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Speculation On AMD Buying Transmeta

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the probably-not dept.

Nuke Skyjumper writes: "According to a report on CNBC, it appears AMD is interested in purchasing Transmeta. I wonder what the implications for Linus, and in particular, Linux would be?" With the recent agreement between them, some people see them working even more closely together. But there's been a lot of hot air about this before - I think at one point people had been talking about Transmeta buying AMD. But, as always, time will tell.

3 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting, but not likely... by Ixnert · · Score: 5
    This isn't going to happen -- not now, at any rate. Transmeta's market cap is almost half of AMD's; that's a huge amount of money that AMD could better put to use building more fab capacity to continue chipping away at Intel.

    Not to mention that AMD already is licensing the most important thing it could get from Transmeta -- the code-morphing tech so that they can simulate their upcoming chips.

    If Transmeta had some fab capacity of their own, it might be different, but IBM produces their chips, and I don't think AMD's quite ready to buy IBM. :-)

    Maybe in a couple years when AMD has an extra couple billion dollars sitting around and/or Transmeta's stock crashes, but for now, AMD is selling every Athlon they can produce without any help. There's just no good financial or technical reason for AMD to do this right now, not in their current position.

  2. I wouldn't worry about Linus. by BlowCat · · Score: 4
    He'll find a better job, that's for sure.

    Regarding Transmeta, my company is developing some internet appliances using Crusoe. Maybe you'll not believe me, but the prototype boards are the primary development platform. People are even compiling XFree86 on them!

    By the way, am I the first in the world to run Digger under Linux+DOSEMU on Crusoe?

  3. Re:Won't happen... by RedWizzard · · Score: 4
    C'mon now ppl, how many times have you heard this kind of thing before..??
    Yeah, last time the rumor was Nvidia buying 3dfx.

    All of you people talking about how the DOJ would get involved must be on crack. AMD has less than 25% of the processor market. Transmeta is barely even a blip. The DOJ won't give a rat's arse about them merging.