Transmeta says that it is considering leaving the business of making x86 compatible processors, and becoming as an IP business instead.
This week, the Santa Clara, California, company said it now definitely plans to increase its licensing activities, and that it would “complete a critical evaluation of the economics of its current business model of designing, developing, and selling x86-compatible microprocessor products.”
Analysts expect Transmeta to announce job cuts at their January 21 conference call.
“The cuts could be as low as 100 or as high as 200 people,” Piper Jaffray analyst Richard Shannon said. Transmeta has about 325 employees, he said.
[...] Silicon Valley is known for “noble failures” – those companies that aim for the stars, run out of fuel, and end up as large smoking craters in the ground. Take Transmeta – please! A year and a half after they stopped making chips, Transmeta is suing Intel for violating its low-power patents. One of the patents in the suit covers “adaptive power control,’’ which changes the speed of a microprocessor on the fly to adapt to usage and power needs. Transmeta applied for that patent in January 2000 and received it in August, said John O’Hara Horsley, general counsel for Transmeta. He said Intel’s SpeedStep technology, which throttles back a computer’s performance to conserve power, appears to violate the Transmeta patent. Under patent law, the filing date for a patent application determines who came up with an invention first. [...]