“Imagine stumbling into the laundry mat with a load of clothes
and only having to swipe a card to use the washer. Then you walk
over to the soda machine and buy a drink with another swipe of a
card. All the while, several cigarette pack-sized digital cameras
are keeping track of what you are doing. This scene is not science
fiction but potentially very real thanks to a new personal
computer-on-a-chip made by ZF Linux Devices of Palo Alto, Calif.
More than 100 potential products are being developed using the
MachZ chip including smart card readers for laundry and soft drink
machines and security systems that harness the intelligence of the
tiny computers to analyze digital images. The 35-millimeter square
chips are actual 133-megahertz PCs when power is added. The chip
features all the basic functions of a PC motherboard such as CPU
core, serial ports and controllers. Processing power is between a
486 and a Pentium. Recently, searchEnterpriseLinux spoke with David
Feldman, ZF Linux’s founder and CEO, about the MachZ chip.”
“searchEnterpriseLinux: So at what market is
the MachZ chip aimed?”
“Feldman: This chip is really aimed for the
embedded market, in which power use is a major issue. The chips are
not aimed at the desktop though they would make for nice thin
clients. For someone who needs a terminal for word processing and
spreadsheets the chip would be more than enough. We run PowerPoint
demonstrations using one.”
“Linux allows you to strip things out because you have the
source code.”
“searchEnterpriseLinux: How does your chip
differ from the low-powered Crusoe chip from Transmeta,
incidentally where Linus Torvalds works?”