CAD Project: WIll Crusoe Choke on Apple?
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By All Group MembersConclusionsMichael HughesThe Transmeta chip is, in my view, an exciting idea in that it has broken away from traditional ideas in implementing many areas. The G4 on the other hand has embodied the "classic" RISC architecture, and makes use of many hardware techniques to improve performance. In the end both are RISC chips, yet I would argue that this means different things. In the G4 I would suggest that RISC still means the Reduced Instruction Set Computer, despite the 162 new instructions. But with regard to the Crusoe I would say that RISC stands for a number of things: 1) Rationalised Instruction Set Computer, this would be difficult to say for sure as very little is know about the native architecture, but the designers appear to have gone through and looked very carefully at the instruction set. And 2) Relegate the Important Stuff to the Compiler. This second definition I feel is the more important of the two, for the following reason: Transmeta has built a chip that uses software extensively to perform basic hardware activities. In order to do this they have built the Code Morphing Software which is an interpreter, all of the Ix86 runs through this and thus the Crusoe relies on this "compiler" heavily. The chip itself performs the basic operations of manipulating data, whilst the compiler organises it and does things like branch prediction.
Stuart MoorhouseAs is visible from the details and comparisons given about the G4 and the Crusoe processors, there are similarities. But however there are far more differences, as you would expect from different companies and design criteria of the processors. The G4 is a classically designed processors that has had some but not many technological improvements over the other generations of processors that came before it. The Crusoe is a new processor, and as a result must face large amounts of competition in its market area. Transmeta have therefore taken the approach of introducing large amounts of new and exciting technology, and made it compatible with the main architecture used today, Intel's. However all of these advances have come at the cost of speed for the Crusoe processor, but even so it is a processor that is due to make dramatic changes to the way that computers are designed and used, both today and in the future.
Paul HulmeI have to admire Transmeta for putting out such a revolutionary processor, and causing such a stir in the CPU and Motherboard community. For me the one thing that I would like to emphasise about the Crusoe is the Code Morphing Software. Initially this seems like an inferior implementation, compared to a similar design in hardware. However, the amount of freedom that the software implementation gives allows a huge range of performance enhancing techniques to be used. This is what I like about Transmeta's chip. Similarly the G4 implements its own techniques to improve speed. Although I am very wary of a processor that adds loads of instructions and then claims a massive increase in performance. I would have liked to see more evidence of real world testing for the G4, but a GFLOP is still a GFLOP no matter how optimised a set of test instructions are. However, in the end I have to favour the Crusoe processor over the G4 for simple reasons of elegance, and it's target market:
Iain GibsonFrom this report I have found that there is a lot of evidence to say that the Crusoe and Apple G4 processors are very similar in design ie RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) although they use very different methods to obtain there final goal. This shows how processor design is an enormous playing field for different designs and ideas. In my opinion the Crusoe processor is a RISC chip, it has 128bit instructions so it is bigger than present day chips. The Code Morphing Software has to be a very good idea, whether or not it is the way forward remains to be seen. An all very well good idea in practice but will it be able to handle the might and lets be honest power hungry Microsoft Operating systems that are available today. So what about the G4 do I like it or not? Well, er no actually, its an Apple but wait there is the Altivec technology to talk about, it does the same idea as the Code Morphing Software of the Crusoe, the draw back, it only does it some of the time. Why have the Altivec engine at all when you still have the main architecture doing all the work.
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