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Transmeta Unveils Crusoe Chip

Watch out, Intel: Startup promises flexibility and longer laptop battery life.

By Ephraim Schwartz and James Niccolai, IDG News Service   

The heart of Transmeta's technology is a microprocessor that attempts to remove the complexity and expense of processor design by putting that complexity into software rather than into silicon.

Crusoe, which will be the brand name for Transmeta's first family of mobile chips, will bring increased power and longer battery life to a range of mobile devices used to access the Internet, from full-fledged laptop computers to new types of emerging devices like Web pads and handheld computers, promises David Ditzel, chief executive officer of Transmeta.

The key to Crusoe's capabilities is its "code morphing" technology, which converts instructions written for x86-type processors such as Intel's Pentium III chips into very-long-instruction-word instructions that can be read by Crusoe's underlying hardware, Ditzel says.

"Transmeta's new idea here was not to use silicon itself to solve the problem, but to use software to solve the problem," says Ditzel, a former chief architect at AT&T's Bell Laboratories.

Two chips were unveiled: the TM5400, for lightweight notebook computers running Windows, and the TM3120, a processor for Internet appliances running Linux.

The TM3120 processor is priced at $65 for a 333-MHz version and $89 for the 400-MHz version. Transmeta says in a statement that it tried to price the chips economically enough for use in Linux-based Web appliances that will be priced from $500 to $999.

The TM5400 will be offered in a range of performance levels from 500 to 700 MHz and will be aimed at ultralightweight notebooks priced between $1200 and $2500, the company says. The 500-MHz version will list for $119, while the 700-MHz version will list for $329.

Notebooks for the LongRun

The processors, to be targeted for the mobile market, will consume an average of only 1 watt of power, which, according to Ditzel, will greatly enhance battery life. That result is achieved by a new power management technology dubbed LongRun.

Using the LongRun power management technology, Crusoe also can "learn" about applications as it runs them, and adjust its operating speed and voltage to match the needs of the application, Ditzel says.

Transmeta began sampling Crusoe last year and expects to ship commercial products to manufacturers by midyear.

The name Crusoe comes from the famous fictional traveler Robinson Crusoe, who was washed up on an island after a shipwreck.

Transmeta will find itself on a head-on collision course with Intel if it delivers on its promise of a low-power notebook chip that runs Windows applications. Power consumption has been the enemy of Intel and its rivals as they try to boost the power of their mobile chips.