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What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO
- chihuahua 10mo agoI interviewed there around 1997 or 98. As part of the interview process, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Linus Torvalds. (I did not get an offer)
- CrankyBear 10mo agoTo me, what's important about Transmeta is that they brought over some kid developer named Linus Torvalds to the States from Finland. He had invented some hobby operating systen. I wonder what ever happened to him. :-)
- bohrbohra 10mo agoAll I know about Transmeta is that Linus Torvalds moved over from Finland to the USA to work at this startup. Other than that, it seems to have sunk without a trace.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- MikeNotThePope 10mo agoI worked at Transmeta. I remember for the launch of one of the Crusoe-powered laptops, there was a bug that prevented the BIOS from booting Linux. Since the laptop was only going to run Windows ME, they didn’t fix it. Of course when Linus got a demo unit to play with, the first thing he did was try to install Linux on it. He let everyone know, and the bug was fixed soon there after.
- Barbing 10mo agoNice. Glad you were a part of it at the time?
- MikeNotThePope 10mo agoMy job was essentially playing videos games for two years to stress test the chips. I was pretty good at Diablo 2 by the end of my run :) It was one of my better jobs!
- bitwize 10mo agoBack in the day, Linux was less tolerant of incorrect behavior than Windows 9x was, and would crash, terminate a process, or otherwise surface errors at times when Windows 9x would just keep going until the bugs corrupted memory or similar. Having Linus aboard as a technical advisor, soneone to whom you can say "hey, the CPU is crashing here, what's the kernel trying to do at that spot?", alone, probably would have been well worth the money to hire him.
- monocasa 10mo agoHe was also one of the world leaders at the time of people who understood x86 privileged space like the back of their hand, and hadn't signed any AMD or Intel NDAs. Linux was originally designed not to be portable, but as a platform for playing with 386 privileged mode constructs. Portability came later (with Alpha IIRC).
- NelsonMinar 10mo agoNot before becoming the worst sort of patent trolls. "in January 2009, Transmeta sold itself to Novafora, who in turn sold the patent portfolio to Intellectual Ventures". (This was long after Linus had left.)
- noelwelsh 10mo agoDidn't Transmeta's technology end up in Apple's PowerPC emulator Rosetta, following the switch to Intel? IIRC Transmeta's technology came out of HP (?) research into dynamic inlining of compiled code, giving performance comparable to profile-guided optimization without the upfront work. It worked similarly to an inlining JIT compiler, except it was working with already compiled code. Very interesting approach and one I think could be generally useful. Imagine if, say, your machine's bootup process was optimized for the hardware you actually have. I'm going off decades old memories here, so the details might be incorrect.
- iszomer 10mo agoI remember it being in one of Sony VAIO's product lines called the picturebook, for its small form factor and a swivel webcam.
- em-bee 10mo agohat was the first laptop i owned ;-) as a frequent traveler it was a very useful device.
- iszomer 10mo agoIt was my first sub-notebook, coming from a thinkpad 600e, and though my memory is fuzzy from 20+ years ago, I think I used an atheros wifi pcmcia/cardbus? card with it at some point. It was also awkward some times having to carry their external 3.5" floppy drive too.
- hayley-patton 10mo agoDynamo <https://www.cse.iitm.ac.in/~krishna/courses/2022/odd-cs6013/BalaDusterwaldBanerjiaPLDI2000.pdf https://www.cse.iitm.ac.in/~krishna/courses/2022/odd-cs6013/...>?
- drob518 10mo agoIn the early 1990s, HP had a product called “SoftPC” that was used to emulate x86 on PA-RISC. IIRC, however, this was an OEM product written externally. My recollection of how it worked was similar to what is described in the Dynamo paper. I’m wondering if HP bought the technology and whether Dynamo was a later iteration of it? Essentially, it was a tracing JIT. Regardless, all these ideas ended up morphing into Rosetta (versions 1 and 2), though as I understand it, Rosetta also uses a couple hardware hooks to speed up some cases that would be slow if just performed in software.
- scq 10mo agoOne aspect of Transmeta not mentioned by this article is their "Code Morphing" technique used by the Crusoe and Efficeon processors. This was a low level piece of software similar to a JIT compiler that translated x86 instructions to the processor's native VLIW instruction set. Similar technology was developed later by Nvidia, which had licensed Transmeta's IP, for the Denver CPU cores used in the HTC Nexus 9 and the Carmel CPU cores in the Magic Leap One. Denver was originally intended to target both ARM and x86 but they had to abandon the x86 support due to patent issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver
- u8080 10mo agoVery similar approach is used in MCST Elbrus CPUs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S#Supported_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S#Supported_operating_...
