Taiwan to use Crusoe as Mobile Standard

Transmeta Corp., who recently released their "Crusoe" mobile processor, said Monday in a press briefing that Taiwanese manufactures plan to use the processor in an array of new mobile devices, and as the standard for new mobile "Web pads."

The new low-cost chips are compatible with PC processors while consuming less power and use "on-board" software to power the chip, as apposed to the hardware alone.

"The entire island of Taiwan is standardizing on these mobile devices using Mobile Linux and Crusoe," said Jim Chapman, Transmeta vice president of marketing.

Additionally a "light" version of Linux has been developed, in part by Linux originator Linus Torvalds, to work on the new Crusoe chip. The press briefing alluded to details about the new "Linux-light" OS designed for the chip. Transmeta Chief Executive Dave Ditzel said that the Linux kernel had been modified to work without hard disks and is able to compress programs to half the size, while not in use. The whole operating system could be stored on a single flash memory card, commonly used in many portable devices.