TM8000 “Astro” Aimed at Energy-Efficient Notebooks and Servers

Introduced in early 2000, Transmeta Corp.’s Crusoe TM5000 series mobile processors are famous for energy-saving, battery-friendly operation, but — while popular overseas, especially among Japan’s subnotebook vendors — have managed to score only a few design wins among U.S. notebook and Tablet PC manufacturers. In the third quarter of this year, Transmeta will ship a chip that it hopes will compare favorably to anything Intel or AMD have got, for blade servers and quiet, fanless desktops as well as lightweight laptops: the next-generation TM8000, codenamed “Astro.”

In addition to enhanced versions of Transmeta’s Code Morphing software and LongRun power- and temperature-saving technologies, the company has revealed that the TM8000 will be able to execute up to eight instructions per clock cycle, compared to four for most competitors.

Equally important, “Astro” will incorporate three sophisticated system interconnects or chipset functions into the CPU itself: A DDR400 memory interface, AGP 4X graphics interface, and 400MHz HyperTransport I/O bus will all be built into the chip, allowing still greater power savings as well as space savings for ultra-compact system designs.

The 0.13-micron-process CPU will also include the industry-standard Low Pin Count (LPC) bus for communication with new, high-density LPC flash memories.

Categories: Technology