“Compaq US won’t be going with the Transmeta chip like it was
supposed to according to highly placed sources both inside and
outside the company. Compaq’s Armada group, the Compaq unit that
invested in Transmeta and has been designing with the start-up’s
revolutionary x86 Crusoe microprocessor, reportedly made the
decision two weeks ago.”
“If the report proves true, as we suspect it will, Compaq US
will be Transmeta’s second major American loss in the last few days
and quite frankly the news couldn’t come at a worse time….”
“A Compaq source says the Crusoe chip, which has reportedly been
evaluated by both Compaq’s commercial and consumer groups, ‘meets
neither performance or power promises, which leaves it kind of in
the lab experiment stage. It would need to be about twice as good
in both areas to produce a competitive advantage. It is interesting
technology but not ready for the real world yet….To make it
commercially viable it needs to be a winner in the base economic
proposition, and more work is needed to get to that point. I’m sure
that Compaq, like all the other major players, will continue to
evaluate the potential of the product.'”