Hot x86 chips for '98 and beyond
http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/column1/wintel19.html
The last 2 paragraphs :
The third, and potentially most interesting, effort involves Transmeta, a
startup formed less than three years ago by former Sun Microsystems chip
architect David Ditzel. Initial word had Transmeta at work on a PowerPC
clone. Then, the buzz was that the company was designing a Java chip aimed
at the nascent market for low-cost network computers. Now, it seems that
Transmeta's effort is focused more on an x86 alternative that boasts either
low-power, multimedia or network-computer capabilities. Or perhaps all
three.
One interesting tidbit to emerge from Transmeta is the news that it has
hired Linus Torvalds, the designer of the Linux operating system. Apart from
Torvalds' considerable software skills, he's plugged into an influential
community of Unix programmers, which could give Transmeta a big leg up in
any effort to design a processor tuned to handle real-world networked
applications.
John Taylor Institute of Government
Computer and Network University of Georgia
Operations Manager
john@www.cviog.uga.edu http://www.cviog.uga.edu/