“Many of us were glued to our monitors last Wednesday
watching Transmeta at last reveal what it’s been so darned
secretive about. So many of us tried to view or mirror their site,
http://www.transmeta.com, that the site was inaccessible to most of
us for nearly an hour. While speculations had run wild as to
specifics, most everyone agreed that “The Announcement” was going
to concern a new, software-driven processor. But Transmeta had
other surprises up its sleeve….”
“Concerned about the battery life in your laptop? Transmeta says
such worries will be a thing of the past in Crusoe-powered laptops.
The Crusoe TM5400 (the 700MHz processor, due out later this year)
boasts less than one watt power consumption in average use (such as
office suite applications), one to two watts in high-power
applications (i.e., DVD playback), and as low as .008 watts (yes,
that’s eight milliwatts) in deep-sleep mode. Crusoe also manages
power on the fly, dropping the power consumption between keystrokes
and other times the machine idles, and assigning only as much
processing power to applications as they require. This, says
Transmeta, leads to a thirty percent reduction in power usage and
can extend typical battery life up to eight hours….”
“What’s next for Transmeta? Once laptops with Crusoe processors
start appearing on shelves, the world will have a chance to see
what the hype was all about, and we’ll have a whole new set of
articles to write detailing their performance. The rollout of the
higher-end Crusoe chip later this year should also cause some
ripples.”