Sunday, June 30, 2013
1. INTRODUCTION:
On January 19, 2000, Transmeta Corporation introduced Crusoe, a
new microprocessor, into a market long controlled by one dominant company. Over
the years, many companies have tried to do the same, and none of them has been
very successful. But unlike all those other companies, Transmeta believes that
they produced something truly revolutionary. And that it’s destined to change
everything. Now, just about this time you’re thinking, Ah, just what the world
needs, another processor company making big promises. And that sentiment would
certainly be understandable, if Crusoe were just another processor. But it’s
not. Unlike everything else that’s come before it, the Crusoe processor is not
technology for technology’s sake. It’s technology with a purpose. Crusoe is the
first processor designed from the ground up to solve the problems of mobile and
Internet computing in ways other processors can’t. And in doing so, Crusoe is
the first processor to offer benefits that really matter to people. The Crusoe processor was designed to fill the
needs of mobile users. The first smart processor of its kind, Crusoe delivers
high performance, longer battery life, and runs cooler than conventional chips.
Being x86 compatible, the Crusoe processor family enables a whole new world of ultra-light
mobile notebooks, and Internet appliances.
Transmeta is dedicated to enhancing the user’s experience.
Transmeta believes in putting the users daily needs first and foremost. Whether
you’re at work, at home, or on the move, Crusoe will be there to improve your
lifestyle. From lightweight, extended battery life notebooks to meet one’s
mobile computing needs to ultra-dense servers that help save electricity and
costs, Crusoe is there. You see, Crusoe
is different in almost every way. Unlike the industry’s legacy hardware-only
processors, Crusoe is a unique combination of software and hardware.
It’s this radical design that gives Crusoe its important advantages, and
manufacturers of all kinds of electronic devices their first truly innovative
new platform in over 25 years.
Thanks to Crusoe, mobile devices can
be made smaller and lighter than ever. These new devices will be more
comfortable to use, too, because Crusoe generates very little heat - a
problem that plagues the industry’s legacy hardware-only processors. And
because it uses far less power and mobile devices running on Crusoe run far longer
on a single battery charge. All of
which means Crusoe isn’t just another processor. It’s a whole new world. Let us
show you around.
2. SIMPLY REVOLUTIONAL
Transmeta’s
premier product is the Crusoe processor. It is a revolutionary x86-compatible family of solutions specially
designed for the handheld and lightweight mobile computing market. The
high-performance Crusoe processor consumes 60 to 70 percent less power and runs
much cooler than competing chips, by transferring the most complex part of a
processor’s job - determining what instructions to execute and when - to
software in a process called Code Morphing.
Because it enables a battery charge to last twice as long, this technology
allows all-day computing. What makes the Crusoe processor ideal for Internet
devices and the ultra-light mobile PC category?
Checkout
these feature :
·
Remarkably
low power consumption, allowing the processor to run cooler than conventional
chips. Battery life is extended up to a whole
day.
·
High
performance, optimized for real-life usage patterns. Crusoe delivers, whether
you’re browsing the web, watching a DVD, or recalculating your spreadsheet.
·
x86
compatibility, so you are free to run the applications and Internet plug-ins of
your choice.
How
did we do it? Revolutionary technology:
The Crusoe smart processor is a flexible and
efficient hardware-software hybrid that replaces millions of power-hungry
transistors with software. Ultra-light mobile PCs and Internet devices made
with Crusoe processors will be among the lightest, fastest, and coolest on the
market.
3. Factors
influencing for the innovation of Crusoe
3.1. The Time is Right for a Smarter Processor:
You
can never go wrong getting the PC with the highest MHz - or so the saying used
to go. That piece of advice was used time and again to convince users that the
highest MHz was needed to run the software for today and into the future. The
advice was fine as long as you were sitting at your desk all day, and the PC
was tethered to a telephone line or internal LAN network. But the times, as
they say, are a ’change in’. In the PC
environment emerging now, buying the fastest processor is turning out to be
unproductive as well as unwise. The fastest processors now consume too much
power relative to the workload they handle. And for mobile PCs, that’s really
not what users need, because higher performance will not enable new mobile form
factors. As the PC market becomes more mobile and more interconnected through
wireless, light carry weight, small form factors, and battery life are the
features that will be in demand.
