Montalvo Systems was a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

start-up reportedly working on an asymmetrical,

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...

capable processor similar to the

Cell microprocessor Cell is a multi-core microprocessor microarchitecture that combines a general-purpose PowerPC core of modest performance with streamlined coprocessing elements which greatly accelerate multimedia and vector processing applications, as well as m ...

. The processor was to use high-performance cores for performance-intensive threads, and delegate minor tasks to the simpler cores to save silicon and power. Matt Perry, former

Transmeta Transmeta Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. It developed low power x86 compatible microprocessors based on a VLIW core and a software layer called Code Morphing Software. Code Morphing ...

CEO, served as CEO and president of Montalvo; Peter Song, founder of failed x86 manufacturer MemoryLogix, served as chief architect. Greg Favor (former NexGen/AMD) was responsible for chip microarchitecture and Carlos Puchol (former architect for power management at

and

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

) was system and power architect. Another founding member, Kevin Lawton, of

bochs Bochs (pronounced "box") is a portable IA-32 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License. It supports emulation of the processor(s) (includin ...

(x86

emulation Emulation may refer to: *Emulation (computing), imitation of behavior of a computer or other electronic system with the help of another type of system :*Video game console emulator, software which emulates video game consoles *Gaussian process em ...

) and plex86 (

x86 virtualization x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU. In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware-as ...

) fame, was the processor simulator architect. The official description of business from Montalvo's security filings was:

''A fabless semiconductor company developing ultra low-power system-on-chips for mobile devices.''

As of 24 April 2008, Sun Microsystems had acquired the company's assets for an undisclosed sum.

Locations

Headquarters were in Santa Clara, California, next door to the remnants of

, and nearby to Intel and Sun. It had offices in Boulder, Colorado and

Bangalore, India Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

. According to news reports, it had close to 300 employees. In March 2008 news broke that Montalvo was seeking funds to avoid shutdown. According to a news article released on March 31, Montalvo had laid off two-thirds of its engineers. At the same time, rumors surfaced that Sun Microsystems was in talks to buy Montalvo. About three weeks later, on 24 April 2008, ''

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information te ...

'' confirmed the rumors to be true.

Finances

From the Cal-EASI database, the following information is available about Montalvo's financing.

News

*2008-04-2
Sun buys low-power x86 disaster Montalvo
*2008-04-0
Sun Microsystems could use Montalvo as a strategic lever against Intel
*2008-04-0

*2008-03-3
Montalvo Systems cuts two thirds of staff
*2008-03-3

*2008-03-2
Montalvo seeking a hoard of cash to avoid shutdown
*2008-02-1
VIA Continues Transition From Chipsets To CPU To Profitability. Skeptical on Montalvo X86 Chip Success
*2008-02-1
Montalvo, a competitor of Intel and AMD, not yet born and already in trouble
*2008-02-1

*2008-02-1
Cash-burning Montalvo tapes out Silverthorne rival
*2008-02-0

*2007-06-0
Montalvo CFO leaves
and joins

Agami Systems Agami ( arz, العجمى ', mostly shortened to , ;, ) is a city in the Alexandria Governorate of Egypt. west of Alexandria, the town is a popular destination for both local Alexandrians and tourists in Giza and Cairo. Overview The city sta ...

*2006-08-2
Is that a VMware CTO and Transmeta CEO at your start-up?
*2006-08-1
Former Transmeta CEO goes at Intel with another low-power chip
*2005-10-2
Chip start-up Montalvo looks to speed mobile devices

References

{{Reflist 2005 establishments in California 2008 disestablishments in California 2008 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 2005 American companies disestablished in 2008 Companies based in Santa Clara, California Computer companies established in 2005 Computer companies disestablished in 2008 Defunct companies based in California Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct semiconductor companies of the United States Fabless semiconductor companies Heterogeneous computing Sun Microsystems acquisitions