Back then Intel was stuck with a classic CISC architecture that did not scale well.
What transmeta did was to keep the x86 instruction set (CISC) but internally convert them to a simpler RISC-ish instruction set and run it in a much simpler and power effective RISC core.
Intel copied this idea which allowed P4 (maybe already PIII?) to make a giant performance leap. Nowadays all high performance CISC CPUs from AMD and Intel do this.
What transmeta did was to keep the x86 instruction set (CISC) but internally convert them to a simpler RISC-ish instruction set and run it in a much simpler and power effective RISC core.
Intel copied this idea which allowed P4 (maybe already PIII?) to make a giant performance leap. Nowadays all high performance CISC CPUs from AMD and Intel do this.