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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

#51

Post by solarexplorer »

actionfromafar wrote: post #49
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…

Did anyone try dynamic recompilation from x86 to x86? Like a JIT taking advantage of the fact that the target ISA is compatible with with the source ISA.

Yes, I think the conclusion was that it did improve performance on binaries that were not compiled with optimizations, but didn't generate enough gains on optimized binaries to set of the cost of re-compilation.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358438.349303

(this is not about x86 but PA-RISC, but the conclusions would likely be very similar...)

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

#53

Post by pdw »

dlcarrier wrote: post #43
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.

I don't know about startups, but the Cell processor in the PS3 and the Xenon processor in the Xbox 360 we both fabricated by IBM.

The Nintendo GameCube and Wii also had IBM CPUs.

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

#54

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

More interestingly, whatever happened to David "Pardo" Keppel, who PhD thesis and person were somewhat central to Transmeta (at least as far as I remember it). For someone who was doing a CS PhD in the mid 90s, he has a vanishingly tiny online footprint. Not sure if that is inspiring or concerning ...

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

#55

Post by miohtama »

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…

Here is an old doc how it worked

https://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~ghosh/4-18-06.pdf

I think it's correct to say Transmeta did partial software emulation, though lines get blurry here.

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

#56

Post by NelsonMinar »

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.

Not before becoming the worst sort of patent trolls. "in January 2009, Transmeta sold itself to Novafora, who in turn sold the patent portfolio to Intellectual Ventures". (This was long after Linus had left.)

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

#57

Post by cpgxiii »

vlovich123 wrote: post #7
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 think more about the timing being incorrect - betting on software in an era of exponential hardware growth was unwise (software performance can’t scale that way). The problem is that you need to marry it with a significantly better CPU/architecture because the JIT is about not losing performance while retaining back compat. However, if you add it onto a better CPU it’s a fine technique to bet on - case in point App…

> 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 compared to the truly wild variety of Arm implementations; no special vector instructions (e.g. SVE), no online translation (e.g. Nvidia Denver), no crazy little/big/bigger core complexes.

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

#58

Post by fullstop »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #54

More interestingly, whatever happened to David "Pardo" Keppel, who PhD thesis and person were somewhat central to Transmeta (at least as far as I remember it). For someone who was doing a CS PhD in the mid 90s, he has a vanishingly tiny online footprint. Not sure if that is inspiring or concerning ...

Hopefully he is living his best life and doing what he enjoys.

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

#59

Post by miohtama »

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…

Apple Arm CPUs have some special tricks to make x86 sogtware emulation faster.

https://dougallj.wordpress.com/2022/11/09/why-is-rosetta-2-f...

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

#60

Post by _ea1k »

mring33621 wrote: post #50
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The children of Segway are still here! Electric unicycles and Onewheels! And they're really fun!

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.
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