Transmeta Closing Up Shop 413
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."
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
They're still working on putting out a chip based on LongRun2 [transmeta.com], which reduces transistor leakage [semiconduc...ossary.com]. This is very important for cutting power consumption [eetimes.com] and increasing CPU speed. They've also licensed the technology to Fujitsu [transmeta.com], NEC [eweek.com] and Sony [eweek.com], 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 [intel.com], so this may well be the end of Transmeta.
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
By any chance, Are you lawyer? :)
Re:define "destroyed" (Score:2)
Re:RTFA (Score:2)
"It isn't out yet, but it's probably out soon."
Is it out, or isn't it? Make up your mind!
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Funny)
They shoulda called it LongShot2
Re:RTFA (Score:2)
So once again they're trying to solve problems that aren't serious enough for anyone else to care. Nobody has really cared that much about power consumption. No, they really haven't.
And transistor leakage may be a problem down the road, but honestly Intel or AMD will be in a much better position to address the pr
Re:RTFA (Score:2)
Re:RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh?????
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.
This is the definition of "going out of business". They are not "out" of business. They are "going out" of business.
Re:RTFA (Score:2)
The submitter probably holds transmeta short and will make a killing when the market opens this morning.
Re:RTFA (Score:2)
Re:RTFA (Score:2)
Re:Somewhat OT but... (Score:2)
Sheesh!
Transmeta (Score:4, Funny)
instruction set (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, hopefully OQO [oqo.com] and others have a backup plan so this doesn't put a kink in the handheld pc market.
would have been pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:would have been pointless (Score:2)
It's also worth mentioning that Transmeta-specific code wouldn't go far if the marketplace didn't support it, at least not while trying to coexist in the x86 space.
Re:would have been pointless (Score:3, Funny)
Is that an example of one of the Crusoe op-code mnemonics? I've heard VLIW is complex to hand code, buy geesh!
-AP
Re:instruction set (Score:2)
Re:instruction set (Score:2)
Re:instruction set (Score:5, Insightful)
Coding would be infinitely expensive if you pour money in and gain nothing, one way or another. Selling of the s/w is just one gain option; using it in-house, as you suggest, is another.
However you can't buy a Transmeta beige box and give it to a code monkey to play with :-) There are no such boxes, except a few notebooks that don't even exist (for all practical purposes.) You would have to build your own computer, from chips, caps and resistors. That is not easy (read it as "awfully expensive".)
You also mention number-crunching in this post and below. But if you want that you don't go with a teeny-weeny low power CPU. You take a big and hot chip, and not one either. Big CPUs can run SMP if that's your thing; for example, G4 is not even a "big" CPU in my book, but with its existing SMP capabilities and its AltiVec core (which is probably what you need for your multimedia and other uses) it trumps Transmeta's product, just stomps it into the ground. And you can get G4 beige boxen from many places, off the shelf (including Apple's shelf, for the moment.)
Transmeta's CPUs are good for one purpose only - for emulating other CPUs. If you want a cold chip, there are many other, and better too (ask anyone between Atmel and Freescale.) If you want a fast CPU, there are many of those (ask AMD and Intel and IBM.) You'd have to work hard to find the exact niche where Transmeta's products fit - and the problem is that the niche is too narrow for the company to live in.
Re:instruction set (Score:2)
Re:instruction set (Score:3, Insightful)
My answer to that would be NO. If the task is to run a legacy s/w on some sort of a replica box, I would rather synthesize the desired CPU in an FPGA. It would give me direct, hardware execution of commands as opposed to reinterpreting them. As another important benefit, I would synthesize right there all the I/O hardware that is part of that Mini. This is not possible with Transmeta since it's j
Re:instruction set (Score:2)
What about as someone said Java or the CLR.
BTW. There are a few companies out there that do make replica boxes. They tend to be PCs running emulation software with special PCI cards that interface with the old systems bus.
Re:instruction set (Score:2)
Java or CLR w
Re:instruction set for Java? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Code Morphing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Code Morphing (Score:2)
Re:Code Morphing (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tablet PCs? (Score:2)
Re:Tablet PCs? (Score:2)
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
Re:Tablet PCs? (Score:2)
Shame (Score:3, Interesting)
32-bit All Chinese CPU (Score:2)
I'm sure the vast collective brain power of /. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm sure the vast collective brain power of /. (Score:2)
The Transmeta CPUs do have outstanding virtues (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:BS. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:BS. (Score:2)
Re:BS. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Before Pentium M... (Score:2)
Re:Before Pentium M... (Score:2)
It doesn't have to be both faster and longer-lived. If the processor is has 20% more MIPS, but consumes 10% more power, then the power efficiency as MIPS/watt has increased by a factor of 1.20/1.10 = 1.0909... or 9% better.
