To All:
News.
dailynews.yahoo.com
Monday May 7 12:03 PM ET
Transmeta Scores Crusoe Chip Win with Toshiba
By Duncan Martell
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp., the world's biggest maker of laptop computers, will use chip-design firm Transmeta Corp.'s Crusoe microprocessor to power one model in its lineup of Libretto notebooks, Transmeta's most significant win yet and another slap in the face to rival Intel Corp.
Transmeta (NasdaqNM:TMTA - news) said that the Toshiba (6750.T) mini-notebook, weighing 2.4 pounds and using Transmeta's 600 megahertz Crusoe processor, could run for as long as 14 hours. The laptop will be available in Japan on May 18.
Upstart Transmeta, once the most secretive company in recent memory in Silicon Valley, is challenging Intel, the world's largest microchip maker, in one of its more profitable markets: selling processors designed for use in laptops.
The company's Crusoe chip is distinguished from Intel's (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) mobile processors because it uses software rather than designs in the actual hardware of the chip to gain the low-power, high-performance characteristics that laptop users most often crave. Longer battery life has long been seen as the Holy Grail for mobile computing.
``This demonstrates momentum and now they're moving into the mainstream, because initially they were kind of on the fringes,'' said analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group. ``Toshiba takes them right to the heart of the corporate market, so this is potentially a very strong win for them.''
While Enderle said Intel's offerings of low-power, high-performance Pentium chips designed for mobile use generally get good marks, there is a significant drawback.
``The power utilization from the Intel part is pretty good, but the problem is it's still producing an excessive amount of heat,'' Enderle said. ``Heat is just about as big a problem as power consumption''.
On May 2, Transmeta Chief Executive Mark Allen said that while Transmeta has yet to sign a deal with a U.S.-based notebook maker, his company has held talks with chief executives of U.S. companies. He declined to say how serious those talks are, or which companies were involved.
He did note that Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE:CPQ - news) and Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW - news) were most open to making computers with processors from companies other than Intel.
More announcements, though not new customers, will be made later this week, said Jim Chapman, Transmeta's head of sales and marketing, in an interview.
So far, Sony Corp., Fujitsu, NEC Corp., Casio and Hitachi have said they will use the Transmeta chip either in laptops of consumer-electronics devices. |
