Transmeta disclosed specifications and technical details on its latest low-power, code-morphing, x86-compatible microprocessor — the Efficeon. The announcement came as part of the annual Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif., where Transmeta had a prominent presence but Intel was nowhere to be seen.

The Efficeon TM8000 boasts a redesigned version of the company's unique “code morphing” architecture along with increased on-chip integration and new high-performance interfaces. It will support processor clock rates of up to 2 GHz by the second half of 2004, the company said.

Transmeta is aiming the Efficeon at ultra-portable and mainstream notebook PCs and tablet PCs, as well as at non-PC devices such as thin clients, blade servers, and embedded systems. Systems based on the processor will begin shipping by the end of this year.

Efficeon's microarchitecture is based on a 256-bit VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) processor that can issue up to eight internal instructions per clock cycle. When combined with the new Efficeon Code Morphing Software, it provides full compatibility with modern x86 software, including MMX, SSE, and SSE2 multimedia instructions.

In addition to an on-chip Northbridge interface, new high performance interfaces integrated on-chip include:

• a high speed AGP-4X graphics interface
• a high speed DDR-400 (Double Data Rate SDRAM at 400 Megatransfers/second) memory interface with optional ECC
• a HyperTransport interconnect for connection to other system devices at data rates of up to 1.6 GBytes/second — up to 12 times faster than the I/O throughput of Crusoe's PCI interface
• a high speed LPC (Low Pin Count) bus interface for communicating with the latest generation of FLASH memory

Pairing the 21x21mm small package version of Transmeta's Efficeon TM8600 processor with NVIDIA's nForce3 Go 120 Southbridge chip results in the combination of CPU, Northbridge, and Southbridge within a space nearly four times smaller than that of its nearest competitor, Transmeta said. NVIDIA's nForce3 Go120 Southbridge chip integrates HyperTransport technology, USB 2.0 support, and NVIDIA StreamThru technology for fast networking and broadband communications.

The standard model Efficeon TM8600 processor will be offered in a 29x29mm package, also said to be smaller than the competitive processors.

Initially, Efficeon silicon will be manufactured for Transmeta by TSMC in Taiwan, in TMSC's 0.13 micron (130 nanometer) CMOS technology at clock speeds starting at 1 GHz and above. Starting in the second half of 2004, Efficeon silicon will also be manufactured for Transmeta at Fujitsu's Akiruno Technology Center near Tokyo, Japan, at speeds up to 2 GHz, using Fujitsu's 90 nm CMOS process.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.