V-Dragon, Transmeta, 68K

[asian1]

Hi
Culturecom had released low cost V-Dragon CPU designed by Transmeta and manufactured by IBM.
The core is 32 Bit RISC, 16 Kb cache, with intergrated Chinese language processor.
Is it possible to design similar chips with support for 68K/CF instruction set?

V-Dragon

Transmeta official reply on PowerPC Instruction set: Impossible!
(aka secret non competitor agreement)

[ptek]

asian1 wrote:
with intergrated Chinese language processor.

Quite interesting!

Could you give us some details about this feature ?
The site seems not to have an english version ...

[bloodline]

asian1 wrote:
Hi
Culturecom had released low cost V-Dragon CPU designed by Transmeta and manufactured by IBM.
The core is 32 Bit RISC, 16 Kb cache, with intergrated Chinese language processor.
Is it possible to design similar chips with support for 68K/CF instruction set?

V-Dragon

Transmeta official reply on PowerPC Instruction set: Impossible!
(aka secret non competitor agreement)

When I asked Transmeta about PPC and 68k support, they said nothing about the PPC but said that 68k was totally possible, it would just take some one towrite the microcode. It would even be possible to have 68k and x86 running at the saem time!!! :-o

[shIva]

When I asked Transmeta about PPC and 68k support, they said nothing about the PPC but said that 68k was totally possible, it would just take some one towrite the microcode. It would even be possible to have 68k and x86 running at the same time!!!

when you contacted them, did they just talk about the possibilities, or eventually of planning to do sth. like m68k microcode ?! :-)
btw : ppc is (imho) not possible, because of the totally different technical specs.

[bloodline]

shIva wrote:

When I asked Transmeta about PPC and 68k support, they said nothing about the PPC but said that 68k was totally possible, it would just take some one towrite the microcode. It would even be possible to have 68k and x86 running at the same time!!!

when you contacted them, did they just talk about the possibilities, or eventually of planning to do sth. like m68k microcode ?! :-)
btw : ppc is (imho) not possible, because of the totally different technical specs.

Thay said 68k was possible. But there's no incentive to make one. I spoke to an Engineer, and he explained in detail how it could work. Unless you buy the right to the CPU's microcode, no one is going to make a 68K one.

[whabang]

I doubt there would be any market demand for 800 MHz 68060-compatibles, allthough it would sure be cool! 8-)

[shIva]

there wouldn´t be any, since the coldfire cpu´s are dominating
this small market. seems there is no need for more cpu power atm.

:-/

[asian1]

>English

Sorry. No. But the CPU is 32 bit RISC, 16 KB Data cache,
16 KB Instruction cache, USB, sold at US$ 15/unit.
The performance is comparable to Pentium 400 MHz.
This CPU is a succesful product and receive support from
both IBM and HP (Hewlett Packard). HP put a giant advertisement
campaign about this CPU in China, HK, Taiwan, Singapore etc.

>Right to 68K Microcode.
Do Transmeta got X86 Microcode from IBM or Intel?
Is it against the law to create 68K emulation?

[bloodline]

>Right to 68K Microcode.
Do Transmeta got X86 Microcode from IBM or Intel?
Is it against the law to create 68K emulation?

you need the rights to the Crusoe microcode so that YOU can make the 68k emulator. Since no one else is going to do it.

[Dr_Righteous]

Somewhere in my browsings I've seen an unfinished 68k VHDL set... Since the Crusoe is nothing more than a massive PLD, if someone VHDL savvy finished the code, it'd be pretty easy. But that's a hashed and rehashed issue.

[T_Bone]

whabang wrote:
I doubt there would be any market demand for 800 MHz 68060-compatibles, allthough it would sure be cool! 8-)

Would make a DAMN fine Classic Amiga accelerator!!!