Secret startup to unveil at Comdex?
Torvalds and other people known to be involved with Transmeta, including Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen and Chief Executive David Ditzel, have been careful not to reveal what the company is up to.
"I think I can now tell you when I will be able to tell you," Linus said on the sidelines of a seminar.
The combination of money from Microsoft's co-founder and know-how from Torvalds, who still controls the core of the Linux system, the secrecy and the Linux hype this year has nurtured the ground for speculation.
Most commonly, the company is believed to work on either a revolutionary high-speed computer chip or on software improving the way chips work, or both.
The company has never issued a press release, and its Web site www.transmeta.com just says: "This web page is not here yet."