- lproven 10mo agoCode morphing was fascinating. I had no idea nVidia tried anything similar. I always felt Transmeta could have carved out a small but sustained niche by offering even less-efficient "morphing" for other architectures, especially discontinued ones. 680x0, SPARC, MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC... anything the vendors stopped developing hardware (or competitive hardware) for.
- SuperscalarMeme 10mo agoSo glad someone else also knew about this connection :) Details about Denver are pretty minimal, but this talk at Stanford is one of the most detailed I’ve been able to find for those interested. It’s fascinating stuff with lots of similarities to how Transmeta operated: https://youtu.be/oEuXA0_9feM?si=WXuBDzCXMM4_5YhA https://youtu.be/oEuXA0_9feM?si=WXuBDzCXMM4_5YhA
- Symmetry 10mo agoThere was a Hot Chips presentation by them that also gave some good details. Unlike the original Transmeta design they first ran code natively and only recompiled the hot spots.
- rsynnott 10mo ago> But they were still a technology company, and if their plans had gone well, they would have sold their product to dotcoms I'm not sure that that's really correct; they were very desktop-oriented.
- drob518 10mo agoWell, they ended up being mobile-oriented, but even that didn’t work. They were definitely not server-oriented and they really couldn’t compete at desktop. Honestly, while the tech was interesting, it wasn’t really solving a problem that anyone was struggling with.
- organsnyder 10mo ago> it wasn’t really solving a problem that anyone was struggling with They did push the envelope on efficiency. My Crusoe-equipped laptop could go six hours on the stock battery (12+ on the extended batteries) back when most laptops struggled to get three.
- drob518 10mo agoYes, but wasn’t most of that because its performance was low? If you had dialed back the performance of an equivalent Pentium (model whatever was current at that time), would it have been in the same power ballpark?
- organsnyder 10mo agoNo, there was no way to "dial back" performance in any meaningful way. This was before CPU throttling was really a thing.
- dlcarrier 10mo agoThey probably would have worked well as server processor, because they were pretty energy efficient, but they were slow the first time a program was run, but sped up after caching the translation. Most servers run the same software over and over again, so they could have been competitive. It would have been an extremely difficult time to enter the market though, because at the time Intel was successfully paying server manufacturers to not offer superior competing products.
- gdiamos 10mo agoTransmeta made a technology bet that dynamic compilation could beat OOO super scalar CPUs in SPEC. It was wrong, but it was controversial among experts at the time. I’m glad that they tried it even though it turned out to be wrong. Many of the lessons learned are documented in systems conferences and incorporated into modern designs, ie GPUs. To me transmeta is a great example of a venture investment. If it would have beaten Intel at SPEC by a margin, it would have dominated the market. Sometimes the only way to get to the bottom of a complex system is to build it. The same could be said of scaling laws and LLMs. It was theory before Dario, Ilya, OpenAI, et al trained it.
- vlovich123 10mo agoI think more about the timing being incorrect - betting on software in an era of exponential hardware growth was unwise (software performance can’t scale that way). The problem is that you need to marry it with a significantly better CPU/architecture because the JIT is about not losing performance while retaining back compat. However, if you add it onto a better CPU it’s a fine technique to bet on - case in point Apple’s move away from Intel onto homegrown CPUs.
- cpgxiii 10mo ago> However, if you add it onto a better CPU it’s a fine technique to bet on - case in point Apple’s move away from Intel onto homegrown CPUs. I don't think Apple is a good example here. Arm was extremely well-established when Apple began its own phone/tablet CPU designs. By the time Macs began to transition, much of their developer ecosystem was already familiar. Apple's CPUs are actually notably conservative when compared to the truly wild variety of Arm implementations; no special vector instructions (e.g. SVE), no online translation (e.g. Nvidia Denver), no crazy little/big/bigger core complexes.
- almostgotcaught 10mo ago> no special vector instructions (e.g. SVE) Wut - SVE and SME are literally Apple designs (AMX) which have been "back ported".
- Theodores 10mo agoI liked the Transmeta web page from before they launched. It was just bare HTML with no styling. It said: This page is not here yet. The product hype and lack of knowledge about what it was meant that nobody knew what to expect. In these hyped expectations, and with Torvalds on board, everyone expected that everything would be different. But it wasn't. A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this incredible vision of everyone on Segways to nobody wanting one. The hype was part of the problem with Transmeta. Even in it's delivered form it could have found a niche. For example, the network computer was in vogue at the time, thanks to Oracle. A different type of device, like a Chromebook might have worked. With Torvalds connected to Transmeta and the stealthy development, we never did get to hear about who was really behind Transmeta and why.
- tyingq 10mo agohttps://web.archive.org/web/19970710102251/http://www.transmeta.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19970710102251/http://www.transm... Then, https://web.archive.org/web/20000229173916/http://www.transmeta.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000229173916/http://www.transm... , when content appeared around Feb 2000. Product launch PDF from Jan 19, 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000815231116/http://www.transmeta.com/press/download/pdf/ditzel.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20000815231116/http://www.transm...
