By Neil Fawcett, VNU
Net
Every day a new technology comes along and attempts to change
the way we handle data. Usually they die out, leaving the de facto
standards such as Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and Intel’s
x86 chip architecture to flourish.
In the world of mobile computing, there is a new pretender to
the throne – a new technology, a new supplier, a new chip and a new
concept to play around with. It’s called Crusoe, and comes from a
company called Transmeta. Don’t feel too bad if you’ve never heard
of it – it’s early days for Transmeta.
What’s so special about Crusoe?
Marketing people around the world will always ask the same things
when it comes to new technologies: What’s the unique selling point?
Why should someone be interested in buying it?
The Crusoe chip, launched in January, is what its creator calls
a ‘smart processor’. Transmeta claims that this chip, the first in
a series of smart microprocessors, will create a new category of
mobile internet computers. It is supposedly based around a
breakthrough software approach that will “revolutionise the field
of mobile computing”.
This, Transmeta claims, delivers on the market’s need for
‘all-day computing’ with a PC-compatible solution that is unmatched
in performance with low power. But for something to define a new
category of anything you need companies manufacturing hardware
around it, and you need a software industry to support it (see
below for more on this).
The core design of the Crusoe chip is a superb piece of
engineering work, and melds hardware and software into a pretty
seductive package.
What you have is a radical departure from traditional
microprocessor design in that Transmeta makes use of software to
implement many functions you would normally implement in a hardware
instruction set. It is this that gives Crusoe the claimed high
performance and low power which is needed for demanding mobile
computers.
At the heart of the Crusoe architecture is its code morphing
software. Code morphing software surrounds a simple very long
instruction word silicon engine to act like a fully compatible PC
processing engine – in this case the software compatibility is with
Intel’s x86 instruction set. This works by using the software to
‘morph’ the x86 instructions into what the underlying hardware
engine understands.
Transmeta describes Crusoe as a smart processor which ‘learns’
about an application while it runs, and then uses that experience
to extend battery life. Using a proprietary power management
technology called LongRun, Crusoe can be made to continuously
adjust its operating speed and voltage to match the needs and
workload of the application.
The technology can apparently make these adjustments hundreds of
times per second, which Transmeta claims dramatically extends
battery life. This contrasts with other processors which run at a
fixed operating speed on batteries, wasting battery life on unused
capacity.
There is also a multimedia aspect to LongRun which can be used
to meet the demanding needs of rich data – such as video streams –
which typically drain a PC’s battery in as little as an hour. With
LongRun, Transmeta claims it is possible to design a lightweight
mobile PC which plays a DVD film for three hours or more.
Who’s supporting Crusoe?
We asked Michael Dell, chief executive of PC manufacturer Dell
Computer, for his view on new and emerging technologies such as
Crusoe. A chief executive is seldom likely to lambast a technology
out of hand, just in case his head of research and development
suddenly shows up with a prototype, but Dell did have his
doubts.
“We’ve been talking to Transmeta for some time now and it looks
like great technology. But isn’t it just emulation? And we all know
the problem with emulation,” said Dell. “There’s been emulation on
all platforms; some worked, some didn’t.”
Dell’s point is valid. Transmeta can call this anything it wants
to, but what it boils down to is that the morphing technology
employed looks very like emulation – not something that turns the
computer industry on.
Having heard Dell’s views, we sought a couple more opinions –
from Compaq and Hewlett Packard (HP). While neither company would
dismiss Crusoe as a non-starter, both preferred to talk about
Windows CE based hardware and Intel’s efforts in the mobile
arena.
HP is determined to bring CE-powered palmtop hardware, such as
its own Jornada, into the enterprise as a device that can be
managed and ‘fed’, meaning that data from the enterprise can be
passed to such a device in a secure way. It sees the mobile device
as a good corporate citizen, and not just a geeky toy that business
people use to carry around telephone numbers.
This raises an interesting issue, and one that potentially
benefits Crusoe. The demand from industrial and corporate users
suggests that the software and data architecture of a mobile
device, as in what it can do within an enterprise, is far more
important than the hardware around which it is based.
If you extrapolate from this, then a chip from Crusoe, Intel,
Hitachi, AMD or whoever, will suffice as long as it supplies what
mobile computing needs – power without battery drain. There’s no
need for Intel inside.
In a mobile internet world, therefore, a Crusoe based computer
has every chance to do well and carve out a niche. If you
technically evaluate Crusoe, you find a chip that is much smaller
than, say, a mobile Pentium II, needs less power and is x86
compatible via the Transmeta code morphing software layer that
exists within the chip. Indeed, a Crusoe chip consumes one watt of
power, which is about a tenth of Intel’s best offering.
Conclusion
So is Transmeta’s Crusoe really a threat to Intel? The best
answer to this is no, based on the information available. If
you look at the company’s website – www.transmeta.com – you will
see that few people have signed up as technology partners.
A big advantage that Crusoe has over Intel’s design methodology
is that potential bugs in the chips can be fixed faster and new
features added more quickly. This can be carried out via software
rather than hardware.
Instead of requiring a manufacturing change, as Intel’s chips
do, engineers can just write new software, test it, and then
distribute the new code to a partner, perhaps over the internet. Or
so the theory goes.
But back to Crusoe’s future. Apparently IBM will be
manufacturing the chip, which is good news because IBM’s
semiconductor fabrication people are highly experienced.
We will undoubtedly see different machines arrive based around
the Crusoe chip, and these will fall into two camps: the low
powered x86 Windows model and the low powered Linux mobile.
The first chip introduced by IBM is the TM3120, which is
designed to act as the powerhouse behind mobile internet
appliances, what people refer to as web pads, smart phones, and so
on. It will use the mobile version of Linux as its operating system
and will run at 400Mhz, with 108Kb of cache Ram, consume one watt
of power and be x86 compatible.
The high-end counterpart to this chip is the TM5400, which is
expected to run Microsoft Windows and will operate at a speed of
between 500 and 700Mhz/s. It has 400Kb of cache Ram, uses one watt
of power and is also x86 compatible. It is designed for lightweight
notebook computers and anything which needs extended battery
life.
But because of the Transmeta chip’s design, it will not always
operate at its highest clock speed. For example, let’s say that a
700Mhz TM5400 is being used to play a DVD film – quite a common
activity on notebook PCs these days. It does not take 700Mhz to
play a movie, maybe as little as 500 MHz in fact, so the Crusoe
chip is intelligent enough to scale itself back and therefore
consume less power.
As regards pricing, Transmeta will cost between $119 (£75)
and $329 (£208) for the TM5400, and $65 (£41) and $89
(£56) for the TM3120. How this will affect the street price
for mobile units is anyone’s guess.
Crusoe offers an insight into how mobile internet devices could
look and operate. But it’s a long way from market dominance
yet.