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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?
Who?
And the Intel deathstar approached...
I wonder what would have happened if Transmeta had released the instruction set for the native VLIW instruction-set processor that runs the x86 emulation layer. Sure, it's probably very hard to code for, but may have offered a tremendous advantage for some applications.
Also, hopefully OQO and others have a backup plan so this doesn't put a kink in the handheld pc market.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Aren't you forgetting AMD's Jem'Hadar soldiers too?
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If Transmeta does close shop, I hope they consider opening up their "Code Morphing Software". It's an interesting approach to X86 processing on non-X86 processors, for more info check here: http://www.transmeta.com/crusoe/codemorphing.html
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
The whole architecture was build upon the premise that the core is only accessable via the code morphing software, so the different crusoe chips hadnt even binary compatible cores.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Linus Torvalds works for these guys now.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Torvalds' employer is OSDL. He left Transmeta years ago.
Gotta love outdated websites! Yes, I'm talking about: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/torvalds/
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
I was just wondering what will become of their code morphing technology especially in light of the rumors of Apple potentially going to X86. Could be interesting if Apple had a chip that could do X86 and PPC at near full native.
The more you know, the less you understand.
Aren't you forgetting AMD's Jem'Hadar soldiers too?
:-P
I need to get a life.
bad analogy. Weren't the Jem'Hadar foot soldiers of the mighty (code)morphin' rulers of the dominion?
I suppose Transmeta's technologies will come in handy. Like they say :)
Hyperom.com
I loved my Casio FIVA, which would run 6-8 hr on a Li battery (till the battery pushed up the daisies), and weighed 3 lbs with battery ... It was "fast enough" because my concern was with size and weight.
I have an X40 now and I still get good run time from it, more like 4-6 hr. It's around 4 lb w/o the dock, but right now I almost always carry the dock with the multiburner in it.
Still, I wish there were much more emphasis on low-power laptop designs.
The other day I was fiddling with a laptop that had dual 2GHz processors or something like that. Ehh? I mean, it's great that they can cram all that into a "moderately" small package, but still, you need Nomex pants to use it in your lap.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
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!
Critics bashed the chips for being underpowered compared with Intel's latest and greatest.
These sound like the same guys who insist Apple is going broke every quarter since '91, can only survive by going x86, etc.
Does the tech industry have more trouble than most w/ utterly clueless people who set themselves up as experts? John Dvorak is still getting published and invited to conferences; so-called analysts make silly statements, Wall Street listens, and everybody (but the analyst) suffers. Crusoe probably got "reviewed" by some moron who gave it a bad rating because it runs at less MHz than the IT guys told him his laptop does.
Transmeta had some good ideas, too.
Yeah. But they'd be a better analagy than say a Borg Cube since that would fit Intel more.
And you gotta love the Might Morphin' Power Changelings
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This type of news, especially in the chip business reminds me of "Cyrix" - the chip, in the mid/late 90s! In the chip business, it must be tough to be a newcomer. Texas Instruments manufactured some of these, IBM did too and a host of other companies. Some people still believe this chip still has advantages over the pentium! http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/rep orts/592/2/. But who is buying that? No wonder, Transmeta may be forced to see the real world. I wish them luck though. All in all, the chip biz must be tough.
That's an odd thing to say. I would have guessed that an 'efficient' processor is one that had a very good MIPS/Watt ratio.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Actually only one Tablet PC shipped with a Transmeta chip. The first HP Tablet PC (TC1000). They ended up switching to Intel at the first opportunity because performance was lack luster at best.
WHOA! Didnt see that one coming!
Transmeta has enough cash to sustain itself for at least a year. I doubt that they will just sit around and watch it disappear.
The headline was irresponsible. It implied that Transmeta was shutting down today. A lot of good and bad things can happen in a year, but that's future stuff, and as such is undecided.
Transmeta can restructure, find VC funding, be bought up by another company, license it's technology to a deep pocketed partner, release a new product and watch it take off (or fail), perform massive layoffs, cutbacks, etc. Headlining that they are closing fails to take into account the money they have and the time they have.