- Theodores 10mo agoThanks for that, I was almost right - This web page is not here yet. I still use this as important placeholder text, not that anyone outside HN would get the reference.
- sgerenser 10mo agoIt looks like rather than hiring a designer, they let one of their engineers (or worse, the CEO) design the Transmeta logo. I don’t know what that font is, but it might be even worse than Papyrus.
- tyingq 10mo ago
- Tepix 10mo agoI had a pretty slick Toshiba Libretto L1 from Japan at the time - twice as wide as long, with a 1280x600 display. Its 600Mhz Transmeta Crusoe CPU was pretty slow, unfortunately. Like a Celeron 333Mhz IIRC.
- organsnyder 10mo agoI used a Fujitsu Lifebook P-2046 laptop at university. It had an 800Mhz Crusoe chip. IIRC it shipped with 256 MB of RAM, which I eventually upgraded to 384. Somehow I managed to tolerate running Gentoo on it. Compiling X, OpenOffice, or Firefox were multi-day affairs. One thing that annoyed me was I could never get the graphics card (an ATI Rage 128 with 4 MB RAM, IIRC) working with acceleration under Linux, and that was when compositing window managers were gaining prevalence; I kept trying to get it working in the hope that it would take a bit of the load off of the struggling CPU. Despite the bad performance, it worked really well for a college student: it was great for taking notes, and the batteries (extended main and optical drive bay) would easily last a full day of classes. It wouldn't run Eclipse very well, but most of my CS assignments were done using a text editor, anyways.
- jpmattia 10mo ago> so IBM handled manufacturing of its first-generation CPUs. I'm curious: Is there a consensus on which startup companies achieved success using IBM as a fab? or if not a consensus, I'd settle for anecdotes too. My own company (which built 40G optical transponders) used them back in that era. While the tech was first rate, the pricing was something to behold.
- rwmj 10mo ago> the pricing was something to behold I guess you mean that not in a good way?
- noir_lord 10mo agoI'd imagine so, IBM are many things (some of them brilliant) but I don't think anyone's ever accused them of been cheap.
- dlcarrier 10mo agoI don't know about startups, but the Cell processor in the PS3 and the Xenon processor in the Xbox 360 we both fabricated by IBM.
- pdw 10mo agoThe Nintendo GameCube and Wii also had IBM CPUs.
- wmf 10mo agoCisco and Cray used IBM fabs for multiple generations in the aughts but they weren't startups. Before the rise of TSMC it was a weird situation where fabless companies were kind of picking up extra capacity from IDMs.
- jecel 10mo agoMy own memory of the events (which might be very wrong) was that a new vice-president of IBM semiconductors decided to drop bulk CMOS and focus exclusively on SOI (Silicon On Insulator). That suddenly left Transmeta without chips to sell. They had to scramble to find a new supplier and design their next generation processor for it (since the Crusoe wasn't portable to any other fabs). They were able to launch their Efficeon on TSMC 130nm (with a later version on Fujitsu 90nm) but the gap in supply was far worse for a startup than it would have been for a big company.
- vjvjvjvjghv 10mo agoJust looked up their investments. These were the quaint days when 88 million investment was a lot of money.
- dlcarrier 10mo agoTL;DR: What happened to Transmeta was that in 2005, Transmeta shifted to licensing intellectual property rather than selling CPUs. …they became a patent troll
- sophacles 10mo agoNonsense. They are licensing IP they created. Thats different qualitatively and quantitatively than buying patent rights for cheap (since the even the original patent holders didn't think it was worth much) and suing random people who happen to use a product that may infringe on the patent.
- dlcarrier 10mo agoIf their patent portfolio wasn't being used for patent trolling, why is it currently owned by Intellectual Ventures, once called "the ultimate patent troll" by journalists. (https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5375304/intellectual-ventures-goes-to-trial-against-google-and-motorola https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5375304/intellectual-ventu...)
- Tor3 10mo agoYou answered that yourself, didn't you? You first said that Transmeta became a patent troll. But the one doing the trolling (a word related to "trawling") is Intellectual Ventures. Not Transmeta, the latter did actual work and did create products.
- sophacles 10mo agoSo intellectual ventures - notably a different company than transmeta - is being a patent troll. That means transmeta became a patent troll too? Why should I believe what you say anyway? Wendy Verlander - notably a different person than you - is a well known patent troll. That means you are just another patent troll not worth my attention. (At least according to your reasoning).
- OhNoNotAgain_99 10mo ago[dead]
- FiddlerClamp 10mo agoI remember my Compaq TC1000 well, a pen tablet convertible running Windows very sluggishly with a Transmeta Crusoe processor. Nice promise, execution not so much unfortunately.
