Transmeta's second-coming for Crusoe chips

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 19 Nov 2002 at 15:26

Astro chip to ignite mobile turf wars?

Transmeta is set to fight back with its latest generation of the power-saving Crusoe chip, the company revealed at the Comdex industry event in Las Vegas.

The Astro will be the first of Transmeta's TM 8000 line of mobile processors. It will be a step along from the company's Crusoe TM 5000 series as it can handle longer instruction sets - eight per cycle, as opposed to the standard four per clock cycle of the current crop of mobile chips.

Increased instructions per cycle is a more efficient way of working and additionally lowers the power consumption of the processor. This makes it suitable for the notebook market, where it will compete with the likes of Intel's forthcoming Banias line.

However, Banias chips will incorporate 802.11 wireless technogies into the architecture, although products sporting the new technology aren't expected to be available until the summer of next year.

While Transmeta managed to win over big clients, such as Toshiba, Sharp and Sony, with the original Crusoe, production was dogged by delays and manufacturing set-backs. Now, Transmeta is seeing renewed confidence in its processors, adding HP to the rosta.