“Transmeta Corp. on Wednesday finally took the wraps off a
widely anticipated line of microprocessors it hopes will boost
mobile computing by dramatically extending battery life and which
could ultimately let devices run operating systems originally
written for different computer chips.”
“But observers said despite the impressive technology — and an
equally impressive executive team — it’s far from certain
Transmeta can live up to its promise of revolutionizing the way
microprocessors are designed.”
“At worst, Transmeta will end up the latest in a long-line
of challengers attempting to take away a piece of Intel Corp.’s
market share — currently estimated as more than 75 percent of the
total market for microprocessors. Transmeta’s initial products
and strategy are pretty straightforward. It hopes to take advantage
of the chip’s low power requirements and innovative “code
morphing” software to fuel an explosion of mobile Internet devices
that can access the Web using the same applications, operating
systems and plug-ins that Intel’s Pentium line of chips do.”