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Transmeta

Transmeta Mulls Exit From Processor Market 202

Posted by timothy from the they've-already-made-it-up-in-volume dept.
chill writes "C-Net is reporting that CPU upstart Transmeta, once the employer of Linus Torvalds and maker of 'Code Morphing' processors, is contemplating leaving the chip manufacturing business. Already their IP licensing revenue exceeds that of their microprocessor sales, though both are dwarfed by their recurring quarterly losses."
Transmeta

Transmeta Mini-ITX Board Reviewed 128

Posted by timothy from the mini-itx-rocks-the-house dept.
NobodyButMe writes "Transmetazone.com has posted a link to a 'world-exclusive' IBASE MB860 review on EpiaCenter.com. This appears to be the first review of a Mini-ITX board built around Transmeta's efficeon technology. Transmeta has also approved this board to be the official reference platform for the TM8600 processor and if you take a look at the benchmark results in the review (page 4) then you'll understand why as VIA's EPIA-M10K board looks quite pale in comparison. The review also adresses issues such as power consumption, temperatures and thermal throttling - three very interesting points when looking at the Efficeon processors. If the MB860 weren't so expensive (~500$ or something as it's aimed at the 'industrial market') then this could easily beat the EPIA boards (IMHO)."
Transmeta

Transmeta TM8800 And Ultraportable Announced 116

Posted by timothy from the smaller-than-a-breadbox dept.
yerdaddie writes "The just-released Transmeta TM8800 has been integrated into a new ultraportable from Sharp. The smaller 90nm variety clocks and performs better than the older 130nm TM86XX Efficeons. It also seems the Orion Multisystems personal clusters discussed earlier on slashdot will be built around this processor variant. Hopefully Transmeta will be releasing a developer kit soon for eager hardware hackers."
Hardware

96 Processors Under Your Desktop 350

Posted by Hemos from the build-your-own-small-cluster dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "A small Santa Clara-based company, Orion Multisystems, today unveils a new concept in computing, 'cluster workstations.' In October, you'll be able to choose between a 12-processor unit for less than $10,000 or a 96-processor system for less than $100,000. These new systems are powered by Efficeon processor from Transmeta and are running Fedora Linux version 2.6.6. Apparently, this new company has friends in the industry. You already can read articles in CNET News.com ("A renaissance for the workstation?"), the New York Times ("A PC That Packs Real Power, and All Just for Me," free registration, permanent link) and the Wall Street Journal ("Orion Sees Gold in Moribund Workstations," paid registration). The company is targeting engineers, life scientists and movie animators. It's too early to know if the company can be successful, but I would certainly have to get one of these systems under my desk. In this overview, I've picked the essential details from the three stories mentioned above."
Security

Transmeta To Add 'NX' Antivirus Feature To Chips 265

Posted by timothy from the nix-'em dept.
Autoversicherung writes points to a ZDNet story which says that "Transmeta will support "No Execute," or NX, in their next core revision. Transmeta will provide advance versions of Efficeon-based systems with NX support to Microsoft for testing. Hope Linus get a few too, even if he's no longer working there. The NX-equipped Efficeon chips are due for general release later this year."
Graphics

Energy Efficient Graphics Processors? 60

Posted by Cliff from the GPU's-that-are-kind-on-your-electric-bill dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "The trends for graphics hardware these days seems to be to draw more power and create more heat to get faster processors and push more polygons. Yet in the CPU arena chips like the Via C3 and Epia, Transmeta Crusoe and Astro, Intel Pentium M, and IBM/Motorola PowerPC (G3-5) seem to favor more power per megahertz and cooler runnings without significant performance loss. Is this just because of the nature of the CPU versus GPU? I understand a GPU die is almost entirely reserved for calculation while the CPU is only 20% of so for calculation. Or are the graphics chip makers merely refusing to innovate and take routes that would reign in out of control energy consumption because of the race for more polygons? What kind of architectural changes could be implemented to alleviate graphics card power gluttony?"
Toys

Handtop PC Announced Using Transmeta Processor 254

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-love-the-gadgets dept.
Cyberllama writes "Like many people on Slashdot, I've been wondering when all those transmeta-based products we were promised were finally coming out -- then I saw this. It claims to a be a fully functional laptop-like device with a 5.6 inch screen that can fit into the palm of your hand -- smaller than many laptop batteries. The specs are a bit last year (256 megs of ram, 1 gigahertz processor, 30 gig hard drive) -- but the size of the device is still pretty impressive. Unfortunately it looks like they won't be shipping until the end of the year."
Transmeta

Transmeta TMS5xxx Reverse Engineered 53

Posted by timothy from the they're-still-around-y'know dept.
Richard W.M. Jones writes "This fascinating article, published anonymously, dissects the Transmeta TMS5xxx architecture, revealing how to access and modify the code-morphing code, how the instruction set works, and tells why you won't be able to run Linux directly on this chip."
Portables

