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For many of the jobs they suggest - Kitchen machine, music hub, lower end specialist stuff - I personally would much rather go with Mini ITX.

eg Via
http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/spearhead/min i-itx/

with a nice compact case
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/
http://www.bigbruin.com/html/morex_3688.htm

I guess really what Im saying is I would perfer a Mac Mini :o)

They added a Montgomery multiplier on their chip recently. Useful to implement fast RSA.

As the parent says, MCE is a performance hog, which means you need a grunty CPU, which means heat and lots of it. Heat requires cooling, and cooling is the prime cause of noise.

Trust me - you dont want a noisy PC in your living room.

Myth runs very well on low spec fanless EPIA mobos.

It *is* possible to reduce cooling noise significantly in a box running MCE, but the price is driven up, and you often end up having to customise the box. Further, there are likely to be water pumps or fans still in there.

Myth is a *pig* to install (even with Knoppmyth, which I use), but you can build a completely silent system.

Dont underestimate how much the noise will bother you.

considering remotely exploitable cache timing attacks against all software implementations of AES and other S-Box constructions will Intel grow some brain cells and put crypto directlty into the core?

i don't think they are that smart...

Agreed.

I'm nearly an AMD fanboy, but I would have a hard time buying a notebook with their mobile processors in it. I think Via might have a good chance at cracking the notebook market with their new C7-M chip. Its max power output is 20W, while its idle output is only 100mW.

I can see the VIA cpu's being practical in a firewall/VPN node within that rack due to their hardware accelerated encryption engine, as shown in http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/padlock/hardw are.jsp but Pentium M based mini-itx boxes would be a much wiser, albeit pricier choice, performance wise.

1. AMD's claim is that the Intel Compiler produces code that actively detects the AMD CPU, then intentionally runs slower code. That's not the same thing as Intel optimizing their compiler for the Pentium Architecture.

The problem with this claim is that it's not actually true! I hate to ask this, but have you checked what happens when you use the Intel computer on a system powered by a VIA CPU? That's right - you end up running "the slower code". What the Intel compiler does is check for certain lntel CPUs - it certainly does not target AMD CPUs. (If you think it does: show me the code emitted by the compiler. This shouldn't be hard like it was with the SCO case, since you can download the compiler free for noncommercial use.)

Of course, it doesn't help AMDs argument one bit that there are non-Intel, non-AMD CPUs such as those from VIA which are actually great little (and cheap!) CPUs that do encryption really fast these days. They make for awesome FreeBSD home/office firewall/webserver/proxy boxes!

Intel's implementation for the 865P/875P chipset goes through the memory hub directly http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/schematics/25 281202.pdf while the i845 chipset has the ethernet interface connected to the ICH4 controller hub that is shared among other devices like the PCI bus http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/2519 2401.pdf. VIA's PT894/PT880 ethernet connection goes through a "VIA Connectivity" bus much like the Intel 845 http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/p4-seri es/pt894pro and http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/p4-seri es/pt880. There were some value motherboards that although I recall that they use good/decent chipsets, their designers decided to connect the built-in gigabit ethernet ports off the PCI bus. I cannot recall what these were but I read about them in anandtech several years ago.

Intel's implementation for the 865P/875P chipset goes through the memory hub directly http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/schematics/25 281202.pdf while the i845 chipset has the ethernet interface connected to the ICH4 controller hub that is shared among other devices like the PCI bus http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/2519 2401.pdf. VIA's PT894/PT880 ethernet connection goes through a "VIA Connectivity" bus much like the Intel 845 http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/p4-seri es/pt894pro and http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/p4-seri es/pt880. There were some value motherboards that although I recall that they use good/decent chipsets, their designers decided to connect the built-in gigabit ethernet ports off the PCI bus. I cannot recall what these were but I read about them in anandtech several years ago.

uh... actually, no. The northbridge chipset is pretty much the same

are you absolutely sure ?

Apple can't meet that volume, so they get memory at much higher prices than Dell. Think about that for a minute. Part of the reason Apple's memory is more expensive than Dell's memory is that, well, Dell gets it much cheaper than Apple. So, to compete with a company like Dell, Apple ( and other manufacturers, even in the PC world, like Sony ) have to compete by not competing- they need compelling designs that Dell lacks, like the mini and the Vaio.

So er... so why then can I buy ram, direct from 3rd parties for 1/2 what apple charges for it? i'm not buying in volume. I'm buying qty 1.

