[H-GEN] A series of snips from CNet

Frank Brand fbrand at uq.net.au
Thu Sep 3 00:23:07 EDT 1998


Oh what a tangled, insestuous web we weavw when ...

Who would have thought ...Linus working for a Microsoft founder!!

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Some relatively small start-ups with big ambitions are planning chips
aimed at taking away business from Intel, but they face daunting
obstacles that question their very survival.

Two newcomers, Transmeta and Rise, are working on low-cost, low-powered
chips for desktops and portables. A third, Metaflow, is planning an
Intel clone with parent company ST Microelectronics.

Rise will announce its mP6 processor October 12 at the Microprocessor
Forum, sources at the company said, and shipments will begin soon
afterward. Aimed at the desktop and mobile market, the mP6 will consume
less power than Intel equivalents.

Transmeta is said to be working on roughly the same thing but is
wrapping the project in more secrecy. The company did not return calls,
and its Web site had no content as of today.

Transmeta, however, appears to be staffed by known industry figures.
Employees include Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, and Robert Collins,
a former Texas Instruments engineer better known for founding the Intel
Secrets Web site, which is dedicated to ferreting out news about the
chip giant. It also has the financial backing of billionaire Paul Allen,
a cofounder of Microsoft. (Allen is also an investor in CNET.)

While most observers suspect that Transmeta will come out with an Intel
clone for mobile chips, some sources indicated that the company's chip
may run Windows programs through a form of highly efficient emulation to
avoid patent or copyright issues. This is similar to the strategy
pursued by IMS and Exponential, another one-time high flyer that folded
last year.

-- 
Frank Brand
E-mail: fbrand at uq.net.au
Homepage: http://www.uq.net.au/~zzfbrand




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