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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

#141

Post by iszomer »

em-bee wrote: post #27
iszomer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember it being in one of Sony VAIO's product lines called the picturebook, for its small form factor and a swivel webcam.

hat was the first laptop i owned ;-) as a frequent traveler it was a very useful device.

It was my first sub-notebook, coming from a thinkpad 600e, and though my memory is fuzzy from 20+ years ago, I think I used an atheros wifi pcmcia/cardbus? card with it at some point. It was also awkward some times having to carry their external 3.5" floppy drive too.

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

#142

Post by musicale »

vlovich123 wrote: post #98
cpgxiii wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, if you add it onto a better CPU it’s a fine technique to bet on - case in point Apple’s move away from Intel onto homegrown CPUs. I don't think Apple is a good example here. Arm was extremely well-established when Apple began its own phone/tablet CPU designs. By the time Macs began to transition, much of their developer ecosystem was already familiar. Apple's CPUs are actually notably conservative when com…

I think your focusing on the details and missing my broader point - the JIT technique for translation only works to break out of the instruction set lock-in. It does not improve performance, so betting on that instead of super scalar designs is not wise. Transmeta’s CPU was not performance competitive and thus had no path to success. And as for Apple itself, they had built the first iPhone on top of ARM to begin with…

> And as for Apple itself, they had built the first iPhone on top of ARM to begin with (partially because Intel didn’t see a market). So they were already familiar with ARM before they even started building ARM CPUs

As a co-founder of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, Apple had a history with ARM dating back to 1990 at least:

> Arm was officially founded as a company in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd, which was a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), and VLSI Technology (now NXP Semiconductors N.V)

https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/arm-official-history

Apple also shipped ARM-based Newton systems from 1993-98, and ARM-based iPods starting in 2001.

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

#143

Post by pertymcpert »

cpgxiii wrote: post #73
almostgotcaught wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no special vector instructions (e.g. SVE) Wut - SVE and SME are literally Apple designs (AMX) which have been "back ported".

> Wut - SVE and SME are literally Apple designs (AMX) which have been "back ported". Literally no Apple CPUs meaningfully support SVE or SVE2. Apple adds what I would say is a relatively "conventional" matrix instructions (AMX) of their own, and now implements SME and SME2, but those are not equivalent to SVE (I call AMX "conventional" in the sense that a fixed-size grid of matrix compute elements is not a particular…

I think if you go back far enough you’ll see that SVE was actually an Apple invention :)

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

#144

Post by Tor3 »

dlcarrier wrote: post #105
sophacles wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. They are licensing IP they created. Thats different qualitatively and quantitatively than buying patent rights for cheap (since the even the original patent holders didn't think it was worth much) and suing random people who happen to use a product that may infringe on the patent.

If their patent portfolio wasn't being used for patent trolling, why is it currently owned by Intellectual Ventures, once called "the ultimate patent troll" by journalists. ( https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5375304/intellectual-ventu... )

You answered that yourself, didn't you? You first said that Transmeta became a patent troll. But the one doing the trolling (a word related to "trawling") is Intellectual Ventures. Not Transmeta, the latter did actual work and did create products.

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

#145

Post by MikeNotThePope »

drob518 wrote: post #15
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.

Transmeta did try to enter the server market. There was a company called RLX Technologies that wanted to use Crusoe chips in blade servers. I remember them demoing a 3U rack server w/ 24 blades in it. 1 CPU per blade.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RLX_Technologies

RLX entering the market in 2002: https://www.serverwatch.com/guides/transmeta-1-ghz-crusoe-bo...

RLX exiting the market in 2005: https://www.techmonitor.ai/hardware/rlx_exits_blade_server_b...

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

#146

Post by 4ggr0 »

mring33621 wrote: post #68
_ea1k wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for me Segway has been a great lesson in how patents can hold back innovation. It was a niche player that prevented others from trying to innovate on the form factor for a number of years.

True! In a similar vein: One of the dads at school runs a company that does a nanotech waterproof coating for electronics (backed by patents). I told him that it would be very useful for personal electric vehicles, like electric unicycles. He replied that they looked at that, but decided not to license the tech for that use, because there wasn't enough money in it. Sad.

> because there wasn't enough money in it

i wonder what the world or progress in general would look like if profit-incentives didn't matter (as much as they do), and instead just "would this take us forwards as societies?"

or in a different way, what are we missing out on just because some people think stuff has to be profitable in order to be "good".

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

#147

Post by anamax »

fajitaforce5 wrote: post #83
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…

I was an intel cpu architect when transmeta started making claims. We were baffled by those claims. We were pushing the limit of our pipelines to get incremental gains and they were claiming to beat a dedicated arch on the fly! None of their claims made sense to ANYONE with a shred of cpu arch experience. I think your summary has rose colored lenses, or reflects the layman’s perspective.

Ditzel went to Intel after Transmeta, doing processor architecture.

While I don't know what his group shipped, some implementations of trace caches do store "improved" operation sequences.

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

#148

Post by sophacles »

dlcarrier wrote: post #105
sophacles wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. They are licensing IP they created. Thats different qualitatively and quantitatively than buying patent rights for cheap (since the even the original patent holders didn't think it was worth much) and suing random people who happen to use a product that may infringe on the patent.

If their patent portfolio wasn't being used for patent trolling, why is it currently owned by Intellectual Ventures, once called "the ultimate patent troll" by journalists. ( https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5375304/intellectual-ventu... )

So intellectual ventures - notably a different company than transmeta - is being a patent troll. That means transmeta became a patent troll too?

Why should I believe what you say anyway? Wendy Verlander - notably a different person than you - is a well known patent troll. That means you are just another patent troll not worth my attention. (At least according to your reasoning).

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

#149

Post by drob518 »

organsnyder wrote: post #29
drob518 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> it wasn’t really solving a problem that anyone was struggling with They did push the envelope on efficiency. My Crusoe-equipped laptop could go six hours on the stock battery (12+ on the extended batteries) back when most laptops struggled to get three.

Yes, but wasn’t most of that because its performance was low? If you had dialed back the performance of an equivalent Pentium (model whatever was current at that time), would it have been in the same power ballpark?

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

#150

Post by drob518 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #39
drob518 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right, Insignia. That was it. But it was a product that HP resold in some fashion.
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