Transmeta sells processor line

  • Thread starter Thread starter YKhan
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EEProductCenter.com :: Transmeta sells processor line to Hong Kong firm
http://www.eeproductcenter.com/analog/review/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=163702355
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Hmm.. odd.. They're only selling the (older) Crusoe line. Not so much
'odd' that Transmeta wanted to do this, more 'odd' in that I can't
understand how this Culturecom company plans to make any money off
buying this processor. The company isn't even getting a license to
the entire chip, they'll apparently still need to pay royalties for it
as well as for the Efficeon.

I could MAYBE understand this if Crusoe or Efficeon were low-cost
chips like VIA's C3, but they aren't really that cheap to produce. At
113mm^2 on a 130nm process the Efficeon is actually larger than an
AthlonXP/Sempron with 512KB of cache (101mm^2) and not far off the
131mm^2 of a 130nm Pentium4 (ie Northwood). Crusoe's 55m^2 die makes
it a bit more economical, though the trade-off here is abysmal
performance (about on-par with a 1998 era 400MHz Celeron).

I just don't get it. Transmeta's been losing bucketloads of money on
a product that costs too much for the performance it delivers, but now
another company thinks they can do better by taking it to a different
fab and paying licensing fees? I guess they can eliminate the R&D
costs, but even without those costs Transmeta is REALLY struggling to
break-even (last quarter showed $6.86M in revenue and $28.08M in
expenses of which only $12.22M were listed as R&D costs).
 
Tony Hill wrote:> I just don't get it. Transmeta's been losing
bucketloads of money on
a product that costs too much for the performance it delivers, but now
another company thinks they can do better by taking it to a different
fab and paying licensing fees? I guess they can eliminate the R&D
costs, but even without those costs Transmeta is REALLY struggling to
break-even (last quarter showed $6.86M in revenue and $28.08M in
expenses of which only $12.22M were listed as R&D costs).
Click to expand...

I get the feeling that this company may be one of those companies that
builds products around the Crusoe, so it wants to ensure that the
Crusoe continues to exist.

Yousuf Khan
 
Tony Hill wrote:> I just don't get it. Transmeta's been losing
bucketloads of money on

I get the feeling that this company may be one of those companies that
builds products around the Crusoe, so it wants to ensure that the
Crusoe continues to exist.
Click to expand...

Actually looking at their website it would seem that they are the
company behind that V-Dragon CPU. This is the chip who's only real
claim to fame was that it was 100% Chinese designed and built.
Otherwise they seem to focus on low cost embedded PC type systems
specifically for the south-east Asian market. The Transmeta chips
would kinda-sorta make sense here if they were cheap to produce, but
with their complex design I just can't see it really working out well.
Ahh well, perhaps they have some other ideas that I haven't thought
of.
 
If they're behind the V-Dragon, maybe this is a hedge against a
sub-optimal design of the V-Dragon?

Yousuf Khan
 
If they're behind the V-Dragon, maybe this is a hedge against a
sub-optimal design of the V-Dragon?
Click to expand...

Could be.. I don't really know much of anything about that V-Dragon
chip other than the fact that it's born and raised in China.. I'm not
even sure what ISA it uses (if it even uses a known-ISA other than one
all it's own).
 
Tony said:
Could be.. I don't really know much of anything about that V-Dragon
chip other than the fact that it's born and raised in China.. I'm not
even sure what ISA it uses (if it even uses a known-ISA other than one
all it's own).
Click to expand...

There was talk about two made-in-china designs. One using the MIPS ISA,
the other the x86 ISA.

Another thing I heard recently is that this company is also known for
its comic books in China. Don't know how relevant that is. :-)

Yousuf Khan
 
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