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What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

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Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#11

Post by Theodores »

I liked the Transmeta web page from before they launched. It was just bare HTML with no styling. It said:

  This page is not here yet.
The product hype and lack of knowledge about what it was meant that nobody knew what to expect. In these hyped expectations, and with Torvalds on board, everyone expected that everything would be different. But it wasn't.

A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this incredible vision of everyone on Segways to nobody wanting one.

The hype was part of the problem with Transmeta. Even in it's delivered form it could have found a niche. For example, the network computer was in vogue at the time, thanks to Oracle. A different type of device, like a Chromebook might have worked.

With Torvalds connected to Transmeta and the stealthy development, we never did get to hear about who was really behind Transmeta and why.

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#12

Post by trollied »

noelwelsh wrote: post #3

Didn't Transmeta's technology end up in Apple's PowerPC emulator Rosetta, following the switch to Intel? IIRC Transmeta's technology came out of HP (?) research into dynamic inlining of compiled code, giving performance comparable to profile-guided optimization without the upfront work. It worked similarly to an inlining JIT compiler, except it was working with already compiled code. Very interesting approach and one…

No, you are confusing Transmeta with Transitive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTransit

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#13

Post by nostrademons »

noelwelsh wrote: post #3

Didn't Transmeta's technology end up in Apple's PowerPC emulator Rosetta, following the switch to Intel? IIRC Transmeta's technology came out of HP (?) research into dynamic inlining of compiled code, giving performance comparable to profile-guided optimization without the upfront work. It worked similarly to an inlining JIT compiler, except it was working with already compiled code. Very interesting approach and one…

A lot ended up in HotSpot for the JVM. I know a number of extremely good engineers whose career path went TransMeta -> Sun -> Google.

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#14

Post by drob518 »

hayley-patton wrote: post #10
noelwelsh wrote: post #3

Didn't Transmeta's technology end up in Apple's PowerPC emulator Rosetta, following the switch to Intel? IIRC Transmeta's technology came out of HP (?) research into dynamic inlining of compiled code, giving performance comparable to profile-guided optimization without the upfront work. It worked similarly to an inlining JIT compiler, except it was working with already compiled code. Very interesting approach and one…

Dynamo https://www.cse.iitm.ac.in/~krishna/courses/2022/odd-cs6013/... >?

In the early 1990s, HP had a product called “SoftPC” that was used to emulate x86 on PA-RISC. IIRC, however, this was an OEM product written externally. My recollection of how it worked was similar to what is described in the Dynamo paper. I’m wondering if HP bought the technology and whether Dynamo was a later iteration of it? Essentially, it was a tracing JIT. Regardless, all these ideas ended up morphing into Rosetta (versions 1 and 2), though as I understand it, Rosetta also uses a couple hardware hooks to speed up some cases that would be slow if just performed in software.

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#15

Post by drob518 »

rsynnott wrote: post #5

> But they were still a technology company, and if their plans had gone well, they would have sold their product to dotcoms I'm not sure that that's really correct; they were very desktop-oriented.

Well, they ended up being mobile-oriented, but even that didn’t work. They were definitely not server-oriented and they really couldn’t compete at desktop. Honestly, while the tech was interesting, it wasn’t really solving a problem that anyone was struggling with.

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#16

Post by pshirshov »

gdiamos wrote: post #6

Transmeta made a technology bet that dynamic compilation could beat OOO super scalar CPUs in SPEC. It was wrong, but it was controversial among experts at the time. I’m glad that they tried it even though it turned out to be wrong. Many of the lessons learned are documented in systems conferences and incorporated into modern designs, ie GPUs. To me transmeta is a great example of a venture investment. If it would hav…

Aren't modern CPUs, essetially, dynamic translators from x86_64 instruction set into internal RISC-like intsruction sets?

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#17

Post by tyingq »

Theodores wrote: post #11

I liked the Transmeta web page from before they launched. It was just bare HTML with no styling. It said: This page is not here yet. The product hype and lack of knowledge about what it was meant that nobody knew what to expect. In these hyped expectations, and with Torvalds on board, everyone expected that everything would be different. But it wasn't. A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this…

https://web.archive.org/web/19970710102251/http://www.transm...

Then, https://web.archive.org/web/20000229173916/http://www.transm... , when content appeared around Feb 2000.

Product launch PDF from Jan 19, 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000815231116/http://www.transm...

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#18

Post by Theodores »

tyingq wrote: post #17
Theodores wrote: post #11

I liked the Transmeta web page from before they launched. It was just bare HTML with no styling. It said: This page is not here yet. The product hype and lack of knowledge about what it was meant that nobody knew what to expect. In these hyped expectations, and with Torvalds on board, everyone expected that everything would be different. But it wasn't. A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this…

https://web.archive.org/web/19970710102251/http://www.transm... Then, https://web.archive.org/web/20000229173916/http://www.transm... , when content appeared around Feb 2000. Product launch PDF from Jan 19, 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000815231116/http://www.transm...

Thanks for that, I was almost right - This web page is not here yet.

I still use this as important placeholder text, not that anyone outside HN would get the reference.

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#19

Post by p_l »

pshirshov wrote: post #16
gdiamos wrote: post #6

Transmeta made a technology bet that dynamic compilation could beat OOO super scalar CPUs in SPEC. It was wrong, but it was controversial among experts at the time. I’m glad that they tried it even though it turned out to be wrong. Many of the lessons learned are documented in systems conferences and incorporated into modern designs, ie GPUs. To me transmeta is a great example of a venture investment. If it would hav…

Aren't modern CPUs, essetially, dynamic translators from x86_64 instruction set into internal RISC-like intsruction sets?

Not to the same level. Crusoe was, in many ways, more classic CISC than x86 - except it's microcode was actually doing dynamic translation to internal ISA instead of operating like interpreter in old CISCs.

x86 ISA had the funny advantage of being way closer to RISC than "beloved" CISC architectures of old like m68k or VAX. Many common instructions translate to single "RISCy" instruction for the internal microarchitecture (something AMD noted IIRC in the original K5 with its AMD29050-derived core as "most instructions translate to 1 internal microinstruction, some between 2 to 4"). X86 prefixes are also way simpler than the complicated logic of decoding m68k or VAX. An instruction with multiple prefixes will quite probably decode to single microinstruction.

That said, there's funny thing in that Transmeta tech survived quite a long way to the point that there were Android tablets, in fact flagship Google ones like Nexus 9, whose CPU was based on it - because nvidia "Denver" architecture used same technology (AFAIK licensed from Transmeta, but don't cite me on this)

Re: What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

#20

Post by rjsw »

gdiamos wrote: post #6

Transmeta made a technology bet that dynamic compilation could beat OOO super scalar CPUs in SPEC. It was wrong, but it was controversial among experts at the time. I’m glad that they tried it even though it turned out to be wrong. Many of the lessons learned are documented in systems conferences and incorporated into modern designs, ie GPUs. To me transmeta is a great example of a venture investment. If it would hav…

They were also the first to produce an x86 CPU with an integrated northbridge, they could have pitched it more at embedded and industrial markets where SPEC scores are less important.
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