A Top-Secret Chip Is Finally Unveiled

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By Newsweek Editors

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For the first time in ages, the buzz in Silicon Valley last week wasn't about a clever new e-commerce site, or a stock that jumped over the moon. Rather, it concerned a company called Transmeta, until now known mainly for operating under a Mason-like veil of secrecy for five years. Its mystery products, unveiled at a packed press conference in Saratoga, Calif., are the Crusoe processors--a family of silicon chips that can fully access the media-rich world of the Internet while consuming only a fraction of the battery power of a normal processor. Crusoe works by performing many of its functions in software, which demands less power and can be fixed remotely when bugs surface. If the company's claims for Crusoe pan out, by the end of the year we could have ultrathin laptops that perform nearly as fast as Intel-based machines but don't run out of juice 10,000 feet above the Rockies. Transmeta also hopes Crusoe chips will power a new generation of portable Web devices that run a variety of operating systems, including the increasingly popular Linux.

With the new venture, Transmeta CEO David Ditzel, a veteran of Sun Microsystems, is aiming squarely at Intel, the world's largest chipmaker. His secret weapon: an all-star cadre of engineers from about 20 countries, including Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux. Intel was quiet last week, but, significantly, its Web site highlighted its own chip offerings for portable computers. It remains to be seen if Transmeta can dent Intel's dominance and survive the rough waters of the chip industry. In any case, it's all more proof that Silicon Valley increasingly sees its future in devices--not the desktop.

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