Messages in this thread | ![/](/images/icornerl.gif) | | From | John Bradford <> | Subject | Re: Flame Linus to a crisp! | Date | Thu, 24 Apr 2003 09:59:00 +0100 (BST) |
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> > With open hardware designs, there would be no problem with > > documentation not being available to write drivers. > > See below... > > > Incidently, using the Transmeta CPUs, is it not possible for the user > > to replace the controlling software with their own code? I.E. not > > bother with X86 compatibility at all, but effectively design your own > > CPU? Couldn't we make the first Lin-PU this way? > > In theory; in practice we have no access to documentation. See above...
I'm now stuck in a mail reading loop, with the see above and see belows :-)
> That makes Transmeta part of the _old_ industry :) > > I believe present Transmeta CPUs are quite specialised for x86 > behaviour (memory model etc.) anyway. When you're running on a CPU > like that, there's probably little to be gained from changing to a > different front-end instruction set. > > Special tricks like non-cache-ping-ponging locks and faster interrupt > handling might improve performance, but probably require a change of > the hardware to implement.
Shame. I guess it wouldn't really have got us any closer to an open hardware design anyway, it just seemed like a nice hack :-).
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