With the new venture, Transmeta CEO David Ditzel, a veteran of Sun Microsystems, is aiming squarely at Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker. His secret weapon: an all-star cadre of engineers from about 20 countries, including Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux. Intel was quiet last week, but, significantly, its Web site highlighted its own chip offerings for portable computers. It remains to be seen if Transmeta can dent Intel’s dominance and survive the rough waters of the chip industry. In any case, it’s all more proof that Silicon Valley increasingly sees its future in devices–not the desktop.
