Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the chips-ain't-easy dept.
aftk2 writes "According to news.com, chip maker Transmeta - current home of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, has canned 40% (200 people) of its work force, and has shifted its goals toward obtaining profitability in 2003. No word on whether there were any penguins seen leaving the building."
This is truly terrible news for Linux and the tech community in general. As the employer of Linux Torvalds, the world's greatest living programmer, Transmeta was the heart and soul of Silicon Valley. Now it's reputation is tarnished and it is but a (60%) shell of its former self.
However, this isn't completely unexpected, at least by me. We bought up a lot of TM's products on Day One because of the low power consumption and high value-add. But around Day Four we noticed a lot of problems. Specifically we found problems with code path regneration, bit concordance, executing lagging on the backend busses and even voltage differentiation. That kind of low quality product eventually brings a company down.
It's too bad that Linux will get caught in the crossfire and most likely go into a tailspin, but that's the trouble when Open Source programmers go into the commercial tech sphere.
Re:Talk to you all later.
by
b0bd0bbs
·
· Score: 0, Troll
"It's better to burn out than to fade away." -- Kurt Cobain
FYI Neil Young said it first.
Re:so is transmeta dying?
by
Warped-Reality
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Sorry, I can't resist... It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: TRANSMETA is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered TRANSMETA community when recently IDC confirmed that TRANSMETA accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that TRANSMETA has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. TRANSMETA is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Torvald [amdest.com] to predict TRANSMETA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: TRANSMETA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for TRANSMETA because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for TRANSMETA. As many of us are already aware, TRANSMETA continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, TRANSMETA went out of business and was taken over by INTEL who sell another troubled CHIP. Now INTEL is also dead(!), its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that TRANSMETA has steadily declined in market share. TRANSMETA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If TRANSMETA is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. TRANSMETA continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, TRANSMETA is dead.
Fact: TRANSMETA is dead!
-- This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Sorry for my previous posting being done anonymous, I didn't have my account ID handy, didn't use it for (quite) a while.
As for the 'penguins leaving the building', I might be able to give some good news (or not) to the guy. I'm still at Transmeta.
Like a lot (most?) of other companies in the business Transmeta has suffered. We've suffered just enough, IMO. We still exist and have a healthy profitable future. Crusoe processors are getting widespread, even outside the Japanese market where they were and still are king.
Essentially, some people from non-vital positions were the victim of a what happens in the general economy, and I feel for them. But the vital teams were untouched.
There will be no change whatsoever in my duties as kernel development maintainer of the odd series, I'll just keep on doing that as I've always have. No need to worry.
Slashdot Mirror
However, this isn't completely unexpected, at least by me. We bought up a lot of TM's products on Day One because of the low power consumption and high value-add. But around Day Four we noticed a lot of problems. Specifically we found problems with code path regneration, bit concordance, executing lagging on the backend busses and even voltage differentiation. That kind of low quality product eventually brings a company down.
It's too bad that Linux will get caught in the crossfire and most likely go into a tailspin, but that's the trouble when Open Source programmers go into the commercial tech sphere.
"It's better to burn out than to fade away." -- Kurt Cobain FYI Neil Young said it first.
Sorry, I can't resist...
It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: TRANSMETA is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered TRANSMETA community when recently IDC confirmed that TRANSMETA accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that TRANSMETA has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. TRANSMETA is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Torvald [amdest.com] to predict TRANSMETA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: TRANSMETA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for TRANSMETA because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for TRANSMETA. As many of us are already aware, TRANSMETA continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, TRANSMETA went out of business and was taken over by INTEL who sell another troubled CHIP. Now INTEL is also dead(!), its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that TRANSMETA has steadily declined in market share. TRANSMETA is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If TRANSMETA is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. TRANSMETA continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, TRANSMETA is dead.
Fact: TRANSMETA is dead!
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Sorry for my previous posting being done anonymous, I didn't have my account ID handy, didn't use it for (quite) a while.
As for the 'penguins leaving the building', I might be able to give some good news (or not) to the guy. I'm still at Transmeta.
Like a lot (most?) of other companies in the business Transmeta has suffered. We've suffered just enough, IMO. We still exist and have a healthy profitable future. Crusoe processors are getting widespread, even outside the Japanese market where they were and still are king.
Essentially, some people from non-vital positions were the victim of a what happens in the general economy, and I feel for them. But the vital teams were untouched.
There will be no change whatsoever in my duties as kernel development maintainer of the odd series, I'll just keep on doing that as I've always have. No need to worry.