Transmeta commences Crusoe TM5600 shipments

Transmeta yesterday launched its latest Crusoe CPU, the TM5600, and confirmed the chip has already started shipping.

The 5600 follows on from Transmeta's earlier 5400, a high-speed - 700MHz - chip aimed at the notebook market, thanks to its very low power consumption. The 5600 adds an extra 256KB of on-chip L1 (128KB) and L2 (512KB) cache to the 5400's 384KB. It also supports both DDR memory and standard SDRAM.

Transmeta has also managed to squeeze a ten per cent reduction in the 5600's power requirement over that of the 5400, the company said. The 5600 is fabbed at 0.18 micron; the 5400 at 0.22 micron - the shift in fabrication technology permitting the power reducting despite the 5600's increased die size, due to the extra cache.

Transmeta did not reveal pricing for the part.

Earlier this week, Sony confirmed it will be using a Crusoe CPU in the next version of its Vaio C1 sub-notebook. The company didn't say which chip will be used, but the 5600 has to be the best bet. The new C1 will ship in October.

Next year, Transmeta will introduce the 5800, sporting 1MB of L2 cache, and taking the 800MHz-1GHz speed band. It will also feature the second generation of Transmeta's LongRun power-management technology, which will allow a system to manage the power requirements on an application-by-application basis. ®

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