Thursday, January 20, 2000

More power to you

Transmeta unveils next generation in computer chips

By IAN HARVEY, TORONTO SUN

  There's a new chip on the block and it's gunning for industry giant Intel.

After five years of cloak-and-dagger secrecy, California-based Transmeta rolled out a new computer chip yesterday that boasts more processing power than Intel's industry-standard Pentium IIIs while consuming half the power -- in others words, capable of running on ordinary "AA" batteries. The price is also right -- starting at US$65.

STARTING GUN

Yesterday's announcement is the starting gun in a race to create a whole new generation of personal Internet-savvy appliances. This is what Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was talking about last week when he stepped back as CEO and appointed himself chief software architect to oversee development of Windows Next Generation Services, a product that he sees running a network of Internet-connected devices that talk to each other and to their masters in a way only now being realized.

If it lives up to its hype, Transmeta's design could have as big an impact on our culture as the introduction of the cell phone a dozen years ago, or the mainstreaming of the Internet in the mid 1990s.

Not surprisingly, the brains behind Transmeta are pretty impressive. The money came from, among others, Microsoft's other founder, Paul Allen, and famed financier George Soros.

The vision came from David Ditzel, chief executive and former top chip designer at Sun Microsystems, while the software which allows the hardware to be so nimble came from legendary Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

And those are just a few of the star-studded board of directors, backers and engineers Ditzel harnessed.

Giving Transmeta even more clout is a deal with IBM, which will manufacture the chips.

"We're going after the x86 (Intel-compatible) market and can run any kind of x86 out there," Ditzel said of the giant which controls 82% of the market. "We're going into mobile Internet computers, and we're creating a new category of computing."

Code-named Crusoe, the chips, Ditzel said, will make Intel's technology look "rather rudimentary."

What's important here is that the speed has increased and cost of computing power has dropped so dramatically that we're looking at a range of practical, powerful and enabling devices that are also affordable.

STAR TREK AGE

This is the dawn of the Star Trek age where personal communicators double as snazzy jewelry, where your cell phone is as powerful as your desktop computer and can do three times more: Beyond mere e-mail, voice-mail and Net banking and into entertainment devices that can play not just music, but movies streamed over the Net all while figuring out where the nearest McDonald's restaurant is on its built-in GPS.

The chips use software that allow them to run on Microsoft, Java and Linux systems and will start at US$65 for the 333Mhz model and run to US$329 for the 700Mhz version, which is designed for notebook or laptop-style computers.
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