The fastest processors today can consume over
10 times the power of most processors built just two to three years ago. Much
of this power goes to waste as users run through their normal set of
applications. Not an ideal set of circumstances, given the power situation in
places like California
3.2. Cooler:
Up
until now, all so-called ’mobile’ processors were just desktop processors in
disguise; they weren’t designed from the ground up to deliver the low power
necessary to really be a true mobile solution. Of course, using these chips in
desktop machines was easy, because all they required was an internal fan to
cool them. But it’s a very different story in a mobile computer, and one that’s
not so easily solved. A mobile computer
has to be, well, mobile. It should be as light and thin as possible, cool
enough to use on your lap, and deliver great battery life. But until now,
mobile computer manufacturers just didn’t have a truly mobile processor to
design around. Instead, they’ve had to make compromises, either in battery life,
or weight, or heat. Crusoe changes all that, because it has makes truly mobile
computers possible - machines that are thinner, lighter, cooler and longer
running than ever. Having Crusoe to design around has given computer
manufacturers a brand new platform from which they can produce innovations the
industry has never seen before. For example, today’s designers are using Crusoe
processors in machines that are 3.5 lbs or less and thinner than an inch. And
with Crusoe’s lower power requirements and higher performance going forward,
designers will have many more choices for their next generation. They can keep
the same dimensions and increase screen size. Or, they can increase screen
size, and decrease thickness. Or, decrease thickness and weight at the same
time. Crusoe gives designers a thermal envelope that really works for mobile,
because it doesn’t require a lot of fancy cooling options that also take up
space and burn precious power.
3.3. Lighter:
In
1965, an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor named Gordon Moore noted that the
number of transistors on a chip doubled every 18 to 24 months. Commonly known
now as “Moore Moore
3.4. Longest Running Mobile
Processor:
The
speed of the fastest computer is exactly 0 MHz with a dead battery. So why do we all think megahertz (MHz) is so
important? Beats us. It’s nothing more than a processor’s internal clock speed.
And yes, it’s a measurement of how fast the processor processes a certain unit
of information, but it has very little to do with anything else. For instance,
it has nothing to do with a system’s overall efficiency, and not that much to
do with a system’s overall performance. But since megahertz was the easiest
parameter to measure, naturally, that’s what people have traditionally
measured. Unfortunately, it has become the yardstick by which we've measured
the desirability of the whole system. Technology is iterative, though, and we
now have the chance to get a more complete picture of just how valuable a
mobile computer really is, by measuring the things that really matter. Like,
battery life, for instance. Today’s
microprocessors have plenty of speed for today’s applications. And they’ll
continue to get faster. But that’s not all they need to become. They need to
become more efficient as well. And that’s where Crusoe comes in.
4. ARCHITECTURE
Transmeta’s
Crusoe processor enables a new class of low power computing and x86 software compatibility
by combining the energy efficiency of a VLIW (very long
instruction word) engine with the versatility of the innovative Code Morphing
software.
Crusoe’s
hardware architecture requires far fewer transistors than conventional x86
microprocessors thereby minimizing power consumption. Modern day processors,
including Crusoe, execute several instructions at once to improve performance.
However, a large fraction of the transistor count in traditional processors is
devoted to rearranging instructions for optimal parallel execution.
Crusoe’s
VLIW design avoids this power and transistor penalty by implementing such
complexities in the Code Morphing software. These missing transistors then
allow Crusoe to operate at lower power, in addition to making it easier to
design and cheaper to manufacture.
4.1. Code
Morphing™ software:
Transmeta’s
innovative Code Morphing software layer provides the Crusoe processor with x86
compatibility while empowering the complex microprocessor with the
flexibilities typically enjoyed only by traditional software products.
The
Code Morphing software is designed to dynamically translate x86 instructions
into VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) instructions for the underlying Crusoe
hardware engine. The Code Morphing software resides in flash ROM and is the
first application to launch when the Crusoe processor is powered up. Upon
completion of its initialization, other system software components such as the
BIOS and operating system are loaded in traditional fashion.
The Code
Morphing software consists of two main modules that work in conjunction to
implement the functions of an x86 processor.
4.1.1. The Interpreter:
4.1.1. The Interpreter:
The Code Morphing software contains an
Interpreter module that interprets x86 instructions one at a time, much like a
traditional microprocessor. The Interpreter functionality also filters
infrequently executed code from being needlessly optimized and gathers run time
statistical information about the x86 instructions it sees for determining
whether optimizations are necessary.
4.1.2.
The Translator:
Upon
detecting critical, frequently used x86 instruction sequences, the Code
Morphing software invokes a Translator module that recompiles the x86
instructions into optimized VLIW instructions, called “Translations.” The
native translations reduce the number of instructions executed and results in
better performance.
