Heavyweights back Transmeta

Innovative chip start-up Transmeta has received $72m (£46.5) in venture capital funding from a number of heavyweight corporate investors, as it attempts to make inroads into Intel's notebook market share.

AOL, Compaq, Gateway, Samsung and Sony are among the major investors.

Backing has also come from Taiwanese notebook vendors Quanta, Compal and FIC, which have large original equipment manufacturer deals with Dell and IBM.

The company has also revealed that a further $16m has been confirmed from its existing investors, which include Deutsche Bank and Soros Fund Management. Transmeta hopes the backing will give it leverage in a market that AMD has been unable to crack.

Founded in 1995, Transmeta unveiled its Crusoe mobile processor in January.

The company describes Crusoe as a smart processor that learns about an application while it runs, and then uses that experience to extend battery life.

Using a proprietary power management technology called LongRun, Transmeta claims Crusoe can continuously adjust its operating speed and voltage to match the needs and workload of the application. The company also claims Crusoe consumes one watt of power, which is about a tenth of Intel's best offering.

Intel last week introduced a 700MHz notebook chip, based on SpeedStep technology. The chip can switch between 700MHz when running on AC, or 500MHz in battery mode. Users can also select maximum performance even if their computers are running on batteries.