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Right away, one problem was obvious; the company had no customers at the announcement event. While a market for mobile devices consuming little power was growing (especially in Japan), it wasn’t quite there yet. In most portable devices, the CPU wasn’t even the primary power consumer. Such an honor would be given to the HDD, FDD, CDROM, graphics processor, or the screen. Add to this that customers weren’t yet thinking about things in terms of heat production or power consumption, and you have a product with no obvious buyer. Those who did see Transmeta’s announcement as a big deal were Intel and AMD. They’d already been in a clock speed race, and now they were going to aim their sights on power. Back to the topic of no customers having been present at the announcement, the first consumer device to ship with a Transmeta Crusoe CPU was the Sony VAIO PCG-C1VN PictureBook in September of 2000.

Right away, one problem was obvious; the company had no customers at the announcement event. While a market for mobile devices consuming little power was growing (especially in Japan), it wasn’t quite there yet. In most portable devices, the CPU wasn’t even the primary power consumer. Such an honor would be given to the HDD, FDD, CDROM, graphics processor, or the screen. Add to this that customers weren’t yet thinking about things in terms of heat production or power consumption, and you have a product with no obvious buyer. Those who did see Transmeta’s announcement as a big deal were Intel and AMD. They’d already been in a clock speed race, and now they were going to aim their sights on power. Back to the topic of no customers having been present at the announcement, the first consumer device to ship with a Transmeta Crusoe CPU was the Sony VAIO PCG-C1VN PictureBook in September of 2000.

(post is archived)

[–] • 4 pts

That was a fascinating processor though. I remember when it was announced in the 90s, it promised a lot.

Seems like most things, however. It did have an impact, but it was the impact of forcing the market leaders to re-think their products.

[–] • 2 pts

Yes I had no idea about what cutting edge progress was being made back then

[–] • 1 pt

I seem to remember they were promising much with little power use. Kind of like what a Pi introduced us to.

[–] • 1 pt

IIRC They were in discussions to buy Commodore assets related to the Aimga and start a new series of computers, especially laptops.

[–] • 1 pt

I did not know that. So much what if and could-have-been here.

[–] • 1 pt

The jew (Gould) who own owned and controlled Commodore clearly lacked vision and like a good kike was too greedy.

The Commodore and Amiga brands went through several owners, especially for their patients, and Commodore eventually ended up in Italy.

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Fascinating article. LOL, I was thinking about this chip recently and wondered what happened to it. As is usually the case, Intel took many of their ideas and implemented them. They kind of remind me of Texas Instruments in that they build some great stuff but really suck at timing and marketing.