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

This is what happens in today's "free market".

[JessLeah]

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..

McDonald's and Burger King for burgers.

Coke and Pepsi for cola.

Nike and Reebok for sneakers.

Microsoft and .... well, Microsoft for operating systems.

Dell and HP/Compaq for x86 computers.

ATI and nVidia for graphics cards.

And... Intel and AMD for x86 CPUs...

Re:This is what happens in today's "free market".

[Kenja]

"Trying to break into an existing market is tantamount to financial suicide."

No, trying to break into an existing market with a sub par product is financial suicide. Face it, Transmeta dosn't make anything that people want. Their much vaulted code morphing has never been used, so they have a CPU that can emulate x86 poorly. Where is the value? Why should I buy a system that uses this CPU when for the same price I can get another that works better? Via has them beat in terms of price and wattage, Intel and AMD have them beat in terms of price and performance, in the embedded market the PowerPC and ARM series are better in every way. Let me put it this way, if it was Intel who had released the Transmeta CPU would you still think it was worth while?

Re:This is what happens in today's "free market".

[swv3752]

There were a few products that had transmeta CPU's. The problem was that there was a very small window when there was a significant adavantage to choose a Crusoe. Now there is not one. On the Low end there is a the Via C3, that is about as efficient as a Crusoe. On the high end there is the Intel Pentium M. A bit more power hungary but also better performance.

TM always avoided benchmarks

[Anonymous Coward]

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 almost made it.

[jellomizer]

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.

Java processor?

[Quixote]

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).

Transmeta

[MemoryDragon]

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)