Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO

dfarq.homeip.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 156 posts

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

#31

Post by aleph_minus_one »

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…

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

The problem with Segway in Germany was rather the certification for road traffic. Because of the insane red tape involved, the introduction was delayed, and for the same reason nobody thus wanted one.

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

#32

Post by Symmetry »

SuperscalarMeme wrote: post #30
scq wrote: post #4

One aspect of Transmeta not mentioned by this article is their "Code Morphing" technique used by the Crusoe and Efficeon processors. This was a low level piece of software similar to a JIT compiler that translated x86 instructions to the processor's native VLIW instruction set. Similar technology was developed later by Nvidia, which had licensed Transmeta's IP, for the Denver CPU cores used in the HTC Nexus 9 and the…

So glad someone else also knew about this connection :) Details about Denver are pretty minimal, but this talk at Stanford is one of the most detailed I’ve been able to find for those interested. It’s fascinating stuff with lots of similarities to how Transmeta operated: https://youtu.be/oEuXA0_9feM?si=WXuBDzCXMM4_5YhA

There was a Hot Chips presentation by them that also gave some good details. Unlike the original Transmeta design they first ran code natively and only recompiled the hot spots.

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

#33

Post by jpmattia »

> so IBM handled manufacturing of its first-generation CPUs.

I'm curious: Is there a consensus on which startup companies achieved success using IBM as a fab? or if not a consensus, I'd settle for anecdotes too.

My own company (which built 40G optical transponders) used them back in that era. While the tech was first rate, the pricing was something to behold.

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

#35

Post by MikeNotThePope »

bohrbohra wrote: post #2

All I know about Transmeta is that Linus Torvalds moved over from Finland to the USA to work at this startup. Other than that, it seems to have sunk without a trace.

I worked at Transmeta. I remember for the launch of one of the Crusoe-powered laptops, there was a bug that prevented the BIOS from booting Linux. Since the laptop was only going to run Windows ME, they didn’t fix it. Of course when Linus got a demo unit to play with, the first thing he did was try to install Linux on it. He let everyone know, and the bug was fixed soon there after.

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

#36

Post by taolson »

p_l wrote: post #19
pshirshov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 microarchite…

>something AMD noted IIRC in the original K5 with its AMD29050-derived core

Just a small nitpick: I've seen the K5/29050 connection mentioned in a number of places, but the K5 was actually based upon an un-released superscalar 29K project called "Jaguar", not the 29050, which was a single-issue, in-order design.

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

#38

Post by rwmj »

jpmattia wrote: post #33

> so IBM handled manufacturing of its first-generation CPUs. I'm curious: Is there a consensus on which startup companies achieved success using IBM as a fab? or if not a consensus, I'd settle for anecdotes too. My own company (which built 40G optical transponders) used them back in that era. While the tech was first rate, the pricing was something to behold.

> the pricing was something to behold

I guess you mean that not in a good way?

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

#39

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

drob518 wrote: post #14
hayley-patton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Rose…

That wasn’t an HP product. It was written by Insignia Solutions and ran on multiple platforms.

I had it on my Mac LCII in 1992. It barely ran well enough to run older DOS IDEs for college. Later I bought an accelerator (40Mhz 68030) and it ran better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftPC

Post reply on HN