AMD Gives Transmeta $7.5M Transfusion

On Friday, Transmeta announced that AMD had swapped $7.5M for Transmeta stock. The reason given was to "thank" transmeta for supporting AMD’s AMD64 64-bit instruction-set extensions to the 32-bit x86 ISA (instruction-set architecture) and to support Transmeta’s continued research into low-power processor design. The UK’s online tech scandal sheet The Register conjectures that AMD is supporting Transmeta to help keep its lawsuit alive against Intel.

I covered Transmeta’s coming-out party, held in tony Saratoga, CA at Villa Montalvo, as an analyst with The Microprocessor Report. At the time, Transmeta’s claim to fame was a VLIW machine and compiler that could emulate the x86 architecture but consume much less power than Intel’s (or AMD’s) processors at the time. Transmeta’s innovative LongRun technology allowed the processor to cut its own clock rate and core operating voltage based on instantaneous processing demand. These were innovations back in January, 2000 when Transmeta rolled out its Crusoe processor at Villa Montalvo. So innovative, in fact, that Intel was caught flat footed. However, Transmeta succeeded in tweaking the bear’s nose and then failing to deliver in a timely manner. Crusoe processors didn’t roll for several months following the announcement. Intel had time to develop its own, good-enough low-power processor technology called SpeedStep, introduced only 10 months later in October, 2000. For Intel’s SpeedStep, good enough delivered in a timely manner trumped Transmeta’s more elegant LongRun technology and the company’s Crusoe processor became a SpeedBump.

It remains to be seen  whether there’s enough of Transmeta left to innovate even with AMD’s cash infusion. Transmeta has proven (as if that was necessary) that competition is really good for our industry. Here’s wishing them well, for their sake as well as AMD’s and Intel’s.