Intel Corp (INTC)

[chipguy]

However, I'm puzzled by your snake oil reference and want to understand it

To put this in perspective you have to consider all the pre-IPO buzz about Transmeta and
the rumours it spread about what it was doing. The early buzz was its would create a
software based x86 compatible chip that would blow away Intel and AMD.

When things progressed far enough that it became obvious that it was a pipe dream
Ditzel and company changed tack and decided it would tackle the low power niche
Intel and AMD were ignoring. A combination of excellent spin control, a credulous
trade press and voila, Transmeta's failure became a success. No one seemed to noticed
that its arrow fell far short of its target and it slyly drew a new bullseye around where it
landed. Transmeta's IPO was a success and Crusoe was launched to pretty good
press despite the incredible obfuscation about processor performance in all the
technical whitepapers that accompanied the launch. But where were the third party
reviews in the months that followed? Even MicroDesign Resources, the people that
publish Microprocessor Reports complained that after many attempts they were unable
to obtain an evaluation board for independent performance testing. The general rule
of thumb that has emerged is that a 5x00 series Crusoe is about as fast as a mobile
Coppermine PIII of half the clock rate. Crusoe design wins are few and far between
and the company is losing monet hand over fist. Anyone who bought the hype and
bought into TMTA on the ground floor sure got burnt. Hence my snake oil comment.

I am happy you like your Crusoe based computer. Obviously for your needs compute
power isn't as crucial as it is for others. But for many others they need a performance
level approaching that of a desktop processor and for them a Crusoe base system
will not come close to being sufficient. The market place decides winners and losers
and it is hard for me to see how Transmeta will deal itself a winning hand sticking to
its code morphing on VLIW paradigm and simply making ever wider issue processors
like the 8000. There are reasons some things are best done in application specific
silicon - be it running 3D rendering pipelines or executing x86 binaries. At least that's
my take on it.