Ministry of Innovation / Business of Technology  Transmeta’s
buyer folds as venture capital avoids semis  Novafora, the
company that bought the remains of erstwhile low-power x86 …
It's almost like there's a curse surrounding former x86 low-
power CPU maker Transmeta. After burning through over $400
million in cash and essentially cratering in 2005, Transmeta
sold its own corpse to another fabless semiconductor company,
Novafora Inc., late last year. Now Novafora itself has gone
under, becoming the latest casualty of an ongoing venture
capital drought that has hit fabless semiconductor startups
especially hard.  Novafora was a secretive VC-backed company
that was developing a video decoder chip of some sort, and Cable
Digital News reports that the company was planning a product
launch this year. But, as is happening across the VC industry
right now, the company had burned through its cash and was
unable to score another round of funding.  In the first half of
this year, VC funding declined to levels not seen