Transmeta extends Sony development contract

Transmeta has renewed an agreement to share its expertise in low-power processors with Sony, dedicating more than 100 engineers to projects in the second quarter of 2006.

Transmeta, of Santa Clara, California, will work on Sony engineering jobs ranging from three-month to one-year projects. The general goal is to find ways to use Transmeta's designs in products made by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Sony.

Company spokesmen declined to put a dollar value on the contract or describe specific products they would produce.

Beginning in March 2005, the companies cooperated in using Transmeta's LongRun2 technology in Sony's portable applications.

LongRun2 is a power management technique that improves the power efficiency of semiconductor devices by dynamically adjusting clock speed and voltage hundreds of times per second.

That is a crucial service as processor manufacturers build faster and smaller chips, dropping below one-micron process geometry to 90 nanometers and 65 nm and running into problems with excessive heat and transistor leakage.

"They have a strong relationship and a good track record of working together, so they are eager to extend that," said Lauren Stein, a spokeswoman with a Transmeta public relations firm. She declined to describe what Sony products would use the Transmeta technology.

Transmeta launched its power-efficient, x86-compatible Crusoe chip in 2000, but decided in 2005 to change its focus from chip manufacturing to technology licensing. The company still makes the 90-nm Efficeon chip.