Transmeta shows Crusoe roadmaps

Matthew Perry said that notebooks should have the right combination of price and performance and software and hardware.

An HP unit using Transmeta technology will be launched on November 7th as part of a worldwide Microsoft launch, he said.

Seven out of the top 10 notebook market leaders in Japan use Transmeta, he said, while worldwide four out of 10 use its microprocessors.

The demand for notebooks was a combination of low selling price, long battery life, wireless connectivity, portability (mobility) and different form factors.

He flew through his presentation in a low rumbling voice but we think we caught most of it.

He said that the switch to notebooks sold versus standards PCs was far faster in Asia than in the US, with this type of PC far outselling desktops in Japan.

That is going to be matched in the US and Europe in the next few years, he said.

Japan was far ahead of other countries in Wi-Fi technology too, with every MacDonalds burger point wireless LANNed up. Tokyo in particular is so wired that it's possible to cruise round the Internet using a notebook without losing hot spots, he claimed. (We think that's what he said - he was speaking so fast and so low it was kind of hard to tell).

He said Transmeta is currently sampling its 1GHz TM5800, made using copper technology, measuring 55 square millimeters, and fabbed at TSMC.

"We do things in our software that other people have to do in hardware," he said. Other chip companies had so spend weeks creating features and functions that Transmeta could do in hours, he claimed.

Here is the current Crusoe roadmap:

Perry estimated that it would achieve 40-45% gross margin and return to profitability by the end of 2003*. TMTA's competitor (Intel) had focused on pure GHz which wasn't necessarily the best combination for a portable device. µ

* READER OF THE MILLENNIUM Paul R. Engel points out that Transmeta has never been profitable. He's quite right. So it can't return to profitability, never having got there yet.