Transmeta To Becomes Fabless Chip Supplier

Crazy Diamond writes "Transmeta has bought back its technology licenses from IBM and Toshiba in order to market its products on its own as a fabless chip supplier. This story comes from EETimes for more information."

Comments

Not much affect

[maggard]

So Transmeta is buying back it's licenses. This means they have a bucket of cash & would like more control of thier own future.

• It doesn't mean that Toshiba or IBM are dropping them as a supplier - just that they'll be a supplier like any other supplier.
• It doesn't mean Transmeta's technology is any better or worse then it was or seemed to be when IBM & Toshiba bought the licenses awhile ago - it just means that the financial folks at those companies wanted the cash more then the licenses & their supply folks felt comfortable with not having production in-house.
• This doesn't mean that IBM won't continue to build Transmeta's chips in their plants. IBM builds lots of chips for many companies as a simple supplier. IBM has the foundry capacity & the manufacturing technology to build chips for any number of clients & it brings them a good profit.
• This does mean that Transmeta will have more freedom in selecting manufacturers and setting prices & directly controlling production.
• It doesn't mean that Transmeta won't turn around next year and sell licenses again for either the current set of chips, for a next generation, or for third-party implementations.

Frankly this seems more like "News for Finance Nerds" then anything directly technology related.