New generation Efficeon enters production: News from Transmeta Corp

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Transmeta Corp has begun limited production shipments of its second-generation Efficeon family of processors, the TM8800 series. The Efficeon TM8800 processor is manufactured with state-of-the-art 90nm CMOS semiconductor technology. By using 90nm process technology, the Efficeon TM8800 achieves both higher performance and improved performance per watt.

In addition, the Efficeon TM8800 features AntiVirusNX technology, being the first low power x86-microprocessor to provide hardware support for the antivirus protection enabled by Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).

The Efficeon TM8800 processor family will be formally introduced on 5th October at the Fall Processor Forum, in San Jose, California, and Processor Forum Asia on 19th October in Hsin Chu, Taiwan.

The Efficeon TM8800 is manufactured using the state-of-the-art 90nm CMOS process technology at Fujitsu Electronics Devices Group Akiruno Advanced Technology Centre near Tokyo.

The initial 90nm TM8800 chips feature a maximum clock speed of up to 1.6GHz.

Transmeta has already sampled Efficeon processors with even greater clock speeds, and expects to sample 2GHz products by the end of 2004.

Chip power consumption for a given clock frequency is greatly reduced on the Efficeon TM8800 processor compared with the prior generation 130nm TM8600.

In addition, 90nm technology reduces die size and ultimately reduces manufacturing costs.

The Efficeon TM8800 processor is optimised for a wide range of computing applications and new types of devices such as notebooks, ultrapersonal computers (UPCs), tablets, BladePCs, cluster workstations and fanless media centres.

The Efficeon TM8800 processor continues Transmeta's commitment to set the standard for efficient computing, enabling new classes of computing and consumer electronic devices which can benefit from high performance, excellent energy efficiency, low heat and fanless design.

Systems based on the 90nm Efficeon TM8800 processor will begin shipping this month, starting with a new notebook computer from Sharp Corp that was introduced on 9th September in Japan.

The recently announced Orion Multisystems Cluster Workstation will also use the new 90nm Efficeon TM8800 when the system begins shipping later this year.

"The 90nm Efficeon TM8800 gives users the computational power needed for today's high performance devices and applications", said Matthew R Perry, President and CEO at Transmeta Corp.

"The high performance, energy efficient architecture of the Efficeon TM8800 promises to enable exciting new products from our customers".

The Efficeon TM8800 features the new AntiVirusNX technology that works in conjunction with the Data Execution Protection feature shipping from Microsoft in the Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).

The Efficeon TM8800 processor and all future versions of the Efficeon processor will provide this capability to protect against the execution of code from memory regions intended for data.

"The spirit behind Windows XP SP2 is simple: provide proactive protection for PCs in a more complete way to keep attackers from getting in to damage the system", said Neil Charney, Director, Windows Client Division, Microsoft Corp.

"Customers using Transmeta's new Efficeon processors will be more secure, since the processor and Windows XP SP2 work together to help prevent a whole class of malicious code from running at all".

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