- BennyGezerit 10mo agoA project with Chuck Thacker while he at MSR
- PaulDavisThe1st 10mo agoMore interestingly, whatever happened to David "Pardo" Keppel, who PhD thesis and person were somewhat central to Transmeta (at least as far as I remember it). For someone who was doing a CS PhD in the mid 90s, he has a vanishingly tiny online footprint. Not sure if that is inspiring or concerning ...
- fullstop 10mo agoHopefully he is living his best life and doing what he enjoys.
- BennyGezerit 10mo agoHe's at Intel, I believe. I found his name on some Intel patents from 2021 or so (I worked with him at Transmeta)
- PaulHoule 10mo agoGod, I had a manager who was the worst manager I ever had who was the last one to stay at Transmeta to turn off the lights. Between working there and working at DEC he could boast that he'd supervised both Dave Cutler and Linus Torvalds. One time I had to unravel a race condition and he seemed pissed that it took a few days and when I tried to explain the complexity he told me his name was on a patent for a system that would let several VAXes share a single disk and didn't need a lecture.
- DetroitThrow 10mo ago>he told me his name was on a patent for a system that would let several VAXes share a single disk Ha, "We stand on the shoulders of giants"...
- jagged-chisel 10mo ago“Ah, let’s just put it on a VAX then…”
- lief79 10mo agoI recall a coworker being excited several years ago about catching someone lying about their linux experience before their interview. If what they said was true, they'd have to have been working on it during it's first year. He was then excited after the interview because the individual had been working at transmeta with Linus, and his resume was accurate. He didn't end up working with us, but I wasn't privy to any additional information.
- deater 10mo agoat the time, just out of undergrad, I ended up working for the remnants of the #9 Video Card company that had been bought by S3 and was masking a last effort at making a Linux-based Transmeta-powered "web-pad" (tablet): the "Frontpath ProGear" (new management wouldn't let them give it a Beatles related name that #9 equipment used to get) in any case due to the unfortunate timing of the dot-com implosion it never really went anywhere (I wish I had managed to keep one, they used to appear on ebay occasionally) the one thing I remember is that it was memory limited, it had 64MB but I think the code-morphing software really wanted 16MB of it which really cut into the available system memory
- hinkley 10mo agoThe last non Apple laptop I had was a Fujitsu lifebook with a Transmeta processor in it. I did way too much work trying to get Linux to use every bit of the hardware. Mostly researching what others had done, but also contributed to the ACPI code - half the buttons didn’t work on Linux because the factory default was broken. Windows had its own, but rather than pilfer that, someone pointed out that later lifebooks had fewer issues so I backported fixes from those, and I think invented one of my own by trying things that seemed reasonable. I also looked at the TM specific flags that they documented, and was surprised to find some that hadn’t been enabled on Linux despite Linus still working there at the time. They looked to be useful for low power mode, and at that time I was looking for a carry-everywhere laptop with decent run time so I invested in those flags. Turns out they didn’t do anything observable to the system. Power draw was unphased by flipping these toggles. I don’t believe those changes ever got merged. But it was the Linux fuckery that convinced me I wanted a bask shell and a Unix CLI and just get shit done without having to fiddle all the time. I had better things to do. So I’ve been on apple since except for Pi, Docker, and work.
- axiolite 10mo agoTransmeta floundered because Intel simply appropriated their technologies, allowing them to jump ahead in energy efficiency: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1565866/intel-settles-patent-case-with-transmeta-for-250m.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1565866/intel-settles-...
- axiolite 10mo agoIntel infringed on one of its patents when it inserted a technology called "enhanced SpeedStep" into its models starting in 1991 (which predates the Pentium Pro) [...] Transmeta was the first company to emphasize that power consumption was going to be a major headache for chip and computer makers. Transmeta's ideas did spark Intel to look more closely at power consumption. https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/transmeta-sues-intel-for-patent-infringement-1/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/transmeta-sues-intel...
- hinkley 10mo agoI wonder if Transmeta could have ever gotten us to a spot where new instructions could be added to old hardware via firmware updates, allowing us to simplify how code gets compiled for backward compatibility.
- urlgrey 10mo agoin 1997 I saw Linus Torvalds speak at UC Berkeley following his move to California to work at Transmeta. I was a computer science undergrad at UC Davis, and took Amtrak to Berkeley along with some friends to see Linus in person. Linux was building momentum, and Linus was a real celebrity to those in the space. Supporting Linus and the Linux community is a great legacy for Transmeta, even if their products didn't find commercial success.
- seg_lol 10mo agohttps://www.intellectualventures.com/files/buzz/press_releases/Transmeta-semiconductor-press-release-FINAL.pdf https://www.intellectualventures.com/files/buzz/press_releas...