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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
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.
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
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!
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.
> 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
When they came out, they definitely had the best MIPS/Watt for x86-compatible chips. I bought a Crusoe-powered laptop back in 2002 (Fujitsu P-series). It routinely got over 10 hours of battery life with the screen at full brightness and over 20 with the screen closed listening to MP3's. With the original batteries, it still gets 6-7 hours with the screen, and 15ish with it closed. It also doesn't get uncomfortably hot, and also has builtin wifi drawing power.
I've never seen an Intel-powered laptop that could come close to that. Granted, it is a dog (and was even then), but a similar Intel-powered notebook draws more power. If you were to scale-back Intel's current offerings to match the speed of my laptop, they'd probably beat it in MIPS/Watt. However, at the time there was nothing comparable.
If nothing else, Transmeta will have prodded Intel and AMD to make more power-efficient chips.
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)
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
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?