed an (at the time) extremely low power CPU by sacrificing FPU performance and doing much of the instruction decoding in software.

Unfortunately, they leaked so much information about their product before its release that Intel was able to develop an extremely low voltage P3 that rivaled the Crusoe TMS5000 series in power consumption and performed MUCH better.

It's a case of not keeping your mouth shut before your product is out. They are in pretty bad shape now. There was a round of layoffs there a while back.