Transmeta's new chip takes a Sharp turn

Chipmaker Transmeta has found a new taker for its Efficeon processor. Sharp Systems of America on Monday announced that it has incorporated the low-power chip in its 2-pound Actius MM20 notebook, due in April. That will mark the debut of the processor in the U.S. market. The 1GHz Efficeon TM8600 chip will let the notebook process up to twice as many instructions per clock cycle as the earlier MM10, the company said. The chip also will let the system run for three hours using the standard battery and nine hours on extended life battery.

Last year, Transmeta unveiled technical details of the chip, on which it had placed its hopes for a comeback after suffering through some difficult times. The company had redesigned the chip and had written a new version of the "code morphing" software that let it run Microsoft's Windows and applications originally written for Intel-based PCs.