No, the reason PC vendors can make such cheap PCs is because everyone is using the chips (via, nvidia, etc). Enormous production scales allow the vendors to make these chips extremely cheaply for anyone who buys them -- not just dell. Not only that, some of the components (southbridge) are used by both intel and amd architectures, across all CPUs (x86, x86_64, etc) Thus driving costs even lower. You're talking about production scales several orders of magnitude larger than apple. Everyone building x86 PCs benefits from the low prices provided by large production scales. Not just dell.

There's no way apple can produce eg intrepid that cheaply.

Nforce and ATI integrated video is just fine (certanly much better than the ati9200 in the mac mini). Whether the intel mini clone uses them is another story, but it doesn't mean nobody can use them.

uh... actually, no. The northbridge chipset is pretty much the same

are you absolutely sure ?

Apple can't meet that volume, so they get memory at much higher prices than Dell. Think about that for a minute. Part of the reason Apple's memory is more expensive than Dell's memory is that, well, Dell gets it much cheaper than Apple. So, to compete with a company like Dell, Apple ( and other manufacturers, even in the PC world, like Sony ) have to compete by not competing- they need compelling designs that Dell lacks, like the mini and the Vaio.

So er... so why then can I buy ram, direct from 3rd parties for 1/2 what apple charges for it? i'm not buying in volume. I'm buying qty 1.

No, the reason PC vendors can make such cheap PCs is because everyone is using the chips (via, nvidia, etc). Enormous production scales allow the vendors to make these chips extremely cheaply for anyone who buys them -- not just dell. Not only that, some of the components (southbridge) are used by both intel and amd architectures, across all CPUs (x86, x86_64, etc) Thus driving costs even lower. You're talking about production scales several orders of magnitude larger than apple. Everyone building x86 PCs benefits from the low prices provided by large production scales. Not just dell.

There's no way apple can produce eg intrepid that cheaply.

Nforce and ATI integrated video is just fine (certanly much better than the ati9200 in the mac mini). Whether the intel mini clone uses them is another story, but it doesn't mean nobody can use them.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/padlock/hardw are.jsp

Hardware, and cheap. And, built-in.

-bzj

Chipset makers VIA (which also does some low-end CPUs) or SiS are not members of TCG... (That, of course, does not imply that they won't follow if put under pressure from TCG).

Get a tuner card first - especially something like PVR-350 that can encode TV to MPEG and simultaneously decode MPEGS to S-video/composite for playback.

My 1.2GHz machine uses 10-15% CPU encoding/recording one channel and, at the same time, playing something previously recorded at 1366x768 (with ads removed of course :-)

Also, unless you have done some significant work around dealing with heat, you have a pretty noisy machine in your living room. Ick.

If anyone starts this type of project, get a low spec and very quiet machine, such as one based on an EPIA MII10000 (1.0GHz) or fanless Eden600. Add a PVR-350 and a *quiet*/fast/big disk (I have 550GB), and you are away.

Oh, and use KnoppMyth for a quick and painless install.

The mini-itx

At 6.7"x6.7", you might be able to get it to fit inside your old car stereo.

Anybody have experience with building and integrating a hardware random number generator?

Yes. But I can also tell you, a hardware RNG is overkill for these purposes. There is easily enough randomness available through /dev/random based on disk timings and such to make strong 152-bit keys. Alternatively, you can roll a bunch of dice.

If you really, really want a hardware RNG, go for a Soekris card or a C3 processor, or make your own RNG (integrating that would be tougher, though).

For those who complain about the speed of strong digests the VIA Mini-ITX platform with the C5J / C5x? processors from Centaur include the Padlock Engine (as they call it) that implements SHA-1 and 256 on core.

Implementing SHA-256 on core means many times faster performance than a 64bit Itanium on a small 1.4Ghz 10W processor.

Via, which took over Cyrix, is building low voltage, low power CPUs. Both CPUs support x86 instructions. VIA Eden-N AMD Geode(TM) GX

You mean like these?

MyDixie wrote: "A small form-factor mini-itx case is still a small form-factor case."

Mini-ITX is a motherboard form factor that measures 170mm x 170mm (6.7" x 6.7").

The Travla C134 Mini-ITX Case measures 7" x 10" x 2" = 140 cubic inches.

A factor of ONE AND A HALF, but it only accepts 2.5" hard drives.

The Travla C158 Mini-ITX Case measures 12" x 11" x 2.1" = 277.2 cubic inches.

