What the hell is a TransMeta?

[integlspwr]

Looks like a new processor. Can someone shed some light on this new processor?

Heres a link...

http://www.transmeta.com/

 

[Vegito]

It's been out for a while, processing power for a Pentium V!!!!!

No, it's just for handheld or stand-alone devices, require lower power, ability to conserve power, etc..etc..

 

[da loser]

Its a new processor which uses little power. Check out www.arstechnica.com for a review as well as their aging x86 article too. Going to be used in laptops. New technology that is not x86 based because it can be software coded . So to improve you can either go the hardware or software route. Lots of OEMs signed on, but there's speculation because the transmeta is slow compared to p3s. Of course that'll improve with time.

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/1q00/crusoe/crusoe-1.html
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/2q00/x86future/isa-future-1.html

 

[ccc]

if you think transmeta is slow, man you are so wrong...
transmeta will be the first mobile chip that hit
1 GHz (expected 4th quarter this year).
It is a very low power consumption chip, it can probably
power up a laptop for 24 hours straight using the
the same battery that can only power up intel/amd
chip for 4 to 5 hours.
This chip has a very smart power management also
(more powerful than Speedstep by Intel), it can
allocate processing power to the most intensive
running application and conserve energy very
efficently.

There is only 1 disadvantage with this chip which
is the price tag.

 

[da loser]

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2595695,00.html

also http://www.aceshardware.com/cgi-bin/ace/tech.pl?read=5667

I've been following aceshardware for a while, and I feel Paul DeMone knows his stuff

"Anyone willing to wade through the pages of bafflegab in Transmeta's white paper could only come up with the conclusion that the 5400/533 was only a little more than 2/3 as fast as a PIII/500 and gave only about 50% more computation per unit of energy (only including MPU + chipset; add screen, disk etc and the advantage rapidly shrinks). The new generation of shrunk coppermine should be even more competitive on both performance and power. "

Also i said it would improve, obviously a 1ghz would be nice, meant current ones.

 

[Bartman]

"hit 1Ghz".. so what.. As Cyrix has so elegantly demonstrated it doesn?t matter if you have a fast clock speed if your chip just sucks. I?m not saying that there chip is bad it?s just not as fast clock for clock as Intel/AMD, so saying that your have a 1ghz rig doesn?t mean much.

Bart