Re: [oc] What about Crusoe

["Jecel Assumpcao Jr." <jecel@merlintec.com>]

Wojciech Banas asked:
> What do you think about the Crusoe processor? I think it is great that
> Linus is involved in this, and I know why they do not make it Open Source
> (yet?). If they do not make, or promise to make this CPU Open Sourced, then I
> probably will not buy it. What do you think?

Good luck trying to buy it unless you are a really big hardware company. I
wrote them a month ago and am still waiting for any reply...

Here is an article which expresses the same opinion as you:

  http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/00/02/14/000214opmetcalfe.xml

I don't agree with it, but I would like for them to publish the various
instruction sets for their CPUs. Philips was the first with a secrete ISA
format for their Trimedia chip and I find this trend very disturbing.

Joe Zott replied:
> As to the Crusoe chip and related "code morphing" technology, I think it
> isone of the exciting things that is happening in processors today. I have
> been impressed with the virtual machine technology advances in the last few
> years. This ability to achieve compatibility with existing software for new
> computer architectures appears to provide an opportunity for new processor
> designs to be more easily adopted. It is interesting that the Crusoe designers
> didn't put more EPIC features in their chip, but based on their VM they can
> add them later without as substantial impact as otherwise would be necessary.

Most of Transmeta's inovations are ugly hacks to speed up execution of X86
code. For running cleaner VMs (such as Self, Smalltalk or Java) they are not
needed and you can get away with what Sun did in their MAJC chip (which,
unfortunately, won't compete much with Crusoe in the Webpad market since it
goobles up 15W).

> It is strange that Transmeta intends to provide a proprietary operating
> system optimized for their processor. I wonder if this was done because of
> performance problems in their hardware/x86VM? Normal business practice would
> be to pick one thing to specialize on. It will be interesting to see if the
> company splits and/or continues their software activity.

They did no such thing - Embedded Linux will work equally well on anyone's
"information appliance" while the Crusoe can run any OS that works on the X86.
The two were announced together, but they are not related.

-- Jecel