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Transmeta's Demise Predicted
egdull writes: "According to this story, Transmeta's party is over. Between buggy first-implementations of chips, leadership shake-ups, and "being outfoxed by Intel," Transmeta is done, according to C|Net. With a low stock price, they might be a target for a takeover, with Via being the only named interested party."
thats not really a bad thing, considering how their products never really were that useful to begin with. their research (if any) in regards to lower power consumption could to sold to other companies to keep their systems cooler (*ahem* amd *ahem*). but, performance-wise, they were nothing special. *shrugs* sorry guys. so many other sources of power drain (harddrive, lcd screen, gfx cards) that the cpu isnt the only battery drain in even semi recent laptops anymore.
I wonder what Linus is thinking of doing if his employer goes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Any company as confident as Transmeta that their product is going to revolutionize the market is in for a rude awakening. They didn't invent anything substantially new or different, and constantly touted how impressive their work was. In the end, it was a lot of spin to hide underpowered processors. Power is cheap, in the end, and people want top-end speed and performance.
Drives and Displays are.
So basically they came to market with a nice sounding product, but it was still a product that sells stock, not laptops. It was a product that used important keywords, claimed it could beat intel, and enlisted the god of Linux.
In the end its a product which really doesn't bolster laptop life all that much, and its real use was to make Intel provide the product that they could but did not have to.
You cannot taunt Intel or Microsoft, they have too many people with very large egos, and they will stomp you if you try. The best bet is to operate under their radar... and not to draw attention to yourself with brash claims versus these two behemoths until you can sustain your business.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Granted I am not an MBA nor a chip engineer, so this may be just wishful thinking, but I always wondered why Transmetta didn't play to the strength of their chip: i.e. you could make it act like other chips thru firm/software. I realize that x86 was where the market was, but I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't expect Intel to counter them in the marketplace (as they did).
I always thought that they should market it as an embedded chip, the lynch pin being they could supply you chips that wouldn't require you to relearn a new instruction set. I.e. if you're used to programming a Mips, they'd ship you the chip with the Mips instruction set. If you programmed PPC, then they'd ship you that. That would also give companies exposure to the underlying archetecture of the chip and maybe they'd migrate to its native instruction set.
Like I said, I'm but a mere code jockey, so what do I know.
Transmeta simply failed to deliver sufficient innovation to be competitive. The code morphing was an interesting idea, but they didn't do anything groundbreaking with it. Similarly, Intel managed to narrow the power consumption gap, while still beating them on the benchmarks.
They designed a chip for a market that doesn't exist - on the embedded side, processors like the StrongARM, SH3, and even, at the very low end, stuff like Z80's are smaller, cheaper, and lower power. At the same time, on the high end, ie. laptops, speed is king. With 15" LCD's on laptops these days sucking down the batteries, the power savings of the Transmeta chips weren't worth the lower performance, and certainly weren't going to help boost sales to mhz-obsessed consumers.
All of the above is my opinion; I am an investor, not an advisor.
For a graph of Transmeta's recent stock action, click here.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Transmeta intended to create a superior product that would quickly capture a small, but profitable, segment of the market--much in the way Apple Computer has survived with less than 5 percent of the operating system market.
Comparing Transmeta to Apple is stupid.
Transmeta develops and manufactures a single product - the Crusoe. Transmeta relies on this single product to drive their revenue. Apple, on the other hand, makes desktops, laptops, monitors, networking peripherals, and MacOS. They're not relying on a single product to stay afloat. So yes, Apple is still alive while only holding 5% of the OS market. Why? Because 100% of Apple's operating system installations run on Apple's own hardware. (Not counting the five or six Apple clones out there.)
If Apple made their living by only selling MacOS, then the comparison could apply. Not here.
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Ars has a good editorial in response to the CNET article.
At the end of my Crusoe article, I predicted that TM would eventually announce a workstation-class chip. It's been a little over a year and this still hasn't happened, but I remain convinced that they're working on just such a project.
The low power consumption was nice for laptops, but they missed the real target. The code morphing would have made this a great chip for small enterprises with limited resources that need a sandbox that can emulate different platforms, or home users that want to run both PC and Mac. There was the potential to make a real dual-booting machine. But they just sold it to laptop makers.
Real shame.
Saw this on zdnet...
The cat is out of the bag. Linus Torvalds was recently seen living under a freeway overpass. When asked about his current living conditions, he remarked "well, Transmeta had to lay me off, and they kept it quiet because they didn't want to enrage their only customers -- Linux geeks." What will this mean for the God of Linux? All the Linux companies are showing cash shortfalls, and none appear to be hiring. A spokesman for Red Hat commented, "We're just tapped out of money. We wish Linus well, but what can we say? We got what we wanted out of him, and know he's going to have to get a real job like the rest of us will have to sooner than later."
Linus appears to be taking it in stride. "Well, I've always said that I wasn't interested in making money off Linux. And heck, this overpass is not so bad. It's still better than Finland."
