..Say it ain't so, Luke
Watching the watchers watch Transmeta
Transmeta, the Silicon Valley company that employs Linus Torvalds,
isn't saying what kind of technology it's working on. (Their Web
site says, succinctly if paradoxically, "This web page is not here
yet.") The Red Herring tried to find out what they are up to --
or perhaps their account of the attempt, "Stalking Transmeta," [17]
is all in good fun. PC Magazine prints a more substantial guess [18]:
> [Transmeta] has been working for about two years on a CPU for
> PCs, which is rumored to have its own internal instruction set
> but to use a fast software translator to execute x86 instruc-
> tions. Transmeta has raised a large (undisclosed) amount of
> venture capital and is well staffed; a product debut is likely
> in 1999.
In the NY Times for 8/31, John Markoff relays a rumor [19] that he
says has some Sili Valley techies quite upset.
Markoff's article is mostly about evidence of increasing strain
in the "Wintel" alliance. One factor contributing to the wobble
is the rapid growth of technology areas such as telephony and
personal digital assistants that do not use Intel hardware or
Microsoft software. Microsoft has an entrant at this end of the
market -- Windows CE -- but Intel is seen as concentrating in-
creasingly on the shrinking top end. (Its purchase of Digital's
StrongArm technology may have been reduced in value by the defec-
tion of key technical talent.)
If Transmeta, which was founded by a former Sun Sparc architect,
is working on a platform for portable computing -- let's call it
a "media chip" [20] -- what OS will it run? Well, with Linus on
board, you would assume the answer would be "Linux, duh." Some
flavor of Java would certainly be a contender. But Markoff says
the word is that Transmeta may run Microsoft software. A hardware
designer is quoted thus:
> It would be a little like hiring Luke Skywalker and then
> turning the whole organization over to Darth Vader.
[17]
http://www.herring.com/mag/issue58/stalking.html
[18]
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/cpu98/intro10.html
[19]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/08/biztech/articles/31chip.html
[20]
http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?EET19980706S0069
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Received on Fri Sep 11 1998 - 09:01:47 BST