The mysterious Transmeta Inc is working on what is effectively the first software upgradable CPU, according to the latest in a long series of rumors. According to the CT Micro web site (http://www.ctmicro.net/), the Intel-clone chip is a CPU with an embedded north bridge, working on a proprietary socket…with 16Mb memory and a special flash chip. With a low power consumption – quoted at 4W for the 500MHz version – the part is expected to be aimed initially at the mobile systems market, and a die said to be four times smaller than the Pentium III, production costs are also expected to be low.
But, says the site, the CPU isn’t x86 native and uses the widely rumored translation techniques that Santa Clara, California-based Transmeta has been working on. That means it is unlikely to be as fast as Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc chips running at the same clock speeds. The software upgrade capabilities could be used to add support for different graphics instruction sets, such as AMD’s 3Dnow! and Intel’s SSE Streaming SIMD Extensions at a later stage. Needless to say with secretive Transmeta, whose web page currently says only that this web page is not here yet, none of this is confirmed.