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda of Slashdot, often thought of a spiritual leader of Linux, commented that "Hey, he's welcome to crash at my house, except that my house is due to be repo'ed any day know due to the VA Linux stock price crash."
This happened to DEC. Apollo. Symbolics. MIPS. Thinking Machines. (Just a sample, the full list is lots longer.) If you're a very smart fellow with focus on CS theory instead of market practice, it can happen to you too.
Please keep in mind while reading the article that Intel was (and may still be) an investor in CNet. They may be hoping for a self-fulfillng prophecy with respect to Transmeta. Hopefully this is not the case and the article is fairly reported (I don't know enough about Transmeta to make that determination myself) - just be congnisant of the source.
No, Intel no longer owns any part of CNET. If they did, CNET would have included the statement indicating ownership.
I know this because a year ago or so, I noticed an Intel story that did not mention their relationship, and I contacted the author of the article. He responded that Intel had recently sold its shares in CNET.
"And like that
Take note of my username: Fudboy. I made this account in the midst of the heyday hype just prior to the first Transmeta product announcement, largely to combat said hype and interject a note of reason into the discussions here at slashdot. Many of the denizens here were overly excited about Transmeta, what with Linus on board and the appearance of their being David to Intel's Goliath...
It is a sad day coming for the chip industry, but not unexpected. Transmeta had some very sharp ideas, great talent, excellent marketting and the promise of revolutionary influence on the mobile computing market. But sadly, many forces conspired to undermine the great promise TMTA represented: most apparently the problems in logic design, lack of op/s power, expensive wholesale prices resulting from increasingly bizarre fabrication contractual arrangements with competitors, a weakening market made worse by tragedy... but I digress.
In a few years, there'll be another company attempting a Transmeta-style hype campaign, and I hope that when that day comes, we can all remember how this played out.
While it is sad to see a company die, let us not forget that this isn't entirely a tragedy- the venture capitalists won great riches, the principles of the company also surely won such riches if they were smart enough to sell liberally afetr the IPO, a handfull of speculators surely won such riches in the early heyday of trading the TMTA stock... But also let us mourn those who will find themselves unemployed, those whose brilliant work will be shelved or scraped and forgotten, those foolish enough to still hold the stock and scramble to cut their losses even at this late hour. Let us offer them our condolences.
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
in addition to their virtualized x86 processor is one that supports many different architectures (Alpha, x86, PA-RISC, etc) on a single chip, with context switching between them. Add vmware to the mix, and you've got virtual OSs on top of virtual, native processors. Talk about being able to run platform 'A's native code on platform 'B'!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
why does transmeta have to enter every market? they could easily license the technology to amd and remain a small profitable company. is the future really about wintel everywhere? look at arm who has a rather nice set of tech. large and unprofitable is really no fun!
It would be a real shame to lose the most important piece of Transmeta's technology - the code morphing. Lower power was just a side benefit.
Image being able to design a totally new architecture unique to your specific application. Utilizing Transmeta's technology, you could design a specialized interface to the hardware, unique to your application, and then build a software platform around it.
Sure, that doesn't seem useful to someone running Windows applications, but think about how easy it would be to create specialized embedded devices. If you needed a processor with only 30 instructions, instead of the 4 billion provided by present-day CISC technology, you could create a pseudo-RISC layer on top of the chip and write software optimized for those procedures.
I'll be very disappointed if, in 30 years I find myself thinking how it should've revolutionized the industry, but was instead forgotten about.
The really sad part is that they stressed the "low power" part of their design. The really cool part was the code morphing. The crusoe was a full 128bit (256? can't remember, although they had it planned) processor that had an emulation layer rinning on it to translate x86 commands into it's own instruction set. This is really cool. Transmetta could change the whole chip design drastically and still maintain compatability with this layer. also you could speed up your computer with a simple bios update when they had finished more research for algorythms and tweaked the code some more.
I was wondering if any other company had interests in code morphing technology of this type.
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Fujitsu is selling a Crusoe based notebook that they claim will last 14 hours on a charge.
Lifebook P
Transmeta's problem is not technology, it's public relations. As the article's author pointed out, after 5 years of secrecy they are not comfortable talking to the public. Add to that fact that Intel is telling anyone who'll listen that Crusoe is junk. Do you really think Intel doesn't have anything to do with the lack of notebooks in the US with Crusoe processors?
Linux zealots blame MS for not being able to buy Linux laptops, but turn a blind eye to the Intel monopoly? What gives?
This article is a good example of the kind of press Transmeta doesn't need or deserve. The authors claim Transmeta is down the tubes, but don't provide any evidence of that (bad debts, layoffs, etc.) In fact Transmeta has enough cash to go 3 more years at the current run rate before becoming profitable. They may indeed go tits up or be bought, but it is _far_ to early to start nailing up the coffin
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
The power saving technologies that Transmeta developed would have been great sellers 5 years from now, when laptops switch to organic LED's or even just white LED backlights and hard drives begin to be replaced with solid state devices. Then the CPU really would be the bottleneck in making a low power system. I still like the idea of diskless Linux workstations with Transmeta chips, though. Too bad they didn't capitalize on innovating solutions.
