Crusoe Technology
Transmeta has pioneered a revolutionary new approach to microprocessor design. Rather than implementing the entire x86 processor in hardware, the Crusoe processor solution consists of a compact hardware engine surrounded by a software layer.
Transmeta's software translates blocks of x86 instructions once, saving the resulting translation in a translation cache. The next time the (now translated) code is executed, the system skips the translation step and directly executes the existing optimized translation at full speed.
This unique approach to executing x86 code eliminates millions of transistors, replacing them with software. The current implementation of the Crusoe processor uses roughly one-quarter of the logic transistors required for an all-hardware design of similar performance. This offers the following benefits:
Transmeta's Code Morphing technology is obviously not limited to x86 implementations. As such, it has the potential to revolutionize the way microprocessors are designed in the future.
- The hardware component is considerably smaller, faster, and more power efficient than conventional chips.
- The hardware is fully decoupled from the x86 instruction set architecture, enabling Transmeta's engineers to take advantage of the latest and best in hardware design trends without affecting legacy software.
- The Code Morphing software can evolve separately from hardware. This means that upgrades to the software portion of the microprocessor can be rolled out independently of hardware chip revisions.