A factor of THREE, but it accepts 3.5" hard drives and a PCI card.

i also recommend openvpn. supported on a majority of systems: windows 2k/xp, linux, mac os x, bsds, & solaris. here's the howto.

imho, great example of kernel/user-land separation: tun/tap virtual device driver is the only kernel-side part, the rest is in user-land. no more having freeswan keep the system from cleanly shutting down because of a lost reference to a network device. but there is overhead from context switches between kernel & user, though it's a trade-off i think is worthwhile.

you can do ip or ethernet tunneling, depending how far down the osi model you want to go and how much overhead you are willing/able to process. with a single wireless client in my household, i do ethernet tunneling, as it frees me from having to do any ip routing and configuring a wins server (which i've found problematic with windows 2000 and samba 2.2 on debian stable).

openvpn openvpn can use shared key or tls, just depends on what you want. you can quickly develop a proof of concept with shared keys (prove software installation, network communication, etc work) and then "upgrade" to tls.

openvpn uses openssl for it's encryption/authentication engine. that means that all the scrutiny and improvements openssl receives (security analysis, assembly encoded algorithms, hardware engines, etc) benefits openvpn. i'm interested in doing openvpn on the via epia platform with hardware-assisted openssl serving as wireless xterminals.

encrypting lots of bandwidth means lots of processor cycles, and depending on the speed of your processors and the bandwidth between the two, expect some slow down. this is not particular to openvpn, but any (software) encryption, so choose your hardware accordingly (with lots of benchmarking for your particular use case).

ipsec is a valid option, though i prefer openvpn. ipsec is a standard, and is supported on more platforms than openvpn (especially embedded systems & dedicated hardware), but is firstly cumbersome to configure and secondly compatibility is theoretically possible between all implementation but not guaranteed. i once connected windows 2000 and linux/freeswan using ipsec. nate carlson's howto is invaluable. with linux 2.6 it's even harder to implement ipsec with iptables because neither the in-kernel ipsec implementation nor openswan support virtual interfaces (ipsec[0-9]). supposedly it's "possible" using iptables to tag packets, but i won't consider it "practical" until it's easy enough to be documented in a howto.

After reading for a while yesterday (after checking yesterday's k=note about the latest intel processor). I found that VIA (who bought Cyrix, I think the best processor at the 4x86 era, after National semiconductors almost broke it) has been working on it for a while. Perhaps the increase on "speed" (power consumption) was the strategy to take AMD and Cyrix out of the market? Now they want to come back because their processors are that inefficient?

Unfortunately, it seems like VIA is not focused on the PC market. Why? If anyone has some "fair" benchmarks, etc about this processors, it would be nice to read the results.

After reading for a while yesterday (after checking yesterday's k=note about the latest intel processor). I found that VIA (who bought Cyrix, I think the best processor at the 4x86 era, after National semiconductors almost broke it) has been working on it for a while. Perhaps the increase on "speed" (power consumption) was the strategy to take AMD and Cyrix out of the market? Now they want to come back because their processors are that inefficient?

Unfortunately, it seems like VIA is not focused on the PC market. Why? If anyone has some "fair" benchmarks, etc about this processors, it would be nice to read the results.

But its the same size and less powerful. AS for efficiency, its hard to beat what VIA's doing these days with the C3 and the forthcomming 64bit Isaiah CPUs.

Uhh, if you want a crappy Creative card, you can spend like $29 dollars getting a SB Live! 5.1 card. If you want a good Creative card, you can get an Audigy 2 ZS PCI retail for $91 (Which is what I upgraded to from a SB Live! Value). What exactly is the turn-on about having a dolby decoder/encoder/whatever, esp. when you're stuck with the the ALC650 codec?

Does it have something to do with movies, DVDs specifically? I wouldn't know about that not having a DVD-ROM drive, I watch all my movies away from the computer on the home theatre system. Seems like integrated audio is a real weird way to go about choosing your chipsets and especially CPU choice, and it's not like VIA is scrapping their on-board audio projects.

I agree with what you say 100%.

If you're looking for a silent system, try the VIA micro-itx formfactor with 1ghz cpu. Not only can you build a very quiet system, but you can build a really small one too. 17cmx17cm full-featured motherboard.

I think the current trends are moving towards small and silent. Personally I'm tired of seeing big box computers. Shoebox (even a bit smaller) size is where it's at.

90nm Athlon64s 939 soon to be available!
90nm A64s seem to draw much less power than 130nm A64s.

There is also Transmeta which produces the Efficeon CPU and VIA which makes EPIA.
You may also get an AMD Geode :)

If you're willing to settle for 1Ghz, VIA has a line of low power processors.

