Transmeta Crusoe

The Transmeta Crusoe is a family of x86-compatible microprocessors developed by Transmeta and introduced in 2000.

Instead of the instruction set architecture being implemented in hardware, or translated by specialized hardware, the Crusoe runs a software abstraction layer, or a virtual machine, known as the Code Morphing Software (CMS). The CMS translates machine code instructions received from programs into native instructions for the microprocessor. In this way, the Crusoe can emulate other instruction set architectures (ISAs). This is used to allow the microprocessors to emulate the Intel x86 instruction set.