Transmeta deepens China presence with nested JVs

Transmeta has formed a joint venture to promote its Midori Linux distro to manufacturers of mobile and embedded devices targeting the Chinese market. That JV has, in turn, spawned two further JVs.

The chip company will partner with Culturecom Holdings and eForce Holdings to create Beijing Chinese 2000 Technology and Beijing Redflag Chinese 2000 Software Technology, respectively hardware and software operations. The latter is jointly owned with the Beijing Chinese Academy of Sciences, Silicon Strategies reports.

Transmeta's stake in these two Beijing JVs devolves from its JV with Culturecom and eForce, Chinese 2000 Linux (Holdings), in which Transmeta has a 16.7 per cent stake. Culturecom and eForce hold 42.5 per cent and 40.8 per cent of the JV, respectively.

Chinese 2000 Linux is, of course, the company Transmeta said a couple of weeks ago had licensed Midori Linux in order to develop and market Midori Linux for mobile and embedded devices in China and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Culturecom has said developed its V-Dragon/IA-3210 CPU to run Midori Linux. The chip apparently supports the Chinese language character set, and was designed to meet Chinese government's standard IT infrastructure specifications.

V-Dragon is said to have been developed with the help of Transmeta and IBM, so it's entirely possible it's essentially a modified Crusoe. If that's the case, it would suggest that there's some truth to the claim that Culturecom and eForce decided to abandon development of a Linux distro of their own, called Chinese 2000 Linux, and adopt Midori instead. It's not hard to imagine Transmeta gaining its stake in Chinese 2000 Linux (the company) in return for the Midori licence. ®

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