Silicon-valley's most secretive start-up, Transmeta, may shed light on its business at the Comdex trade fair in Las Vegas in November, according to one of its most famous employees, Mr Linus Torvalds.

Mr Torvalds, the developer of the Linux operating system, has shot to fame this year as his system has been endorsed by a number of top computer industry companies and emerged as a serious rival to Microsoft.

Mr Torvalds and other people known to be involved with Transmeta, including Microsoft's co-founder Mr Paul Allen and chief executive Mr David Ditzel, have been careful not to reveal what the company is up to.

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.