Transmeta has signed its latest LongRun 2 licensee, Sony, the chipmaker said today.

LongRun has always been a key feature of Transmeta's chip designs, minimising energy consumption and heat dissipation. Last year it announced version 2 of the technology, which addresses current leakage at the transistor level, later licensing the power management system to its fab partner, Fujitsu, and to NEC.

LongRun2 isn't yet shipping in Transmeta silicon - it was due to debut with the second-generation 90nm Efficeon, which was scheduled to ship during H1 2005, though the company's potential change of focus away from silicon and toward technology licensing could mean the processor never sees light of day.

How Sony will use the technology remains to be seen, but it's certainly tempting to speculate that it plans to use the system to keep 'Cell' running coolly. Sony, together with Cell development partners IBM and Toshiba, will lift the lid on Cell's architecture next month at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. ®

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