"Where can I buy one" was what I thought when I first heard about Transmeta's processors.
I don't need a laptop. I want to put one into a PC. VIA makes a similar sort of low-power product, and you can actually play with those.
Transmeta made some inroads into the laptop and supercomputer markets, but there was just no way for normal people to play with one, except by buying a laptop.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
Now I really will be the only one with a LifeBook.
It's an interesting thought ...
Intel optimised the performance of Just-In-Time compiling for Java straight to x86 assembly language. And at the same time, Intel also designed the Pentium processors to convert x86 instructions into internal processor instructions. What if Java were compiled directly into internal processor instructions?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
So now some "holding company" reporting to China's industrialist mafia government has all the rights to America's most cutting-edge CPU tech of 3 years ago. Capitalism really is a glorious way to get ahead, when you've got the bucks to buy time.
--
make install -not war
They don't. They couldn't even beat Intel on MIPS/Watt, and ARM has between 20 and 100 times the MIPS/Watt that Intel does.
There's no way Transmeta was the best in any technical measure.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Everyone who has a vested interest in maintaining the 'status quo' will try their darndest to repress, discredit, and sink anything that threatens them, regardless of the benefit to the average citizen.
The inverse is also true: the more a new technology benefits the average citizen, the more opposition it will encounter.
Of course, this only serves to tell the enlightened among us what to check out and buy. If there's lots of people talking trash, there's more often something to it than not.
People hate change.
You can buy a C3 or C7 today if you like. Since VIA seems to be staking out the same low-cost, low-power embedded territory as Transmeta, I wouldn't doubt a similar fate (for the chip, not VIA, which has many irons in the fire). I'm guessing ARM-type architectures are ruling this field (vs. x86 type).
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> Culturecom Holdings, a Hong Kong company
> better known for publishing comic books
It's about time comic books started containing chips so portions can be animated and with story line updates that are downloadable, if you ask me.
Fascinating. This is the first time I've pulled out my Fujitsu P-1120 in two months, and slashdot was the first place I went to to make sure I was connecting OK, and what do I see. Sigh. I feel bad for all the folks that will never have the opportunity to buy a P1120. All signs are that Fujitu won't be making a replacement with all the same features, namely:
1. The clearest screen I've ever seen on *anything*
2. TOUCHSCREEN!!!!
3. Size of a small hardcover book
4. Weight of a small hardcover book
5. Runs *cool*
6. Runs forever on battery power
7. No fan, silent except for the hard drive
8. Built in Wifi & Ethernet
9. Etc., etc.
10. Very nice, *useable* keyboard
Heck, I'm thinking about buying another one to have in case my current one ever breaks!
The older folks here may remember the teeny little laptop that HP came out with in the early '90s with the mouse that popped out from the side? I never bought one 'cause I figured they'd eventually come out with a faster model, and then HP just discontinued it. I always berated myself for not buying one when it was available. So when the P1000 series came out, I bought one, even though I really could have used the money for a lot of other things at the time. Two years later, I'm still convinced it's the best $1100 I've ever spent. I don't need a laptop that often, but when I *do* need one, it's the most convenient full featured, yet smallest laptop ever made.
The only downside is that it needs a bit of tweaking before it can play full screen videos, but it *can* play them, and that's all that matters. It's also well supported by Linux and has it's own forum
"I wonder how much the lackluster appeal of these devices contributed to Transmeta's downfall... or if they just never stood a chance against Intel."
Well, as a TabletPC owner, I can tell you I wouldn't have bothered with Transmeta. I get nearly 4 hours out of my Tablet on a single charge. At that point, getting another hour or two wouldn't have been worth the potential performane hit. (Note: this is NOT an educated opinion, it's a perception. And that's my point, perception is a factor when purchasing something like this.) PC purchases are treated more like investments than "oo that's neat!" impulse buys. I had a lot of trouble settling on the one I wanted.
