Re: [RE: [oc] What about Crusoe]

[jamil khatib <jamilkhatib@netscape.net>]

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"Joe Zott" <jaz@itvc.com> wrote:

I don't drive an open source car or watch an open source television and I
don't expect that every company release all of their proprietary technology.
Working for a start-up company myself I understand that investors put up
money expecting to see a return on their investment.

Open source is great and well worth supporting, but it does not make sense
for every business situation. I say let the developers (and their investors)
themselves choose to do things in an open source manner. Let's create an
environment where open source is encouraged, but not persecute those who
don't or can't do things open source.

As to the Crusoe chip and related "code morphing" technology, I think it is
one of the exciting things that is happening in processors today. I have
been impressed with the virtual machine technology advances in the last few
years. This ability to achieve compatibility with existing software for new
computer architectures appears to provide an opportunity for new processor
designs to be more easily adopted. It is interesting that the Crusoe
designers didn't put more EPIC features in their chip, but based on their VM
they can add them later without as substantial impact as otherwise would be
necessary.

It is strange that Transmeta intends to provide a proprietary operating
system optimized for their processor. I wonder if this was done because of
performance problems in their hardware/x86VM? Normal business practice would
be to pick one thing to specialize on. It will be interesting to see if the
company splits and/or continues their software activity.


Joe Zott



pls: replay to khatib@ieee.org

Thanks
Jamil Khatib
OpenIP Organization http:/www.openip.org
OpenIPCore Project  http://www.openip.org/oc
OpenCores  Project  http://www.opencores.org

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