Transmeta finds small is beautiful for Efficeon

Transmeta has unveiled its new Efficeon TM8620 processor, designed for thin notebooks and other small form-factor embedded systems.

The company said at the Computex show in Taipei that the 21mm x 21mm package, 46 per cent smaller than the current Efficeon TM8600, will give system designers more flexibility for units requiring long battery life, low heat output or fanless operation.

Arthur Swift, senior vice president of marketing at Transmeta, said in a statement: "Transmeta continues to transform the microprocessor from what was often a barrier to design innovation into an enabling technology that spurs creative thinking and creates new classes of computers."

Transmeta processors combine Northbridge functionality into a single integrated circuit to save board space, the company said.

The processor specifications include a 256-bit VLIW engine with x86 compatible Code Morphing software, a 192KB level 1 cache (128KB instruction, 64KB data), and a 1MB level 2 cache.

Now sampling to customers, production volume is expected by the end of the second quarter of this year.