If anybody's curious, no, I don't have any complaints aobut my TabletPC. It's quite nice to be able to use it while standing up. I walked around the office taking inventory of the computer equipment in my office not too long ago. Just walked into each office, tapped the data right in to the spreadsheet, and it was done. I'm actually kind of surprised TPCs aren't more popular with sysadmins. I think Microsoft should be less enthusiastic about handwriting input and more so on the "you don't have to have a table to use it" aspect of it.
"Derp de derp."
Does this mean Transmeta laptops will be really cheap now?
[o]_O
I don't think Transmeta's problem was choosing a bad niche; everybody wants lower power chips. Rather, the problem IMHO was that their innovations didn't provide much advantage over Intel and AMD chips. The Transmeta chips are too slow for general purpose usage when the competitors are so much faster for just a bit more power.
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.
This is a field where you must not only have a good product, you must also have a solid market AND a solid marketing team, AND you must avoid bad PR like the plague, AND any major players (like Intel) must not deliberately sabotage efforts to compete, AND your plant can't be struck by major earthquakes.
(Why are all the major chip makers in Taiwan, Japan and America ALL concentrated in areas with high tectonic activity? Is there something in the fault line they use in the production line?)
The bottom line is simple. A chip fabrication plant can cost tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, skilled chip designers can command hefty salaries, many of the key markets are 0wn3d by monopolies of questionable legality who flirt with unethical practices to keep their position, and software developers reinforce this by targetting established, high-volume platforms and that means no new products get support.
Of course, Transmeta didn't help its case. Its Linux distro was late, the first batch of chips was buggy, they didn't sell to anyone outside of the "big players" (and "big players" only really buy from other "big players", because volume bought and sold = profit), and they only produced an 80x86 layer for the Crusoe, rather than using the capabilities to cross market boundaries and therefore create volume by getting into many niche markets.
Also, their design was poor. Intel beat them on power consumption in a very short space of time, and this is Intel we are talking about. At the same time, people knew there were problems with 80x86 scalability (hence the work on SMP and hyperthreading), but Transmeta didn't look far enough ahead to build a multicore product, when they were already building a design from scratch and had ample opportunity to make such changes.
(In comparison, AMD and Intel have to engineer such features into an existing design, which is always much harder and likely to be much slower than working from first principles. AMD's and Intel's route also offers much better odds of bugs being found in the design, at a later date, as their architecture was never intended to be multicore.)
So, I don't hold Transmeta blameless in this. They may have been pushed over the edge, but they still chose to walk along the cliff in the first place, knowing it to be a dangerous spot, and knowing that the view wasn't even that good there, to make it worth the risk.
One of these days, I hope to see a company start up that takes the time to be truly innovative (and not just fake it), takes the time to get things right, and makes a product so damn unbeatable it wipes the floor with everything else.
It does happen. True, AMD is no start-up, but they were hardly giants in the 80x86 world. With the Opteron and their 64/32-bit crossover architecture, they've demolished Intel's Itanium and even convinced Microsoft to switch to them for 64-bit stuff. Given the longevity of the Wintel duopoly, that took a good plan and a good effort.
Any start-up could do just as well, or better, because it wouldn't have the legacy hardware to build around. They could do a clean design that merely supported legacy code. Transmeta started down that road, but for some reason chose only to camp a little way down it and go no further.
The "ideal" processor would work just as well as a CPU, GPU, network processor or processor for a disk array, as then a manufacturer can go to a single vendor, buy in even bigger bulk, and save money on all aspects. Your computer would become a Beowulf cluster, in effect, with specialization in software. It would be cheaper to build, and would mean that the same system wou
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
That is very complimentary to my idea of making everything hardware done 'natively' Make an OS module. Make it compatible with such and such hardware. This would make everything insanely fast, quite possibly more secure (if say, the OS is firmware inside a card, updates can be applied like that to fix problems.)
We've got modular cases, why not do modular computing?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You say they had the best battery life before Pentium M came out. And then you say they were very slow.
So knowing these two things, how do you make the leap to best MIPS/Watt? Your laptop would have to be some combination of faster and longer battery life to win. Yet you say it was very slow. Would a comparably slow Intel machine have as long battery life?
