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To: sand wedge who wrote (31208)	9/8/2000 12:43:20 AM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 54805

Sony to unveil laptop with Transmeta chip sooner than expected By Duncan Martell PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept 8 (Reuters) - If chip giant Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) thought it had plenty of time to design a microprocessor that would rival closely held Transmeta Corp.'s own revolutionary offering, it might want to think again. The first computer or device -- for that matter -- to use Transmeta's Crusoe chip will be on store shelves far sooner than most thought. Sony Corp. (NYSE:SNE - news), maker of the sexiest laptop PC now on the market, the Vaio, is expected to announce Friday its ultra-light and compact PictureBook laptop will appear on store shelves in October. What gives Crusoe so much buzz -- and increasing credibility among industry and Wall Street analysts -- is the way the chip uses software to perform many of the functions that had previously been done using hardware. The processor uses a technology called very-long-instruction-word combined with a software translation technique called code morphing to convert Intel's widely used X86 instructions. Boasting a tiny, rotating digital camera atop the display the Sony Picture Book can run for up to 20 hours on a single charge with an attachable quad-battery pack weighing 1.28 lbs, Sony executives said. With a standard, single battery, it's 1.14 inches thick, 9.8 inches wide and 6 inches deep and 2.2 lbs. ``Sony is really the bellwether for these ultralight computers,'' said analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group, adding that, because of the Sony Vaio's sleek, design and its burnished metal casing it's the laptop of choice for many in the digerati set. The Sony win ``is perhaps indicative of a future trend.'' One of the most secretive start-ups in Silicon Valley in recent memory, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Transmeta came clean with more details in mid-August when it filed with regulators to raise some $200 million in an initial public offering. Transmeta, founded in 1995, had sales of just $5.07 million in 1999 and lost $41.1 million. That compares with revenue of $29.4 billion and net income of $7.31 billion for Intel, which has more than a dozen chip plants around the world. Intel is already selling a version of its Pentium III chip for laptops. It consumes 1 watt of electricity, comparable to the power consumption Transmeta claims in its IPO filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. The standard PictureBook model is $2,300 and a fully-functional laptop that runs Windows. Mark Hanson, general manager for PC product marketing at Sony, said the Crusoe PictureBook will have a battery life of 2.5 hours to 5.5 hours. Sony's SR laptop model, a Sony spokeswoman said, has a battery life of 3 hours to 5 hours. With the $500 quad-battery pack as an option a user could get as many as 20 hours, and with the double-battery pack, at $250, users get close to 10 hours. Sony is also a Transmeta investor, taking part in a recent $88 million round of funding. Transmeta said it uses about a quarter of the logic transistors needed for a conventional X86 chip as made by Intel or Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which, according to Enderle, has already struck some patent-swapping arrangements with Transmeta. The result is a chip that's smaller, doesn't use as much power and generates far less heat than a traditional X86-class microprocessor. Also putting wind into Transmeta's IPO sails are its high profile backers, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, financial George Soros, Gateway and others. ``Their IPO should give them a market value sufficient to buy AMD and they're already walking like they're going down a path that results in a merger,'' Enderle said. That combination, with AMD (NYSE:AMD - news) already on a roll in the last year with its speedy Athlon processor and order-wins from PC makers, could spell trouble for Intel. Email this story - View most popular stories emailed

To: sand wedge who wrote (31208)	9/8/2000 1:31:32 AM
From: tekboy	Respond to of 54805

wired.com tekboy/Ares@realmenprovidelinks.com

To: sand wedge who wrote (31208)	9/8/2000 9:08:09 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

The July issue of Wired had an article featuring Transmeta. The cover story of the March issue of Red Herring (which is one I still haven't read) is also about Transmeta. The cover title: "THIS could change everything -- behind Transmeta's bid to power the post-PC era." --Mike Buckley

To: sand wedge who wrote (31208)	9/8/2000 9:57:00 AM
From: EJhonsa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

The more I look at Transmeta, the more it seems like one of those great excesses of overblown new-economy hype to me. For starters, the power savings offered by its chip are commendable...if an entire laptop only consisted of its CPU. The CPU accounts for only 20% of the power consumption within a laptop. The rest comes from the display, peripherals, etc. Meanwhile, Transmeta's made no secret out of the fact that in terms of performance, their chips doesn't come close to rivaling those that AMD and Intel offer. For this reason, I think they're considering some sort of technology cross-licensing agreement with the former. It should also be noted that similar power savings could be attained through the use of Ibis' SOI wafers with standard x86 CPUs, all with no degradation in performance. I think that Transmeta's idea for producing low-cost, low-power chips for portable web pads may have some merit to it, as there could be a decent market for such devices thanks to 3G. However, in terms of volume sales, it'll still pale in comparision to the market for PDAs, let alone handsets. If Transmeta had created a decent, communications-ready CPU for PDAs (something like Qualcomm's MSP1000), or had created a robust CPU design to be integrated into the baseband ASICs and SoCs that go into handsets (in other words, a direct competitor to ARM), then perhaps all the hype that's surrounded them would be justified. There's too many great technological developments going to be fawning over a second-rate, low-cost chip that, in a best-case scenario, will still only dominate a couple of niche markets. Eric