Transmeta Licenses Its LongRun2 Technologies to Fujitsu for use in Multiple Proc

Transmeta Corporation announced that Transmeta's advanced LongRun2™ technologies for power management and transistor leakage control have been licensed to Fujitsu Limited. Fujitsu will utilize Transmeta's LongRun2 technologies for use in Fujitsu's current and future generation semiconductor products.

Transmeta's LongRun2 technologies address the problems of excessive chip heat and transistor leakage, which pervade the semiconductor industry and are expected to get progressively worse as successive manufacturing technologies scale down to smaller dimensions. Transmeta's advanced LongRun2 technologies are expected to improve semiconductor devices by reducing total chip power, reducing standby power, reducing burn-in power, and potentially improving chip performance and reducing manufacturing costs.

LongRun2 technologies build upon Transmeta's first generation LongRun® power management technology, which pioneered the dynamic adjustment of MHz and voltage, hundreds of times per second, to reduce power consumption. LongRun2 technologies extend this approach by dynamically adjusting transistor threshold voltages to control transistor leakage. This dynamic control reduces leakage caused by changes in runtime conditions, such as voltage and temperature, which are not predetermined when the chip is manufactured.

"Fujitsu has achieved a performance leadership position with its 90nm CMOS technology node, featuring an industry leading transistor with a 40nm gate length. In reaching for even smaller transistor geometries, Fujitsu saw that transistor leakage would become a critical issue to solve," said Matthew R. Perry, president and chief executive officer of Transmeta. "We're pleased that Fujitsu recognizes Transmeta's LongRun2 Technologies as having advanced new approaches to attacking the transistor leakage problem in order to achieve greater power efficiency."

"Transmeta is well known for its focus on Efficient Computing," said Toshihiko Ono, group president of Fujitsu Limited's Electronic Devices Business Group. "By working closely together with Transmeta, we expect to combine the capabilities of our high performance technologies and their low-power expertise for the benefit of our ASIC, CPU and foundry customers."

"Transmeta's LongRun2 technologies are a major practical innovation designed to address the leakage problem facing the industry and will enable continued scaling of semiconductors to smaller geometries," said Bijan Moslehi, Ph.D., chief technology officer of The Noblemen Group and senior vice president of the Noblemen Semiconductor Technology Research Division. "The implementation of these ground-breaking technologies will benefit licensees by increasing semiconductor performance, providing better yields and ultimately driving down manufacturing costs in the future."

Transmeta's Efficeon TM8800, which recently began initial production, is manufactured in a state-of-the-art 90nm CMOS process technology at Fujitsu's Electronic Devices Business Group's Akiruno Technology Center in west Tokyo. By using this advanced process technology, the initial 90nm TM8800 shipments feature clock speeds of up to 1.6GHz while maintaining low power operation. The first versions of the LongRun2-enhanced TM8800 are expected to sample later this year, featuring further reductions in active and standby power.