Transmeta calls it a day and looks for a buyer

Coulda shoulda chip vendor Transmeta has thrown in the towel and put itself on the auction block. The low-power chip vendor, which launched in 2000 and IPO’d later that year, said yesterday that it had “initiated a process to seek a potential sale of the Company”. The decision came after it had actively explored “a full range …

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it

The only reason anyone has ever heard of them is that you-know-who worked for them!

[Ian]

hmmmm Apple?

"Should you fancy taking on a chip company that said it was going to revolutionise the CPU market turned IP licensing house, you just need to get in touch with Piper Jaffray & Co. "

I wonder if His jobsness is still seeking private R&D?

I figure Steve has decided that since he probably cant win head to head on x86 that he'd just reinvent his own semi-propietory platform that would make it much more difficult to make clones from. (that PPC company he purchased recently)

It would sure throw stones on the track for the hackintoshes/iphone clones and make them try to emulate altvec again.. IF it was still based on X86 to a degree, it would still run games, windows... and the few apps that mac users actually wish to use -- the best of both worlds? (and would give apple the excuse they need again to be 'a bit expensive')

Or maybe I have just been blinded by my 2nd hand PPC cube, 1mb of cache goodness in 2000 would have been like heaven.

I feel Apple had to run windows apps in some form to be taken seriously in the present market, but I did let out a cry inside when they announced switching to intel.

[Anonymous Coward]

One can only hope

that they aren't purchased by one of the IP lawsuit troll companies whose only goal in life is to buy up IP and sue the hell out of everyone else on the planet.

[Stephen Huyssoon]

Get Mad, Not Sad

Transmeta just needs an injection of alien technology.

Or maybe just become partners with AMD?

Why can't that work?

Bah, I get tired of all the failing companies. It doesn't seem right.

[Allan Rutland]

Hmm...

So, to name two, Intel and Nvidia are paying out nice large license fee's. Why does those same two seem very likely to buy up Transmeta and screw over the other one with said licensing fee's. But giving Nvidia's recent ability to piddle away cash through screwups, guess Intel surely has to be best bet to buy them up.