Mar. 01, 2001

Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan is expected to begin shipping notebook computers with Crusoe microprocessors to Casio Computer Co. Ltd. of Japan in March this year.

Quanta is one of Taiwan's leading notebook computer makers.

Casio has contracted Quanto to manufacture the notebeook, dubbed Cassiopeia Fiva. Casio unveiled the computer in November last year at Comdex Fall in Las Vegas.

Cassiopeia Fiva weighs less than one kilogram and has an 8.4-inch thin-film transistor liquid crystal display. The computer comes with the Crusoe processor designed by U.S.-based Transmeta Corp.

Transmeta announced the new family of chips early last year. Crusoe is designed for mobile Internet devices. Transmeta claims that they consume less power than Intel processors and is based on a "reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, which can process date faster than the complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture that most Intel microprocessors use.

Industry experts in Taiwan point out that Casio notebook computers will target business people, and Quanta has delivered only a small amount of this type of computer to Casio.

Quanta's executives, according to local news reports, declined to comment nor disclose the contract amount with Casio.

Quanta's recently developed Web pads are installed with the Crusoe TM3120 chip, and some of itsp notebook computers are shipped with the Crusoe TM5400. Quanta claims to be the first company to incorporate the new chips in those devices