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Transmeta Mulls Exit From Processor Market

Posted by timothy on from the they've-already-made-it-up-in-volume dept.

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."

5 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Meanwhile, in Lost Wages... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    Already their IP licensing revenue exceeds that of their microprocessor sales, though both are dwarfed by their recurring quarterly losses."

    And yet they're going to the CES in Lost Wages. (Booth 36235, LVCC)

    [Hello! My name is ARTHUR SWIFT] "Hi, these are our microproceesor products, which cost more to make than we sell them for. We're thinking about breaking into the game console market next. Losing money seems to be working for the X Box!"

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. TM always avoided benchmarks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:This is what happens in today's "free market". by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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..

    You overlook a once tried-and-true strategy, which doesn't seem to have happened in this case:

    Devise some clever new bit of technology

    Burn venture capital (or even your own money if you're confident) waving it under the big noses in the industry.

    Sell out

    Logically you'd expect Intel, IBM or AMD to snatch them up as some sort of IP asset or leverage against a competitor, but Intel's scrambling against AMD, which hasn't exactly had lots of money to burn on other fronts, which left IBM who probably will pick up the ashes, unless Microsoft does and uses it for their Windows Processor ...

    (Please note, I did not include

    ...
    and

    Profit!!!
    above. Thanks.)

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. The Crusoe Chip by elecngnr · · Score: 5, Informative
    I remember back a few years when their Crusoe chips were touted as the next great development in chips. IEEE Spectrum had a big article that really pumped them up. Here is the abstract from that:

    Abstract:

    It took Transmeta engineers $100 million, five years of secret toil, and a little magic to create fast low-power chips that turn into x86s in a microsecond. Transmeta Corporation's Crusoe chips look nothing like Intel's Pentium processors. They do not even have a logic gate in common. They are smaller, consume between one-third and one-thirtieth the power (depending on the application), and implement none of the same instructions in hardware. However the Crusoe microprocessors can run the same software that runs on IBM PC-compatible personal computers with Pentium chips-for instance, Microsoft Windows or versions of Unix, along with their software applications. The paper describes the development of the Crusoe chips

    All that development and hype, yet now they are getting out of the market. Seems they should have been well positioned to dominate in the handheld and portable market. Bad business practices? The EE Times also has a good article on this.

    --
    Having done so much with so little for so long, I now can do anything with nothing at all.
  5. Re:Transmeta by Simulant · · Score: 5, Interesting


    I agree. And I'm an ex-employee, assuming that counts for anything.

    They should have been GIVING away small form factor reference designs. They ones they did sell weren't all that great, geared mainly to laptop vendors... and way over priced.

    That said, people still drool over my small, Crusoe based, laptop; especially after they've watched the SECOND movie with out changing batteries. It's the only laptop I own which I never fear running out of juice on. With a couple of batteries, I can fly just about anywhere in the world with out having to recharge. If only it had a bit more cpu power....