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Transmeta Closing Up Shop
Ashutosh Lotlikar wrote to mention an article on the Business 2.0 site stating that chip producer Transmeta is going out of business. From the article: "The company's Crusoe family of microprocessors promised lower power consumption and heat generation, enabling the creation of laptops with longer battery life. Critics bashed the chips for being underpowered compared with Intel's latest and greatest. Transmeta struggled to find a market, and recently it sold off most of its chipmaking business for $15 million to Culturecom Holdings, a Hong Kong company better known for publishing comic books."
They're still working on putting out a chip based on LongRun2, which reduces transistor leakage. This is very important for cutting power consumption and increasing CPU speed. They've also licensed the technology to Fujitsu, NEC and Sony, none of which have released a product based on it yet.
It's quite possible, though apparently unlikely, that Transmeta will turn things around and manage to survive. However, Intel is already all over the leakage problem, so this may well be the end of Transmeta.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Linus Torvalds works for these guys now.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Torvalds' employer is OSDL. He left Transmeta years ago.
The Transmeta CPUs have the highest MIPS/Watt ratio of all, still. Laptops built around them have the longest battery life, and superclusters with Transmeta CPUs have some of the highest processing densities and lowest power consumption - characteristics that may not be an obvious advantage for customers in need of raw power, but that certainly lower the bill when you factor in the power needed to dissipate the extra heat, and the price of real-estate.
I will be the first to admit: I was sceptical when Transmeta started publicizing their ideas. I thought employing Linus was just clever PR. Yet, as time went on, I thought a Transmeta-based laptop would be a very desirable item. I hate it when laptops burn your lap, don't you?
Sigged!
Your empahsis this in order to convince people that this deal is bad?
I think quite the opposite, because I know Culturecom pretty well.
Culturecom Holdings, under which they've companies sells comics books, publishing press and magazine; they also manage properties, and they also have a technology company, which releases its own Linux distro (China 2k) for use in their line of Linux specific workstation and terminal server selling to China since 1998. Their distro originally released for office use and now porting to embedded system. Buying transmeta's production line is a sensible and wise choice for a proactive technology company devoted to Linux business like Culturecom.
I don't know others, but I feel good to hear that a company devoted to Linux business since boom still around and kicking and decided to enhance their Linux business.
Disclamer: I worked for Culturecom even before they started their Linux business.
.. or the reporter at Bussiness 2.0 doesn't know his bussiness..
Here's one little tid bit that will put those of you who invested at ease.. Transmeta is the one doing the design for the Cell processor.. yeah that amazing thing. Yes, for the Sony PS3.
Check back in a year.
Now move along and get a better story to read.
-- Robi
You can buy these at spectra. Look under Mini-ITX motherboards for the MB860.
The board fits into standart ATX-Cases with ATX powersupplies, but is smaller than ATX-Boards and has only one PCI slot. It has sound, ethernet, graphics, usb, serial,parallel onboard.
It is not very fast, but you can work comfortably with it.
But don't expect too much efficiency. It still uses around 30W under full load, including Processor and peripherals. It can work without a fan, but gets real hot then. I run it with one slow Case-Fan (5V in stead of 12V), but no CPU or Powersupplyfan.