Embedded systems engineers are running into trouble for certain applications. On the one hand, StrongARM, MIPS, and even low-end microcontrollers like the 8051 are reliable and cool. But in the race for speed everyone has thrown power consumption to the wind. What if you need something more powerful than a StrongARM, but can't make use of Ultra SPARC and Intel processors because they simply run much too hot for embedded devices? So the embedded engineers are starting to resort to custom-designed processors tuned for specific purposes. But it would be much better if someone put effort into higher performance CPUs that didn't munch up 50 watts of power.
Transmeta has about $262 million in cash, but it expects to burn through $20 million in the current quarter.
at that rate, if their business doesn't pick up, they'll be out of business in 6 years!
than the actual story, is the related stories below it.
* Transmeta CEO to step down March 1, 2001
* Transmeta plans to raise more than $140 million in IPO October 2, 2000
* Transmeta shoots for 700 MHz with new chip January 20, 2000
* Intel clones face tough market September 2, 1998
* Transmeta dumps latest CEO October 16, 2001
* Next Crusoe chip bogged down in testing October 9, 2001
* Transmeta goes after non-PC chip market October 2, 2001
Not exactlly a portfolio of success stories.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Unless you are a day trader, this shouldn't pose a problem. There is an element of risk involved, especially when investing in the short run. Looking in the long run, however, one can stand to make a great return on their investment. Transmeta isn't done; they have newer processors planned. Manufacturers have thus far only focused on the low-power properties of the Crusoe, and not very much has happened with the code morphing, which is evident from the C|Net article. Code morphing is a potential technology; when companies realize the value of it, then you will see manufacturers flocking over it rather than dropping it like a bad dream.
Considering that most of Transmeta's research over the past few years have been on concepts such as code morphing, and considering that Intel and AMD haven't been researching this venue, Transmeta would therefore have the lead in such a category for quite a while. The only question is: when will companies realize the value of this technology?
Note: I am not an analyst nor an investor (no money here). Feel free to take my argument with a grain of salt.
IIRC Transmeta was the first one to optimize power consumption by design. Probably the world is just not ready for low power chips, but it will be later.
Compare it with engines: about 100 years ago, Rudolf Diesel introduced a more efficient combustion method, which even needed a different kind of fuel. Up to 10 or 15 years ago, diesel engines were noisy, stinky and less powerful than gas engines, so not many people cared about their fuel consumption being slightly lower.
During the 1990s, more and more people (at least in Europe) became aware of the importance of reducing energy consumption. Volkswagen/Audi were the first to introduce a really low-consumption yet very powerful type of diesel engine (TDI). After some years, most other manufactorers saw the growing market and followed. Rudolf Diesel didn't profit at all from his work - he even killed himself in desperation of his seemingly failed invention. But his technology is still there, and today it rocks.
We may probably lose Transmeta, but the idea of designing CPUs in a way that they consume less power while still being quite powerful will remain. The market for this technology is still new, but it is expected to grow - through higher energy prices as well as the need for longer uptime of battery-powered devices.
On behalf of people with a clue everywhere, I'd just like to remind you:
We told you so. :)
Please don't write us off just yet. We have over two years worth of cash in the bank, and we've recently announced our second product. The Crusoe chip has been very popular in Japan, including holding the #1 Notebook Top Seller spot for a while.
Is it easy to go up against Intel? Of course not. This is not an overnight, just-add-water kind of deal. We're trying to change the way people perceive computing. NEC has taken our chip and combined it with a low-power screen for further power savings. RLX is using the Crusoe chip to build ultra-dense server racks. Granted, there's some overcapacity in this area at the moment, but that could turn around.
Yes, our stock price has been beaten down. Yes, Intel is a formidable competitor. Yes, we've had a management shake-up. I don't think it's nearly as bad as the CNET article makes it sound. I'm not looking for a new job, and I'm staying fully vested with the ESPP. Let's wait and see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised.
... then maybe I'll finally be able to put a decently fast (~300 mhz) CPU into an ATX case that doesn't need a CPU fan that keeps dying. Oh how I wish there was more low-maintinance hardware out there...
Examples:
Digital makes an Alpha chip that's 25% faster than Intel's chip. That's a noticeable speed boost! ... But, if you wait a year, Intel's chips will match its speed. So you might as well buy an Intel chip now and plan to upgrade in a few years.
Centaur makes a chip that's 25% cheaper than Intel's chip. That's a nice price drop! ... But, Intel makes so many chips that don't turn out to be 1.5 GHz P4s, it can afford to send out all those low-speed Celerons at roughly the same price as Centaur. So, you might as well buy a low-cost brand-name Intel chip.
Now, Transmeta makes a chip that's 25% cooler... and once again you can buy an Intel chip that's almost as good, but much more available.
In each of these cases, Intel has been able to shift the price-performance ratio and knock out a competitor. Only AMD's Athlon line, which is capable of competing with Intel from top to bottom, seems to be able to stake out its own territory.
I think the niche market for general purpose CPUs doesn't exist.