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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."
Virtually every field nowadays seems to be ruthlessly dominated by one or two (if you're lucky, three) titanic competitors. Trying to break into an existing market is tantamount to financial suicide. Not because newcomers have bad ideas or make bad products-- but because the "mindshare" of the unwashed masses is so stuck on the existing titans..
.... well, Microsoft for operating systems.
McDonald's and Burger King for burgers.
Coke and Pepsi for cola.
Nike and Reebok for sneakers.
Microsoft and
Dell and HP/Compaq for x86 computers.
ATI and nVidia for graphics cards.
And... Intel and AMD for x86 CPUs...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Taking on Intel and AMD head-on is always an unlikely path to success. Still, the next big thing in processors has to come from somewhere, and if you can get enough funding to keep it running for 5 years it would be fun to try!
One key though: your first release would have to be tremendously successful right out of the gate, if not in sales at least in buzz. Transmeta's first releases were, well, who knows. So I guess they weren't successful.
Next move: sell to Intel for $50 million. Sorry investors! At least you gave Linus a place to work for a few years.
sPh
TM always avoided industry standard benchmarks. That is always a bad sign.
Instead, they always had some loser from marketing spout about efficency, blah, blah, efficency. I still have those emails and they are very funny.
While I worked at a major OEM developing blade servers, we evaluated their processors and the performance was very weak. De-clocking existing proven designs was a better alternative.
As is often the case with weak products, non-disclosure agreements precluded benchmark publication and disclosure of evaluation results.
RIP TM.
I think one of the problems they had was that a CPU with low power requirements is only particularly useful in embedded (ie handheld) devices, and thus x86 compatibility is not that useful. The embedded market was/is already heavily controlled by ARM-based CPUs to begin with.
Yeah, its kind of sad to see that these days the money really is in being one of the pure-IP companies we all hate.
At least Transmeta is doing this all above board with actual public licensing of their technologies instead of just sinking unsuspecting companies with lawsuits fired by submarine patents years after the technology has settled into use.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Eating a Wendys burger with a can of RC Cola, Wearing British Knighs Snearkers, Running OS X, on a Power PC Processor, but I have a nVidia graphics card... Damn! I guess I am just a Puppet of the Man!
Actually they are 3 Mega Corps but the #3 is usually far behind, but still close enough to get good Profit.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That can actually work.
If you are only losing money because of the development costs, then you can make it up on volume as you have more sales to amortize the development costs over. If you're still losing money even without your fixed costs, though, you're completely hosed.
I think the biggest reason why Transmeta can't compete in the x86 CPU market is the marketing success of Intel's Centrino mobile processing technology, with lower-power motherboard chipsets and the low-power Pentium-M CPU's.
Why bother with a company with a relatively short track record compared with Intel's long track record?
There just wasn't any demand for another slow low power x86 clone. The "code morphing" was nearly useless and failed to deliver what was originaly promised.
More a case of too much hype too little substance.
Ayuh, Nike and Reebok have got the market cornered. Nobody gives a damn about the small, unknown, irrelevant players in the sneaker market.
I always wondered: with their "code morphing" technology, why didn't they turn it into a Java processor, with the ability to execute Java code natively? Yeah, I am aware of Sun's past efforts in this direction; but imagine if you will: Java apps running natively at the same time as Linux apps. Even if the processor is 3x slower than a x86, Java running natively would be comparable to Java running under VM on an x86 (please, I don't want to start a flamewar about Java's speed here).
Sad to say that, but Transmeta marketing is to blame. Face it, Transmeta could have had the market via now has with their C3 and Intel partially holds with their Pentium-M Centrino. The main problem was, that Transmeta went from day 1 to the manufacturers only, and were leaving the early adopters hardcore system builders out. Add to that an emerging home theatre pc market which Transmeta failed to cover that way (nobody bought at the early stages a HTPC from a manufacturer and most people still dont do due to DRM and other nastyness)
and a VIA which just said to the people, we are not fast, but they can handle the stuff you want to do with your HTPCs self made routers, firewalls, fileservers (you name it), we are cheap you can buy our stuff from the next vendor on the net and we will support you, and Transmeta was on a losing ground.
On one hand there was ARM which only sold cores and they did need less power, on the other hand there was VIA with the mentality you can buy our stuff even as a private person, and on the Notebook computer segment there were the Heavyweights Intel and AMD crushing Transmeta left and right.
So where did Transmeta stand there, basically nowhere because they refused people (and there were thousands who wanted to buy that stuff at an affordable price) the hardware, by selling only reference designs and not having others selling decent boards to an affordable price. Add to that that in Europa and other markets you basically could not get the stuff and that interested people were complaining in forums about that situation for years and you have a company doomed from day 1.
Now they want to concentrate on the core selling business, I wish them good luck they will need it, between a very good ARM on one side and VIA which still also sells boards to people if they need them on the other side and an Intel with a very good low to medium power solution on the server/notebook corner of things. Also IBM is in the business or at least other companies selling cores on the based PowerPC design.
Guess it is time to say to Transmeta, goodbye it was nice knowing you. (Hopefully not but there is a high chance)
They never came out with a consumer motherboard.
Geeks can't easily test products they can't easily buy.
Note (shriek, actually) to proc makers:
If you invested enough to make the cpu, offer a damned mobo at an accessable price!