Where
my mind was 2000-01-23...
Đ 2000 Per Johansson All rights reserved
2000-01-23
Itīs Sunday. I have actually played some guitar today, but nothing came up I thought was worth recording. Mabe there was some, as Iīve mostly rehearsed to a rock-ballad accompaniement I set for endless loop. I guess some of the rehearsal sounded pretty cool. I didnīt record anything though, and I didnīt bother to pick out the cool stuff for further rehearsal and eventually a song. Please donīt fall into despair, somewhere in time I will find my way home and come up with some awesome songs to publish here.
The big event this weekend was that I bought me a pair of new Bauer hockey skates. I have skated at the local hockey arena both yesterday and today, I have sure missed it. Just wonder if I will have time to get together a few guys with stick and puck as well, to play a game. As they say in the NHL: "The coolest game on earth", I can just heartily agree. Talking of cool; the thermometer here in Stockholm this weekend, have kept itself around -10--15°C all the time. At last we have a little winter around here. Mostly this winter have been grey and moisty, no snow, no fun. Good thing then, that one can keep oneself warm in front of the screen as the nothern winds break loose outside.
On the computer arena: this weeks most breaking news-event was that the myth surrounded company of Silicon Valley, Transmeta, finally unveiled what has been going on behind the curtains the last five years. No small reason for the myth-making is the names of some of the employees at Transmeta. For one; the former contructor of the Mac:s RISC based Power PC processor is employed as chief of development. The programmer behind the legendary computer game "Quake" is also employed. But most stirr have been around the fact that the man who invented LINUX; finnish-swedish honour professor at Stockholm:s University, Linus Torvalds is employed. Heīs really a man surrounded by myths, and as to PR he have really helped Transmeta a lot just by being their man. Hopefully has he done an even more awesome work in the labs.
And what was all the fuzz about ? Transmeta presented a possibly revolutionary processor for laptops and handheld computer devices. Named "Crusoe" and said to consume as little as one tenth of the power of contemporary processors. It will also feature good speed ranging from 400-700 MHz. Mabe the most technologically revolutionary new design in it is that it uses a simplified hardware core, etched in 0.18 micron technique, and instead uses a overlaying software core to teoretically emulate any other processor thatīs ever been constructed. That makes it also able to use any OS on the market, including x86 designs like Windows 9x/2000 and Linux and above all, it makes it also possible to upgrade the processor itself by simply "flashing" it to new or better functionality. All this is accomplished by a partly old, but never fully deployed, technique in the processor called VLIS - very long instruction set.
As a matter of fact, it uses 128-bit instructions on the hardware layer so this is actually a 128-bit processor where a Pentium III, for instance, is only a 32-bit processor. Thanks to the overlaying software core, it has no problems with 32-bit software like Windows. It will mabe not be as fast as a 800MHz PIII, but much smaller, uses much less energy and much more future proof. As a last revelation; so is this also the worlds first "intelligent" microprocessor, as it learns what software you use and how you use it. Then it can rule over itīs internal resources to give you the best in both terms of long lasting battery power and computing speed. Is this a hit or a fiasco ? Time will tell, but IBM will produce it (at this, they are very good) and S3 inc.:s daughter company Diamond multimedia (mp3 players, you remember) will probably release the first "real world" product as a "web-pad"(fully functional web-browser and cellular phone about twice as big as a Palm Pilot). Sounds exciting, doesnīt it ?
See Ya //Per
2000-01-15