This secret chip has nothing to do with open source. But for some strange reason it is associated with it. The questions arise:
Why would Transmeta, a hardware company obsessed with maintaining a low media profile want to bring onboard Linus Torvalds, a software programmer with almost Hollywood-scale name recognition?
Conversely, why would Torvalds, a man who achieved that recognition through the simple act of giving technology away, want to cast his lot with an ultra-proprietary chip company?
To was extent the obvious sucess of Transmeta PR and marketing can be attributed to Linus Torvalds.
I always was puzzled why Torvalds chose to work for Transmeta, not in academic or research institution. I do not know the answers.
[Jan 21, 1999]Upside people The Transmeta-Linux Connection -- good questions ;-)
Industry observers wondered and open-source observers speculated, but the more they looked, the less sense it made. Why would Transmeta, a hardware company obsessed with maintaining a low media profile want to bring onboard Linus Torvalds, a software programmer with almost Hollywood-scale name recognition?
Conversely, why would Torvalds, a man who achieved that recognition through the simple act of giving technology away, want to cast his lot with an ultra-proprietary chip company?
[Jan 20, 1999] Crusoe vs StrongARM As interesting as Crusoe is, it still have one one major customer Diamond. And it needs to complete with StrongARM that is also more economical (looks like less that one watt in any mode). There are some skeptic voices (Transmeta round-up Technology worth the hype):
Richard Gordon, senior analyst with Gartner Group research remains unconvinced. He says, "I think you can safely say that their marketing and PR campaign has been very successful. There's been lots of hype but they've yet to prove the technological innovation."
Gordon also has reservations about the specific technology involved. He continues, "If you read between the lines, it's not quite as quick and as clever as some think it is. When you have the ability to run different OSs it has to be an emulation technique. Then there has to be a performance penalty. From what I understand the headline speed is 700 MHz but emulation reduces this to 500."
How good is Crusoe against StrongARM? The latter is established player with a lot of backers in Linux community (Corel is one example). Intel stated that:
Next-generation StrongARM processors are based on a high-performance, ultra-low power 32-bit RISC architecture implementation and Intel's new 0.18m process. These chips will provide a number of significant advantages for developers:
- High processing power up to 750 MIPS at less than 500 mW.
- Scalable combinations of performance and power consumption ≈ from 150 MHz to 600 MHz at 40 mW to 450 mW.
- Scalable voltage from 0.75 Vdd to 1.3 Vdd.
- Compatibility with current ARM architecture.
With all this hype about Crusoe it looks like Strong ARM is at least as powerful as Crusoe(750 MIPS at Ultra-Low Power) and more economical. I remember that Corel supported StrongARM and ported Linux to it. StrongARM is not Intel compatible. Intel emulation can be a winning card for the cheap economical CPU, but how good is emulation layer in Crusoe remains to be seen -- it's very complex solution that can have some holes (floating point compatibility is one obvious example). Also StrongARM is field tested. See also:
Like a character in a Graham Greene spy novel, David Taylor sometimes labored under the pressure of constantly guarding Transmeta's secrets.
"It made me kind of psychotic," said the talkative software engineer, one of the original programmers of ID Software's Quake and Doom, who was hired away by the hush-hush chip design firm about a year ago. "I had my wife and brother sign NDAs, just so I'd have someone to talk to."
The obsessively secretive company demanded that employees reveal no more than four pieces of information to anyone: the name of the company, its location in Santa Clara, that its CEO was David Dritzel, and that Linus Torvalds worked for the company.
"You couldn't tell your friends or family anything," Taylor said. "You wanted to tell them about your life, your shitty day at work, or the cool people you worked with. But you couldn't do any of that."
What made things worse for Taylor was that he'd come from a company that divulged everything to anyone who cared.
"This was a complete culture shock to me," said Taylor, who was dressed for the launch in a black morning coat with long tails, black leather pants, and a cream waistcoat. "But today I'm free. I'm a free man."
...Speaking on condition of strict anonymity, engineers with a major computer manufacturer said that after years of painstaking design work, the earliest Transmeta chips were a big performance disappointment. The engineers would neither confirm nor deny their company's plans to build Crusoe devices.
"They were dogs," said a Transmeta engineer, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. "We were in trouble."
Still, after all the hype, all the wild speculation, all the hopes and dreams (Transmeta will overthrow Microsoft/Intel hegemony, Transmeta will deliver the fastest chips ever dreamed of, Transmeta will end world hunger and abolish poverty) -- it was a bit of an eye-opener to see half a decade of intensive work by a world class team of hardware and software engineers packaged and marketed as a cheap, energy saving device.
Sure there was plenty of talk about "code morphing" software and "smart microprocessors" that can optimize their performance on the fly. But the key, apparently, to Transmeta's business plan is to design chips that use so little power that computer manufacturers will be unable to resist incorporating them in their new devices. While Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe spent years stranded on a single island, lost and alone, Crusoe chips will be everywhere that power outlets are not. Is this the revolution we've all been waiting for?
In a way, yes. Transmeta is an odd bird, a throwback to an earlier generation of Silicon Valley start-ups that is playing by the rules of the brand new Internet game. Your average Internet start-up promises a revolution, but usually just delivers a clever Web site and a stunning IPO. Hype rules, and the successful manufacturing of buzz is sometimes all you need to pull off the "big win."