Further
efficiencies are possible by saving the translations memory that is
inaccessible to normal x86 code. This special memory area is named the
“Translation Cache” and allows the Code Morphing software to re-use
translations and eliminate redundancies. Upon encountering previously
translated x86 instruction sequences, the Code Morphing software skips the
translation process and executes the cached translation directly out of the
Translation Cache.
Caching and
re-using translations exploits the high degree of repetition typically found in
real world workloads. The Code Morphing software matches repeated executions
with entries in the Translation Cache and the optimized translation is executed
at full speed with minimal overhead. The initial cost of the translation is
amortized over repeated executions.
4.2. LongRun™
Power Management Technology:
In
addition to the Crusoe processor’s inherently energy efficient design, the Code
Morphing software allows further reductions in power consumption by utilizing
capabilities available only in the Crusoe hardware. One of these features is
implemented in Transmeta’s LongRun Power Management technology. The LongRun
technology provides Code Morphing software with the ability to adjust Crusoe’s
voltage and clock frequency on the fly depending on the demands placed on the
Crusoe processor by software. Because power varies linearly with clock speed
and by the square of voltage1, adjusting both can produce cubic
reductions in power consumption, whereas conventional CPUs can adjust power
only linearly (by only adjusting the frequency).
The
Long Run policies are implemented within the Code Morphing software and it
continuously scales both the frequency and voltage of the Crusoe processor
according to the instantaneous demands of the computer system. It can detect
different scenarios based on runtime performance information and then exploit these
by adapting its power usage accordingly. All Long Run adjustments are seamless
and transparent to the user.
Long Run is
designed to provide just enough performance for the processor workload at hand.
This allows it to deliver performance when necessary and conserves power when
processor demand is low, thereby eliminating performance and energy wastage.
4.2.1.
How does Long Run work?
Long Run
operates by configuring the Crusoe processor to run at a number of different
frequency and voltage points. The Long Run algorithm in the Code Morphing
software monitors the Crusoe processor and dynamically switches between these
points as runtime conditions change.
Long
Run policies can be abstracted to the following points:
- If no idle time
is detected during a workload, the frequency/voltage point is incremented
(if possible).
- If idle time is
detected, Long Run may decide that performance is being wasted and
decrement the frequency/voltage level.
4.2.2. Thermal Management:
The
management of how a device will dispose of heat is an integral part of
microprocessor design. Operating temperature rises as heat collects in a
device, potentially causing damage and affecting performance. Designers are
careful to incorporate thermal solutions in their designs that allow their
products to operate within a safe temperature range. Conventional processors
typically use Thermal Throttling for CPU thermal management. Thermal throttling
regulates the thermal environment by alternating between running the processor
at full speed and placing the processor in a sleep state whenever the upper
limits of the thermal envelope are reached. Performance is delivered in
discrete bursts that tend to be unfavorable for applications processing smooth
multimedia content, such as software DVD and MP3 playback.
By integrating
a thermal model into the software algorithm, LongRun manages the Crusoe
processor’s thermal environment by using frequency/voltage shifts as a
substitute for thermal throttling. In contrast to conventional thermal
management techniques, the LongRun thermal extensions deliver higher
performance at the same die temperature or the same performance at a lower die
temperature, essentially expanding the thermal budget of the CPU. The LongRun
thermal extensions allow the possible elimination of active cooling solutions,
which reduces system weight and time-to-market as there is no need for explicit
CPU thermal management. With Long Run, Transmeta delivers superior performance
for a given thermal envelope.
Power=(Total Capacitance x Frequency x Voltage2) /2
Power=(Total Capacitance x Frequency x Voltage2) /2
4.3. VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) Engine or
Hardware Engine:
A
CPU architecture in which the processor executes long instruction words
(molecules) consisting of several instructions (atoms) each. Unlike superscalar
or out-of-order processors, a VLIW does not need to analyze whether
instructions can be executed in parallel, since the molecule already explicitly
encodes that information. This reduces hardware cost and enables higher
processor speeds.
4.3.1.
Molecule:
A VLIW instruction
word containing multiple atoms, which the hardware executes in parallel. The
current Crusoe processors support 64- and 128-bit-long molecules containing two
to four atoms each. When the hardware processes a molecule, it executes all
atoms in the molecule in parallel, meaning the current Crusoe processors can
perform up to four operations per cycle.