Intel's current offerings destroy that laptop in MIPS/Watt. Intel's P3 mobiles released right after the first Transmetas bested the Transmetas significantly. And the Pentium M obliterated it. And now the ultra low volt Pentium Ms?
You're greatly mistaken.
I do agree Transmeta perhaps lit a fire under Intel to make more power-efficient chips. But they ceased to be competitive on power-efficiency or MIPS a long time ago. I won't be sorry to see them go.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I had high hopes.
Pretty Pictures!
"Aren't you forgetting AMD's Jem'Hadar soldiers too?"
... err... whatever the plural of prosthesis is. Oh, plungers!
I'll stick with Apple's Daleks. Gotta love their elegant simplicity of their
"Derp de derp."
Apple has been assimilated by the Intel collective. Resistance was futile :).
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
Well, if they go out of business, will they still be able to afford web hosting for all those web pages and images and such? Or will their entire web site get replaced with a cryptic message?
FWIW; I'm an embedded firmware and hardware developer amoung other things, and HAVE worked with their hardware:
I evaluated transmeta's chips in 2003, I think.. it was for a target product that needed a low power consumption. When we got their development kit and the heatsink was huge, I knew they were in trouble. I KNEW they were in trouble when we tried to return the multi-thousand-dollar kit to look at some other options they had.. and they wouldn't listen.
If you're working in the embedded world, you're probably in a well defined area:
- Low power, low speed micros. These are usually under 20mhz, sometimes faster. Cost a couple bucks and have everything under the sun integrated. Some have micro RTOS's developed for them, most don't. This market is mature and owned by people like Atmel, Microchip, Zilog, and a hoarde of other people making variants of chips like the 8051. Transmeta didn't stand a chance there. Those chips consume almost no power at all and cost nothing.
- Midrange micros for pdas and other appliances. This is where I thought transmeta had a chance, but then along came Intel with the XScale architecture and they made it work and work very well. This, not the pentium M, is what killed them I think. XScale is cheap, well supported, and very low power.
- Above-midrange; Transmeta might have had a shot here, but their power consumption and support was much worse than the x86 compatible Nat Semi Geode (now owned by AMD?), and offerings from Via (C3 MiniITX). Price? No competition.
- Notebooks. Pentium M ended this one. So did the G4 chip from Motorola.
- Desktop high end CPUS. Nobody ever expected them to be competitive.
Looking back, it seems like their market ran away from them whereever they looked. Unfortunate, but not unforseeable IMO.
..don't panic
I'm an American and it makes me sad to see American technology sold to Chinese companies. When China decides to stop funding Americans' debt-laden lifestyles we'll all end up working for them. And to think that the right-wingers blamed Clinton for allegedly "allowing" a Chinese spy in Los Alamos "give" nuclear secrets to China. What a farce that turned out to be. But when it's them doing the giving it's OK. Sorry to rant about this, but China is getting ready to eat our lunch as long as the big corporations are able to start using Americans for their new-century 3rd-world labor they could not care less.
And everyone who complained about it got modded down? /. pretty much sucks these days. It's a toss up betwixt the Nat. Enquirer or Slashdot. Frankly NE might have more technical value.
Sheesh!
Ooh, your powers of computation are exceptional. I can't allow you to waste CPU cycles here when there are so many crimes going unsolved at this very moment. Go, go, for the good of the city.
dinner: it's what's for beer
Sun's MAJC: dual core VLIW FP monster...gone
Transmeta: also VLIW...going
Intel: Itanium VLIW FP monster...stagnant once HP's base converts from PA-RISC and Alpha
It seems that no VLIW architecture to date has really been successful against PowerPC, SPARC, and AMD64. Is it the compilers? Too nontraditional?
I remember seeing ads for embedded hardware JVMs in JavaPro magazine. Dunno if they took off or not.
A comic end to a great chip..?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
It will be also more current and probably not a duplicated.
Good at killing mammoths, but stunk at killing elephants... yeah, that makes a whole lotta sense.
:D
Must be all the hair... yeah... that's it. The hair caused the mammoths to get stuck in shrubbery while the hairless elephants escaped.
