Transmeta Mulls Exit From Processor Market

chill writes "C-Net is reporting that CPU upstart Transmeta, once the employer of Linus Torvalds and maker of 'Code Morphing' processors, is contemplating leaving the chip manufacturing business. Already their IP licensing revenue exceeds that of their microprocessor sales, though both are dwarfed by their recurring quarterly losses."

Comments

Sorry, but:

[Sebastopol]

Ha ha ha!!! I laugh at all of you who thought this would dominate ANY market segment, and who saw this as anything more than an academic study.

It was a dumb idea to begin with, but was so cool and flashy, and had LINUS written in big letters on everything that it was more a fan item than a viable product.

How could a dynamic architecture possibly complete with a tuned architecture? Everyone knows this: tuned assembly is always faster, better, cheaper, than an all-in-one programming language. The software analogy holds to hardware.

This was an academic exercise, a graduate student thesis with a lot of investing capital and some big industry names.

I'm happy it was done and it was an exciting adventure, but never for an instant did I think it would succeed, and it has NOTHING to do with monopolostic theories. Those of you claiming the MAN held them down should look closesly: THE ENTIRE SEMICONDUCTOR industry has focused its guns on low power, and with 1000x the engineering brains, you bet yer ass Transmeta would eventually be outgunned. This has nothing to do with an unfair free market as some of you have whined.