From the Show Floor

Today while eating lunch at a table that was way too weighted towards members of the press and not enough actual industry people I had a discussion with the founder of a start up that uses IP blocks to create video ASIC designs.

He's spent a career in the video side of the semiconductor industry and was attending the show to get a sense of what competitors were doing and to do some networking. But in spite of his affliliation -- his career, his own company -- he was not as hot on the semiconductor space as he was on YouTube.  Everyone I spoke to at The Microprocessor Forum this week seemed to have something to say about Google's acquisition of the video hosting web company for $1.65 billion -- a company that no one had heard of a year ago.

Indeed, it was a big news week, with various executives resigning over stock option problems (but not in the semiconductor space) and Transmeta suing Intel.

The buzz among people who ought to know about such things but didn't want to be identified was that the battle between the two companies -- one liliput and one gargantuan -- would be long and nasty. A Transmeta victory would be a longshot, one person said. But that doesn't mean that Transmeta is not in the right. 

It was fitting that the suit was filed during Fall Microprocessor Forum, the event where Transmeta had previously announced its LongRun2 power management technology that has since been licensed by a handful of big chipmakers.  I didn't see anyone from Transmeta at the event. I guess the company was too busy filing the lawsuit.