Mobile
computing has been the buzzword for quite a long time. Mobile computing
devices like laptops, webslates & notebook PCs are becoming common
nowadays. The heart of every PC whether a desktop or mobile PC is the
microprocessor. Several microprocessors are available in the market for
desktop PCs from companies like Intel, AMD, Cyrix etc.The mobile
computing market has never had a microprocessor specifically designed
for it. The microprocessors used in mobile PCs are optimized versions
of the desktop PC microprocessor. Mobile computing makes very different
demands on processors than desktop computing, yet up until now, mobile
x86 platforms have simply made do with the same old processors
originally designed for desktops. Those processors consume lots of
power, and they get very hot. When you're on the go, a power-hungry
processor means you have to pay a price: run out of power before you've
finished, run more slowly and lose application performance, or run
through the airport with pounds of extra batteries. A hot processor
also needs fans to cool it; making the resulting mobile computer
bigger, clunkier and noisier. A newly designed microprocessor with low
power consumption will still be rejected by the market if the
performance is poor. So any attempt in this regard must have a proper
'performance-power' balance to ensure commercial success. A newly
designed microprocessor must be fully x86 compatible that is they
should run x86 applications just like conventional x86 microprocessors
since most of the presently available software’s have been designed to
work on x86 platform.
Crusoe is the new microprocessor which has been designed specially for
the mobile computing market. It has been designed after considering the
above mentioned constraints. This microprocessor was developed by a
small Silicon Valley startup company called Transmeta Corp. after five
years of secret toil at an expenditure of $100 million. The concept of
Crusoe is well understood from the simple sketch of the processor
architecture, called 'amoeba’. In this concept, the x86-architecture is
an ill-defined amoeba containing features like segmentation, ASCII
arithmetic, variable-length instructions etc. The amoeba explained how
a traditional microprocessor was, in their design, to be divided up
into hardware and software. Thus Crusoe was conceptualized as a hybrid
microprocessor that is it has a software part and a hardware part with
the software layer surrounding the hardware unit. The role of software
is to act as an emulator to translate x86 binaries into native code at
run time. Crusoe is a 128-bit microprocessor fabricated using the CMOS
process. The chip's design is based on a technique called VLIW to
ensure design simplicity and high performance. Besides this it also
uses Transmeta's two patented technologies, namely, Code Morphing
Software and Longrun Power Management. It is a highly integrated
processor available in different versions for different market segments.