Let's see, since I actually worked at Transmeta up until about 2 months ago and I still know the guys who work there, I'm pretty confident in saying that they are NOT out of business!
As far as I know, they are still churning out silicon. I don't know where Business 2.0 gets this trash.
BTW, their chips are pretty competitive now. It's a bit late, but you never know.
.. 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
There's already a chip which can directly execute java, if that's what you mean, check out the picojava chip.
I would love to own a transmeta laptop, so that the next time i fly oversees and sit next to some kid with an alienware laptop, i can laugh at him when his battery dies after 45 minutes and enjoy my movie, games, or even just solitaire for the next 8 hours.
:P
A very interesting use of the technology, indeed
Set your threshhold to 1. /. becomes a hell of a lot easier to get through then. :P
East Coast Brewers
You don't really need a user escalation flaw in the OS on a single user machine (Such as a desktop linux box) Anything you need root to destroy/gain access to could be reinstalled with the os install disks (debians get/load selections makes this easy enough that you'd be done in a day). Anything that can only be read/destroyed by the user is $HOME, where all your code/pictures/downloads/logs/keys/all that good stuff is.
/bin and /usr than /home any day.
I'd rather lose
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I guess that's the way it goes in the IT business, never is the first-mover rewarded...
With no Intel, AMD would have no major competition in the desktop sector. They would be free to stop spending so much money on R&D, stifling innovation. Don't get me wrong, I like AMD over Intel, but this is because of the innovations in their product... innovations brought on by the heated competition between the two companies. I hope they both do faily well... well enough for one to keep offering good products at prices that won't break the bank.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Wonder what will happen to this thing? It's based on Transmeta Tinside chips.
Me (Blog)
Perhaps this is illegal, unethical, or immoral. Perhaps it never even happened, but the truth is that it's very hard to challenge major players when you are starting from scratch.
I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons, especially since I'm spreading ugly rumors I have no way verifying.
With the jaugarnauts Intel and clones AMD or IBM pumping out a new chip one to three times a year, a commodity chip catches up to a custom CPU in price, performance or power in a fews years. A custom company generally on has the resources to ship a new generation every 3-5 years. Moore's Law gives a 5-10x price/performance increase in that time period. I've seen this happen dozens of times in Silicon Valley. Where are the Convexes, Masspars, Thinking Machines, HEPS, and twenty other custom CPUs?
In the case of a VLIW machine, theoretically, it's a fast beast- but you have to have a good compiler of whatever type (JIT of x86 or Java, Native Code, etc...) to actually see the full advantage of the architechture. Currently, most of these compilers produce less than optimal results so they end up not showing their true potential.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
(Now I see why Rob Malda says slashdot could be dying. A swamp of americans shouting, screaming and spitting without knowing what's going on. Americans. Heh.)
Culturecom truely is a company most known for its comics business. But it has deep pockets, and is also known to buy this and that business, extract the most money out of it within 1 yr or 2, then leave users dying in the cold. Its 'chinese2000' is one of the best known "Linux distribution" in Hong Kong, and one of the ugliest.
- First version is an incomplete rip of redhat. What is incomplete? Even trademarks / logos are not completely replaced! Redhat sued it later and it has to pay lots of money.
- Next version is another rip, seemingly from (at that time called) mandrake. Between these 2 versions, their bundled office are not compatible!
- No more. No 3rd version. Users either accept the fact that there is no security update, or just format it.
And one of the saddest is that, it hired one of the oldest and most respected open source pioneer in China, yet didn't produce anything really useful.
There are still good companies in Hong Kong, but not this one.
... buy their IP and use Crusoes to reduce their HVAC and power costs? Don't need a fab, just have them design chips and boards that fit Google's requirements then have someone else fab 'em. There might be savings if you go with multi 100k runs...
Sure, running stripped mobos is cheap, but if those mobos are 80-160w each the price of power (especially in California and Europe) as well as neutralizing all that heat must be pretty steep..
Ehh, just thinkin out loud..
will need another chip. Now, their personal clusters uses transmeta chips. Bad news for keep-it-cool team. http://www.orionmulti.com/
---- Where is my mind?