4.3.2. Atom:
4.3.2. Atom:
A component of a VLIW
instruction word, or molecule. Conceptually, an atom is similar to an
instruction for a RISC processor. A key difference is that a VLIW processor
does not execute individual atoms by themselves but always as part of an entire
molecule.
5. Performance:
5. Performance:
The Crusoe processor gives you all the
performance you need for today’s demanding applications, from office suites to
multimedia applications like DVD or Internet content playback. In fact, in the
category of Mobile Internet Computers, Crusoe
processors deliver the highest performance available. But when you are a mobile
user, peak performance is only part of the story. Traditionally, desktop processors and
systems have been optimized for peak performance, which is fine as long as
unlimited power and cooling are available. In mobile systems, the situation is
quite different. In a mobile setting, the issue of battery lifetime enters the
picture: running the processor any faster than is necessary to get the job done
is a waste of energy and reduces battery lifetime. Unlike conventional processors, Crusoe
processors are designed for mobile applications. Advanced power management
techniques maximize battery life by dynamically matching performance levels to
application demand. In this way, Crusoe processors give you the best of both
worlds: full speed whenever you need it, and unprecedented battery lifetime.
6. Upgradeable:
Early on in
the design of the first Crusoe processor it was noted that a key advantage to
the Software based architecture was the ability to perform upgrades to the
processor. Upgrades not only during the design and verification phase but also
to our customers and even to end-users.
How is this
significant to the mobile PC world? On a first order basis, software upgrades
allows Transmeta to design and bring to market processors in roughly half the
time it takes for the standard hardware processors. Instead of having to tape
out a new chip to fix bugs in silicon, which can take weeks for the new chip to
come back, we can make most of our fixes in software which can be recompiled
and loaded into a system the
same
day.
Our customers
also enjoy the benefit of fixing many system related bugs through a Code
Morphing software upgrade provided by Transmeta. Often late in the development
cycle of a new mobile computer an OEM will run across a problem that may not be
related to the processor but an I/O device. To proceed through qualification
and meet schedules a software upgrade may be the only answer to getting a
product rolled out on time.
Of course the
ultimate goal of software upgrades is to provide new features and performance
enhancements to end-users. Transmeta is early in the development of the
technology and the interaction of its customers. Therefore most enhancements
have been made in an incremental fashion to the newly arriving second wave of
Crusoe ultra-light mobile PCs. More significant upgrades are due to arrive as
the architecture expands with the
next
generation of Crusoe processors.
7.
Advantages of the Code Morphing
software:
The Code Morphing software provides
the Crusoe processor with unprecedented flexibility by implementing the
complexities of a traditional microprocessor in software. This results in the
following advantages over conventional x86 processors.
Translates single
instructions one at time
|
Translates an
entire group of x86 instructions at once
|
Translates each x86
instruction everytime it is encountered
|
Translates
instructions once, saving the resultant translation in a cache for re-use
|
Full of complex,
power-hungry transistors
|
Much of the
processor functionality is implemented in software - less logic transistors,
less power
|
With conventional microprocessor designs
approaching 40 million transistors, managing heat and power consumption is now
one of the industry’s biggest challenges. Switching every transistor on or off
requires a bit of energy. The Crusoe
processor was designed specifically to avoid these energy pitfalls by using the
Code Morphing software to replace logic transistors, therefore generating less
heat. This also has the added benefit of rolling out software upgrades to the
microprocessor logic independently from the hardware. With a talented team of
engineers dedicated to developing and enhancing the Code Morphing technology,
Transmeta can provide quick, low cost improvements to performance and power
consumption by simply releasing new Code Morphing software versions. In
contrast, conventional x86 processors typically require new spins of hardware
or exotic fabrication processes to deliver similar gains. The flexibility provided by the Code
Morphing technology allows Transmeta to spearhead industry wide initiatives for
low power/high performance mobile computing.
8. DISADVANTAGES:
·
Showing
poor performance in multi-processing and graphics.
·
Most
of the processor is depending on software so; there is chance of virus attack.
9. CONCLUSION:
Until now so many companies (IBM, SONY
etc) released their notebooks with this processor. But the thing is, it is not
able to beat the market of Intel. Whether for good or bad this has brought a
revolutionary change in the designing of the processor. We have to wait and see
whether this revolutionary product will dispose soon or will stand in the
market for long time like Robert Crusoe, who is a navigator, who staid in
dangerous pacific island for 7 years.
