[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]
“We’ve been asked by our readers to give our thoughts about the
Crusoe, but until recently, we had no direct experience. At
this year’s Platform 2000, we took a good long look at the Crusoe,
watched presentations by Transmeta engineers and asked plenty of
questions. Here’s what we think so far….“
“Both versions of the Crusoe take up very little silicon and are
therefore relatively cheap to produce. The market of the TM3120
doesn’t need an L2 cache since it’s not a speed-oriented market.
The market of the TM5400 is very speed conscious and the large
on-chip L1 and L2 cache will help keep the speed
acceptable….”
“According to Transmeta, approximately 3/4 of the Crusoe is
software and 1/4 is hardware. By having the x86 instruction set in
software, Transmeta was able to design a streamlined, small,
low-power, low-heat CPU. They didn’t have to waste space on power
hungry and heat producing gates for complex work-arounds needed to
increase CPU speed while keeping backwards compatibility.”