The fact of the matter is that there are only fast processors available now. They may eat power and heat siberia but it's all there is (at a reasonable price for a desktop).

It all depends on what you're tryin' to do.

But yeah, I won't lie: I like fast computers even if I don't need 'em. And I'm glad a lot of people out there aren't thinking clearly about what they need either, so the economy of scale works out and my fast computer will be affordable. :-) Subsidize me, suckers. And I'll do the same for you...

You can try out VIA C3 or Eden based solutions such as this one: http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm?prod cd=B7VEPIACL6
VIA http://www.via.com.tw/ makes excellent fanless CPUs and motherboards from 400Mhz upto 1+Ghz

Why don't you get a board with a VIA Eden or C3 processor? They don't draw much power and they don't need much in the way of cooling. Get a small ITX case, install your favorite flavor of Linux or BSD, and your set.

Except that VIA *does* make CPUs -- ever since they bought Cytrix. See here:

VIA Antaur
VIA C3
VIA Eden

Except that VIA *does* make CPUs -- ever since they bought Cytrix. See here:

VIA Antaur
VIA C3
VIA Eden

Except that VIA *does* make CPUs -- ever since they bought Cytrix. See here:

VIA Antaur
VIA C3
VIA Eden

WTF?? The C3 can be clocked up to 1.4 GHz, according to the specs page.

Of course to top it all off Intel claims that all of its bus technology is "proprietary", this is why nVidia hasn't made an nForce chipset for the P4 yet. AMD on the other hand has a much more open policy and actively encourages 3rd party motherboard and chipset makers. A policy which has worked very well for AMD to date.

Here are some current examples:
ATI RADEON 9100 PRO IGP
SiS SiS648FX
VIA PT800
ALi M1681

I don't know why NVIDIA doesn't make nForce chipsets for the P4. Maybe NVIDIA doesn't want to compete with Intel in making chipsets

Apart from the obvious example of AMD, who fabs many processors in Germany (and isn't it even former east -Germany?), what about VIA. Surely their processors are made in Taiwan?

Via's processors may not be leading edge performance, but they are above the limits suggested for control.

What authority can the US government exercise over a foreign company building products abroad? OK, probably some "discussions" the next time the issue of Taiwan buying US arms comes up, but don't forget that Taiwan can also buy many of those weapons from other countries, such as France, UK, Russia, etc.

See either chapter 2 of the manual or the paragraph below the second photo of the motherboard on the Linuxdevices article: The Epia MS is the first VIA mainboard available with the fanless 1GHz VIA Eden ESP processor announced last February. The board is also available with a fanless 800MHz VIA Eden ESP processor, or with a "fansink" equipped 1.2GHz VIA C3.

See either chapter 2 of the manual or the paragraph below the second photo of the motherboard on the Linuxdevices article: The Epia MS is the first VIA mainboard available with the fanless 1GHz VIA Eden ESP processor announced last February. The board is also available with a fanless 800MHz VIA Eden ESP processor, or with a "fansink" equipped 1.2GHz VIA C3.

I wish they'd gone with the CN400 northbridge instead... oh well maybe for the Epia MS II =)

e.

I've been researching chipsets for digital TV. Here are my links to current hardware products:

STMicroelectronics System on Chip (2) Get Linux here
ATI Xilleon 220 (Products)
Sigma Designs Digital Media Processors (Products)
IBM PowerPC405 STBxx (Zarlink [2], Araneo)
Texas Instruments DM642 DSP (i3 Mood Box , X-Designs Flikit + Softier MediaLinux)
NEC EMMArchitecture2 (Galaxis + LinuxTV , PRISMIQ + Linux)
Equator Technologies BSP-15 boards
Via CN400 (Mini-ITX Board), PM800 and PM880 (w/ HDTV for Pentium 4) , ShowShifter HMN, Soyo Multimedia Ready Motherboard (with TV Tuner, $129.99)
Toshiba TX System RISC (MontaVista Linux)
Windows chipsets:
Intel 815 VisionPlus terrestrial box (Korean OEM)
AMD Geode (CoCom)
ARM (Samsung, etc.)
Digeo X-Stream (Paul Allen company)

Interesting, VIA is announcing yet more new products... Yet, I've been looking for the past several weeks (and other posts on the Internet go as far back as Nov of 2003) for VIA's latest generation Athlon XP chipset KT880 via kt880... yet other than VIAs website, it's nowhere to be seen!!!

