AMD teams with Transmeta, IBM drops Crusoe project

Advanced Micro Devices is reportedly working with Transmeta to incorporate

some of Transmeta’s Crusoe power-saving design features into its lines of

Athlon and Duron processors.

AMD hopes to use the Transmeta technology to lower power consumption of the

Duron from 3 to 1 Watt. This in answer to Intel’s latest low-power laptop

processors.

AMD this week also introduced a 1.2-gigahertz version of its Athlon processor

and plans to introduce a 1.5-gigahertz version of its Thunderbird processor in

the first quarter next year. In an unexpected negative chapter in Transmeta’s

short history, IBM has reportedly ended one Transmeta project with Taiwan's

Quanta Computer to produce a notebook computer using Crusoe which uses software,

rather than on-chip circuitry to do most of the computing.

Quanta is a sub-contractor for IBM and currently produces about 7,000

ThinkPad 240 notebooks a month for the computer maker. The ThinkPad project was

scheduled to have been followed by a Transmeta-based notebook for IBM with

production slated for the first quarter of next year. No reason was given for

IBM's cancellation of the Transmeta project. It is not clear whether IBM is

going forward with the Crusoe project using other contractors.