Transmeta licenses LongRun 2 technology to Sony

Transmeta today announced that Transmeta's advanced LongRun2 technologies for power management and transistor leakage control have been licensed to Sony Corporation.

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 may be used 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 technique further by using Transmeta's proprietary new approach for 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.

"Transmeta's LongRun2 technologies represent a major practical innovation that addresses the problems of exponentially rising leakage and power consumption facing the semiconductor industry," said Bijan Moslehi, Ph.D., chief technology officer of The Noblemen Group and senior vice president of the Noblemen Semiconductor Technology Research & Strategy Division. "I expect that the implementation of these ground-breaking technologies will benefit the consumer significantly, by increasing performance, lowering costs, improving battery life, and ultimately, improving the overall consumer experience."