Seems to me that the VIA C5J has better power (3.5W at 1GHz) and 800MHz FSB. The only advantage of Geode is the integrated peripherals. But you can get a two chip solution through VIA that has more peripherals than a Geode and better price point.

The videocard on the Geode is pretty low-end, VIA's beats it. Also the built-in cryptography accelleration on the C5J would make it useful for kiosks that would like to use encrypted media or encrypted connection and it vastly improves key exchanges and certificate signing (assuming you have software to support the feature).

System:
533 MHz Eden-N Processor
133MHz Bus
SSE and MMX instruction Set support
128MB DDR266 SDRAM
High-Performance 64-bit DDR SDRAM Controller
20GB Hard Drive - Data transfer rates of up to 133 MB/s

MPEG2 & MPEG4 Hardware decoding

Audio:
VIA Vinyl Six-channel Audio
Full Immerzio(TM) Gaming support
o EAX® 1.0, EAX® 2.0
o DirectSound3D®
o I3DL2(TM)
o A3D® 1.0

LCD Display
The Eve Mobile Gaming Console integrates a 4, 640x480 TFT LCD screen. In supporting up to 640x480 resolutions, the Eve Console can easily play all PC games natively.

Hard Drive
The Eve Console includes a single 1.8 20GB hard drive for storing the OS and the game data. This is sufficient to store a large library of games and digital media content. This is transferred to the system either via wireless LAN or by USB2.0 pass-through to a PC.

Batteries
Prismatic Lithium-Ion batteries are the current favorite choice for the console. Two packs of batteries are provided so that the batteries can be hot-swapped for continuous, uninterrupted play.

Port List
The ports that are user-accessible on the Eve Console include:
Power jack (DC barrel type)
2x USB 2..0 jacks (Type A host style)
1x Compact FLASH type II slot
2x battery slots (as specified as handgrips)
1x smartcard card slot (15mm x 1mm slot)
2x 1/8" stereo jack for headphones out & microphone in
1x 1/8" stereo jack for composite video out
802.11b wireless LAN

Button List
D-pad (WASD)
L/R triggers
Cluster of 4 action buttons
Line of 6 auxiliary function buttons

It's some kind of sub nano-itx form factor called Grace.

I admit it is only going to run low power games (being able to drop RAM in would be nice) but the stats for it are not that bad - 2 USB two ports - chain me up a keyboard,mouse and a link to the net. 20gb of storage on a x86? Yeah - I can run linux on that. If the price is right it looks to me like a fun little linux box (MAME, xmms, xine, and anything else you want) hot swappable batteries and video out?? Might be the "portable" computer (drag it everywhere - plug in as needed) that everyone hasa been talking about. The video chipset even looks nice. Will it run Half-Life 7? No, but could it blow the pants off a GBA? Yeah, I think so.

Sera

"Come my friends tis not too late to seek a newer world." -Tennyson

The mix of tin and lead in solder varies somewhat depending on the application, with 60/40 and 70/30 being common. I was curious myself about the claim of "Lead-Free" since every solder joint in the system would have to have lead, right? From VIA's Lead-Free Manufacturing page:

...and the solder balls now consist of a tin, silver and copper composite.

Of course, I don't know what everyone's got against lead. If all the claims you hear were true then my old man (who breathes in solder fumes for up to 80 hours a week) should have died of lead poisioning forty years ago. He reckons milk is the answer. :)

VIA Green Computing page

It's too bad they don't do monitors. Those CRTs are the biggest source of lead in computers. Of course, I don't like electrons being shot at my face, so it's not all bad, but still. They are a pain to dispose of.

Cross your fingers for affordable OLEDs. (fp?)

Does VIA offer documentation on their chipsets?

Yes, at least to their PadLock system. Overview, Programmer's Guide.

Basically their system allows one to use hardware accelerated AES encryption in all major modes (CTR requires using the co-processor to precompute blocks in ECB mode and then XORing them in regular software.) I'd say that is pretty damn impressive and from what I've looked, the documentation is solid and quite clear.

You can even get Brian Gladman's AES implementation which uses VIA's hardware acceleration if such is present.

Does VIA offer documentation on their chipsets?

Yes, at least to their PadLock system. Overview, Programmer's Guide.

Basically their system allows one to use hardware accelerated AES encryption in all major modes (CTR requires using the co-processor to precompute blocks in ECB mode and then XORing them in regular software.) I'd say that is pretty damn impressive and from what I've looked, the documentation is solid and quite clear.

You can even get Brian Gladman's AES implementation which uses VIA's hardware acceleration if such is present.