Transmeta Aims at Portables, Servers
T O K Y O, Feb. 20 -- Chipmaker Transmeta Corp says its vaunted Crusoe chip, which gives laptops longer battery bycutting power consumption, has a new foothold for growth with a slew of portable PCs just launched in Japan and servers soon due to debut in North America.
Crusoe has received a boost in its key Japanese market for portable computers in recent weeks as three Japanese companies unveiled new PCs using the chip. Now four companies are set to launch super-dense servers that use the chips, with Exodus Communications Inc., the largest manager of corporate Web sites, among those now evaluating the machines, said David Ditzel, Transmeta's chief executive officer. The Crusoe, introduced in January last year, uses elaborate software instructions rather than hardware to perform certainfunctions. Low power consumption means it emits less heat that other chips, so more can be put into a given space. "In California in particular we have an electricity crisis. Companies like Exodus cannot expand their business in thetraditional way because they're not allowed to pull any more electricity out of the grid, so what they have to do is get morecomputing for the watts they have," Ditzel said in an interview on Monday. He said it was too soon to give a revenue forecast forTransmeta's server-related business, although it could be asignificant contributor by the second half of this year. The Japanese companies that have unveiled new PCs using thechip include Casio Computer Co Ltd. Its Cassiopeia Fiva, littlebigger than half a sheet of letter-sized paper, runs up to ninehours on a single battery charge and weighs less than 2.2lbs. Ditzel said the chip's reputation was undented by a recalllate last year by NEC Corp. of a few hundred notebook computerswith faulty chips, adding that NEC had since shown its faith inCrusoe by using it in another new product.
Power Saver
The tiny start-up is dwarfed by industry giants such as IntelCorp. but is growing rapidly, with revenues of $12.4 million inthe fourth quarter of last year compared with zero in theyear-ago period, while quarter-on-quarter growth of more than 50percent is projected for the January-March period.