OQO Ultra-Portable Impresses At CES 268

Posted by simoniker from the oh-the-anticipation dept.
carpoolio writes "One of the most-talked about gadgets at CES last week was the OQO ultra personal computer (uPC). TechTV gave it a Best Mobile Device award, and deservedly so. It's a fully functional PC that fits in your pocket. Running on a 1 GHz Transmeta Crusoe processor, the uPC packs a 20 GB hard drive, 256 MB of RAM, and has a color screen that slides up to reveal the keyboard. The price? Sub-$2,000. Photos available on OQO's Web site. Similar devices have come and gone in recent years, but this one really looks nice." OQO seems to be slowly migrating from vaporware to a release date - a CNET News article notes that "OQO said Thursday that it will begin selling the device in the second half of 2004."
Transmeta

Transmeta's New Smaller, Faster Chips Announced 235

Posted by simoniker from the mini-vroom-vroom dept.
billstewart writes "Transmeta announced their new 5900 and 5700 CPUs. They're 50% smaller than the 5800, intended for low-power, low-heat, high-speed applications, and contain an integrated Northbridge. They're sampling now, production in January 2004, and expect to have a mini-ITX board out in 1Q04. The core chip is a 128-bit VLIW hidden by x86 emulation (as opposed to their new Efficeon, which is 256-bit VLIW.) The difference between the 5900 and 5700 seems to be L2 cache size. There are several other stories on Google News."
Linux Business

Low Powered Mini-Server for the Masses 351

Posted by michael from the smaller-than-a-breadbox dept.
ServerSam writes "Sudhian has a review up on EmergeCore's "IT in a Box" IT100. Designed for small business use, it comes equipped with a Transmeta Crusoe 533MHz, 128MB RAM, 20GB IBM TravelStar, 802.11b Access Point, and boots from a 32MB Flash card. The IT100 is powered by a 60 watt external PSU and is smaller than a PS2."
IBM

Ars Dissects POWER5, UltraSparc IV, and Efficeon 176

Posted by timothy from the pirate-noise-plural dept.
Burton Max writes "There's an interesting article here at Ars about the POWER5, UltraSparc IV, and Efficeon CPUs. It's a self-styled "overview of three specific upcoming processors: IBM's POWER5, Sun's UltraSparc IV, and Transmeta's Efficeon. " I found the insights as to Efficeon (successor to Crusoe) to be particularly good (although it paints a sad picture of Transmeta, methinks)."
Transmeta

Efficient Supercomputing with Green Destiny 193

Posted by Cliff from the transmeta-in-the-news-again dept.
gManZboy writes: "Is it an oxymoron to have an efficient supercomputer? Wu-Chun Feng (Los Alamos National Laboratory) doesn't believe so - Green Destiny and its children are Transmeta-based supercomputers that Wu thinks are fast enough, at a fraction of the heat/energy/cost, according to ACM Queue." 240 processors running under 5.2kW (or less!) is nothing to sneeze at. The article offers up this question: might there be other metrics that might be important to supercomputing, rather than relying solely on processing speed?
Caldera

SCO Fires back, Subpoenas Stallman, Torvalds et al 1145

Posted by timothy from the subpoenas-envy dept.
SirFozzie writes "SCO has just, within the past hour, announced that they have fired back against IBM's legal broadside, with one of their own, filing subpoenas against several of the biggest names in Linux. SCO filed subpoenas with the U.S. District Court in Utah, targeting six different individuals or organizations. Those include Novell; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel; Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation; Stewart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Labs; and John Horsley, general counsel of Transmeta."
Transmeta

Transmeta Founder Talks Chips 153

Posted by CmdrTaco from the getting-technical dept.
gManZboy writes "Dave Ditzel, CTO and Founder of Transmeta (you remember Transmeta? weren't they supposed to kick some Intel booty?) sits down and speaks with Alpha and StrongARM chip designer Dan Dobberpuhl about the history of CPUs, where they're heading, and how the heck we'll keep up Moore's Law (if we can)."
Transmeta

Transmeta Introduces The Efficeon 231

Posted by timothy from the what-a-name dept.
brentlaminack writes "Information Week and others are reporting on Transmeta's new Efficeon chip. 1.1 GHz, 7 Watts, 1MB cache, 130 nanometer technology. A marked improvement over their previous generation. Let's hope they can capitalize on this before Intel starts filling the same niche. Looks like a nice product, Linus and Co." Update: 10/15 00:22 GMT by T : woobieman29 writes "Looks like this is a good day for high-efficiency processors. Hot on the heels of Transmetas announcement of the Efficeon, VIA Technologies has announced the release of it's latest low-power processor, the NanoBGA EDEN-N. Capable of running at 533MHZ (4 watts), 800MHZ (6 watts), and 1GHZ (7 watts) this appears to be a very good fit for Thin Client and other embedded devices. One really interesting feature is the on-chip Padlock security suite incorporating AES encryption."
Transmeta

New Transmeta Chip: "Efficeon" 183

Posted by michael from the let-the-jokes-begin dept.
ddtstudio writes "Oh, "Astro" was such a friendly name -- but it probably had trademark issues. So the alphabet blender came up with "Efficeon" instead. This eWeek story gives the lowdown on what Transmeta is doing apres Linus. There's also a writeup on ExtremeTech."

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