THE man who wrote Linux, the upstart rival to Microsoft鈥檚 Windows operating
system, now believes he鈥檚 ready to take on Intel鈥攚ith a new low-power
microprocessor that is claimed to extend the battery life of laptops and
palmtops. Linus Torvalds says that his company鈥檚 new Crusoe processor is just as
fast as its rivals, only smaller and cheaper to make because it has shed many
thousands of transistors.
Transmeta, a company in Santa Clara, California, where Torvalds is a senior
software engineer, launched its Intel-compatible processor last week after
months of speculation fuelled by sketchy clues hidden on the firm鈥檚 website.
Transmeta has the backing of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and financier
George Soros鈥攂oth billionaires. The company believes the new chip will
also run a future breed of 鈥渨ebpad鈥濃�攁 device the size of a laptop screen
that will let you surf the Net.
Crusoe drains less power from its battery because it has fewer transistors.
This is because Transmeta believes that many hardware-processing functions can
be performed in software, without any loss in speed. So Crusoe is a simplified
processor that offloads many operations to clever software. This idea is the
heart of Reduced Instruction Set Computing chips鈥攆ound in everything from
mobiles to palmtops. But unlike Crusoe, these devices cannot run most PC
software.
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Torvalds claims to have solved this problem with translation software dubbed
a 鈥渃ode morpher鈥�. Each time a PC program issues an Intel-compatible instruction,
the code-morphing software translates it into one the simplified Crusoe
processor can understand. They say it will work on any operating system. 鈥淚
haven鈥檛 seen anything as exciting as Crusoe on a technology level,鈥� says
Torvalds.
Crusoe also incorporates a new technology called LongRun that鈥檚 designed to
maximise battery life. Intel recently announced its own battery saving
technology
(see 鈥淭he empire strikes back with an energy saver鈥�).
Conventional chips save power by changing their
鈥渄uty cycle鈥濃�攈ow long they are switched on between instructions. But
Crusoe is said to constantly check the applications it is running to see if they
need less speed and saves power by throttling the chip back accordingly.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 the technological accomplishment that I find most significant,鈥� says
Joe Byrne, an analyst with the Gartner Group in Stamford, Connecticut. 鈥淭hat
looks really new and the benefits are clear,鈥� he told New Scientist.
A 400-megahertz Crusoe designed for webpads is available now, and a
700-megahertz version for laptops鈥攎ade by IBM鈥攚ill be available in
the summer. California-based Diamond Multimedia, maker of the Rio MP3 Internet
music player, says it will be adopting the Crusoe processor in a future
Linux-based webpad.