Breaking ranks with the powerful “Wintel duopoly,” based on Intel hardware and Microsoft software, Gateway and America Online plan to use a processor from an upstart Silicon Valley chipmaker and a version of the Linux operating system in a new Internet home appliance scheduled to go on sale later this year.
The decision is a big victory for Transmeta Corp., a chip design company in Santa Clara that has developed a microprocessor intended to be a low-power and inexpensive alternative to Intel’s microprocessors.
Transmeta was founded five years ago by David Ditzel, the former Sun Microsystems hardware designer, with backing from George Soros, the financier; Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder; Deutsche Bank; and others. It said last month that it had raised an additional $88 million in financing from Compaq Computer, Gateway, Samsung, Sony and a number of Taiwanese manufacturers.
The deal is a portent of the arrival of what is being popularly referred to as the post-PC computing era, a world in which the personal computer is displaced by an expanding array of digital cellular phones, personal digital assistants, Webpads–which are tablet-style computers–and other appliance-like devices.
Both Intel and Microsoft have largely resisted this vision, maintaining instead that the PC will remain at the center of the computing world for many years and that the new devices will function more or less as peripherals to a central PC.
Gateway executives said they had decided to break with Intel and Microsoft because the new devices were not personal computers.
“We’re not building a personal computer, we’re building an appliance,” said Peter Ashkin, Gateway’s senior vice president and chief technology officer. “Hence, there was no strong requirement for Windows.”
Ashkin said the choice of the Transmeta chip was appropriate to the new devices, which are intended to be placed on a kitchen counter or a desk and eventually to be carried around the home as wireless Webpads always connected to the Internet.
Ashkin said Transmeta turned out to be an excellent choice. “Their chip offered a unique combination of low power and low cost,” he said.
Many executives in the computer industry believe that the next generation of computing will bring fresh opportunities for competitors like Transmeta to offer alternatives to the dominant industry powers.
“This is Microsoft off the desktop, and Intel out from inside the desktop,” said Robert Enderle, a market researcher who is vice president for desktop and mobile technologies at Giga Information Group.