Re:BS. (Score:2)
which model of the P-series were you using? Everything before the P5000 series used the transmeta chips. fujitsu switched to pentium M for the P5000.
I've never heard of a P3000, but I know the P2000's used transmeta.
-metric
Those Critics again.... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 pr
Cyrix (Score:3)
Re:Cyrix (Score:2)
Yeah, it's a common story. (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Yeah, it's a common story. (Score:2)
Hellmouth.
Chips run on magic smoke, and you need demons to get the smoke.
Re:Cyrix (Score:2)
I've got $50 on "No." Any takers?
Re:Cyrix (Score:2)
Unfortunately, Transmeta's niche was a little too broad for a newcomer to fill, and there was already a lot of fierce competition.
IMO Transmeta could have set their sights a bit lower -- go for a nice ultra-low-power embedded PC or something. Or even something like Via's Eden (C7 line).
They set their sights a bit too high, didnt quite manage to reach it, and were eventually beaten into the ground by Intel's Pentium M and AMD's mobile lin
yeah... (Score:2)
Where can I buy one? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Where can I buy one? (Score:2, Informative)
You can buy these at spectra [spectra.ch]. 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 perip
Cashing in the Chips (Score:2)
Re:Cashing in the Chips (Score:2)
Re:Cashing in the Chips (Score:2, Insightful)
Transmeta is like free gas (Score:2, Interesting)
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 ch
So, don't comic books need chips too? (Score:5, Funny)
> 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.
Re:So, don't comic books need chips too? (Score:2)
I already have mine (Score:5, Funny)
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 [leog.net]
Re:I already have mine (Score:2)
Re:I already have mine (Score:2)
It really does rock. I have mine dual-booting Win2K and Fedora Core 2 (haven't taken the time to upgrade - my bad). Even found the necessary touchscreen and wifi drivers for Linux. I actually like it better for travelling than my IBM T41 (though I usually drag both of them along :-).
Re:I already have mine (Score:2)
instead of the HP Omnibook. And if you realized
how bad HP hardware support (in-warranty) was, you
would also be glad.
I have an HP Omnibook that went back twice to HP
while under warranty -- the first time back they
replaced the system board but didn't fix the
problem. The second time it went back, it was
returned to me as-is, with a note that it is
functioning as designed. Unfortunately, their
"as designed" functionality was not the condition
in which I bought it ne
Re:I already have mine (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I already have mine (Score:2)
Re:I already have mine (Score:2)
zerg (Score:2)
Known for selling comics book???? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Known for selling comics book???? (Score:2)
They're not buying their production line just for replacing Via dragon chip from their EasyReader electronic book. This product is history. There's no point in makin
So sad (Score:2)
Web Hosting (Score:2)
Transmeta bet on the wrong pony (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Transmeta bet on the wrong pony (Score:2)
What they did with their first processor, though, was pretty ballsy. When the big guys were still climbing the superscalar curve (with diminishing returns, of course), these guys identified the problem (energy) and went after it in a very big way, ripping out huge chunks of HW
Comic books with CPUs? (Score:2)
The Curse of VLIW? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Too complicated to code for... (Score:2)
Couldn't resist (Score:2)
Article is not quite right! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
This is some sort of social engineering.. (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:This is some sort of social engineering.. (Score:2)
Though, considering the bright minds at Transmeta, it certianly would not surprise me in the least bit.
Re:This is some sort of social engineering.. (Score:2)
Ah, then those rumors will remain as credible as the rest of Tansmeta's track record.
Transmeta was all about rumors. Oh, and gulping down VC and swindling investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
almost all custom cpus fail economically (Score:2)
Culturecom? Aha, THAT Culturecom... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 i
Re:Told You So! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Told You So! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Told You So! (Score:2)
I'll stick with Apple's Daleks. Gotta love their elegant simplicity of their
Re:Told You So! (Score:2)
Re:Told You So! (Score:3, Funny)
And you gotta love the Might Morphin' Power Changelings
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes but... (Score:2)
Re:A Darn Shame ... but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not a laptop; that's a portable workstation.
Re:A Darn Shame ... but ... (Score:2)
I'm sayin'. They're pricey and great and all but there are hidden costs to operating them. Namely that the most expensive thing with these devices isn't buying second batteries (which are expensive in their own right, don't get me wrong). The most expensive thing is
Re:bout fricking time... (Score:2)
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.
Re:bout fricking time... (Score:2)
I'd rather lose
Re:So irresponsible (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Am I still the only one (Score:2)
Re:Sad (Score:2)
Yippeee....hooray, tinfoil hats rule.
This all sounds familiar. Oh yeah....the doom-n-gloom crowd in the mid 80s regarding Japan.
I'm sure you're too young to remember that though.
Re:Bleeding Edge (Score:2)
A very interesting use of the technology, indeed
Why? (Score:2)