Well I've read the last 40 posts and to summarize.
My conclusion. crusoe is the best thing since sliced bread.
well in theory. Only one chink may be in the armor. Will the morphing introduce operational anomilies, bugs?
Only time will tell, but the tech team at transmeta is quite impressive and the crusoe processor seems to be the result of a wow well thought out system's analysis.
When considering the niche of transmeta, well if we are only talking about numbers maybe we should be talking about intel's niche. OK it will take a couple of years for every human to have his own personal wearable PC.
Repeating some of the really great links already posted.
Crusoe Explored by Jon "Hannibal" Stokes
arstechnica.com
Both of the above factors are essential to the success of a high end x86 CPU that's aimed at the server and workstation market. What if, though, a team of CPU designers were to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch on a CPU design with a different market, and different set of questions, in mind?
Transmeta's Crusoe team did just that. They started over again, but this time instead of asking "how fast can we possibly make this," they asked "how efficient can we possibly make this, and still have it run x86 apps acceptably." Thus, Crusoe's designers were working towards two primary design goals that dictated the decisions and tradeoffs that they made. Transmeta wanted the Crusoe to have:
full x86 compatibility
the lowest possible power consumption
a level of x86 application performance that provides for a reasonably good user experience
Notice that last bullet point there. Crusoe isn't about framerates(yet), and it isn't about 3DSMAX rendering or weather simulation. It's about doing low to mildly compute-intensive sorts of tasks like word processing, video and audio playback, web browsing, email, etc. And more specifically, it's about taking those tasks on the road. New Transmeta patent reveals x86-killer design
theregister.co.uk
I've really enjoyed reading this thread.
Tom Watson tosiwmee
Oh and I think my idea of a window manager is as well thought out as the crusoe processor.
watman.com |
