Transmeta scores Crusoe chip win with Toshiba

Duncan Martell

SAN FRANCISCO: Toshiba Corp., the world's biggest maker of laptop computers,

will use chip-design firm Transmeta Corp.'s Crusoe microprocessor to power one

model in its lineup of Libretto notebooks, Transmeta's most significant win yet

and another slap in the face to rival Intel Corp.

Transmeta said that the Toshiba mini-notebook, weighing 2.4 pounds and using

Transmeta's 600 megahertz Crusoe processor, could run for as long as 14 hours.

The laptop will be available in Japan on May 18. Upstart Transmeta, once the

most secretive company in recent memory in Silicon Valley, is challenging Intel,

the world's largest microchip maker, in one of its more profitable markets:

selling processors designed for use in laptops.

The company's Crusoe chip is distinguished from Intel's mobile processors

because it uses software rather than designs in the actual hardware of the chip

to gain the low-power, high-performance characteristics those laptop users most

often crave. Longer battery life has long been seen as the Holy Grail for mobile

computing.

"This demonstrates momentum and now they're moving into the mainstream,

because initially they were kind of on the fringes," said analyst Rob

Enderle of Giga Information Group. "Toshiba takes them right to the heart

of the corporate market, so this is potentially a very strong win for

them."

While Enderle said Intel's offerings of low-power, high-performance Pentium

chips designed for mobile use generally get good marks, there is a significant

drawback. "The power utilization from the Intel part is pretty good, but

the problem is it's still producing an excessive amount of heat," Enderle

said. "Heat is just about as big a problem as power cons+-umption".

On May 2, Transmeta chief executive Mark Allen said that while Transmeta has

yet to sign a deal with a US-based notebook maker, his company has held talks

with chief executives of US companies. He declined to say how serious those

talks are, or which companies were involved.

He did note that Compaq Computer Corp. and Gateway Inc. were most open to

making computers with processors from companies other than Intel. More

announcements, though not new customers, will be made later this week, said Jim

Chapman, Transmeta's head of sales and marketing, in an interview.

So far, Sony Corp., Fujitsu, NEC Corp., Casio and Hitachi have said they will

use the Transmeta chip either in laptops of consumer-electronics devices.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.