NVIDIA Licence Transmeta LongRun Battery-Saving Technology

It's been a while since anything Transmeta has shown up on the radar, but the company has just licenced its LongRun and LongRun2 low-power technologies to NVIDIA.  Costing a non-refundable license fee of $25m, the technologies are described as "a suite of advanced power management, leakage control and process compensation technologies" that reduce overall power wastage.

"LongRun2 Technology is a suite of advanced power management, leakage control and process compensation technologies that can diminish the negative effects of increasing leakage power and process variations in advanced submicron geometries. LongRun2 Technology addresses these challenges with a broad set of solutions that include advanced algorithms, innovative circuits, unique devices and structures, process techniques, software and manufacturing optimization methods" Transmeta press release

Power management is currently a hot topic not only in graphics cards, NVIDIA's most typical segment, but in processors for ultraportable devices.  As manufacturers and consumers alike realise that battery technology is not going to suddenly accelerate to the point where existing hardware can be promised extended run-time, attention instead turns to making the device using the battery as efficient as possible.

NVIDIA's current entrant to the ULV processor market is the Tegra, which is already said to consume less than a single watt of power.  The ARM11-based 750MHz APX 2500 is capable of encoding and decoding HD video, as well as driving displays up to SXGA (1280 x 1024) resolution and cameras up to 12-megapixels.

[via The Tech Report]