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New Power-Sipping Chips From Intel
bradlauster writes: "As Reported on InfoWorld.com: Intel will be announcing new mobile processors on Monday. One is claimed to run at 500 MHz and consume less than two watts! How's that compare to Transmeta's Crusoe ... and has anyone used one?" yomahz points to additional coverage at news.com. Isn't it nice what price/performance battles can do?
I haven't had any problems. The case has a piece of plastic inside that directs some of the case's air flow over the heat sink.
By the way, does anyone know if there is any point in putting silicon paste between the chip and heat sink?
Yes, to fill any gaps between the heat sink and the chip. Air is a terrible conductor of heat. The ideal situation is to use just enough heat sink compound to displace the air from the gaps. Any more than that and you decrease the efficiency of the heat transfer.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Sure, it'll wear down the battery, but I'm not talkin' about watching freakin' Shoah on your plane trip here. ;-) We're just on a flight of a few hours, and you can just plug your laptop in and recharge the battery later on the ground.
As for the other thing, I've got a lot of stuff installed, so I'm reluctant using up even more space just to store things I don't need at the moment (I always travel with a 24-CD carrying case, and it's a little overstuffed right now, including one enormous DVD with software and docs on it), plus when I do pick and choose stuff to store from a CD, the inevitable always happens, where I end up wanting something that I didn't bring. :) Oh well, I don't think we're gonna come to agreement on this (not that that's any big deal), so I'll prolly just bid you adieu and leave it at that, 'cause I should be heading out soon anyway.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Yes, heat is one thing in overclocking but ever wonder why some guy can crank is 500E to 750 with the OEM heat sink/fan combo and the guy next to him has to use a peltier? You have to have good quality silicon to get to higher speeds and thats why dedicated overclockers will look for a certain week manufactured intel chip like...week 28 from ireland or something. Its because they have finer silicon. If intel makes these things operate on low power...they also have to have the quality silicon it takes to get higher speeds. If they use a .18 die process then sure...it might look good but to keep the price down to compete it will probably be a .25 or .22 micron. Less power doesnt also mean less heat...sure there is a direct link between more wattage and more heat but this thing may run so hot its not even funny even tho its only at 2 watts! We will see I guess....
A computer generates over 2000 times as much heat as a human being? Rubbish!
I think you're confusing your units; there's more than one kind of calorie. Check your numbers for common sense, before making such an absurd statement.
Well, it "seems" pretty straight-forward.
The 500 MHz is a single-speed chip; therefore it cannot drop it's speed to conserve power.
The 600 MHz has the SpeedStep technology, letting it drop its power consumption for an "average" of 1 Watt.
Fuck that. You don't have anything to gain. Without competition you've got jack and shit. You wanting one monopoly over another is just showing your lack of understanding of economics. How Palm and WinCE got on your little list confounds me, Palm had a veritable monopoly on the handheld market due to the penetration of the Palm series organizers. WinCE has had a marginal share at best. Do you really think your end products are going to be cheaper because one company dominates the market rather than another? Corporations exist for the sole purpose of making a handful of people alot of money. If Intel ceased to exist AMD would pull the same strong arm tactics that Intel does right now. Most systems are comparable in price and performance anyways only gaining marginally over competitors for short times. Your whole argument is merely brand loyalty.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I don't work for Intel. I do however think people are fucking idiots for believing marketing department hype. If you're going to make statements about Brand X being better than Brand Y then you really ought to have some sort of viable litmus test to really prove that. Otherwise you're just another statistic believing the shit released from marketoids.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I would love to have a laptop computer that could run for days on a battery charge, even if the CPU was slow by desktop standards.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think there was a very important statement in the news.com story. Something along the lines of 'Intel just has to get close. If I'm most MIS guys, I'll choose Intel over Transmeta.'
That's very true. Even products coming from the likes of IBM and Gateway, most corporations (read: where the bulk of sales are) will choose a product with an Intel chip. Unlike Linux vs Windows, it is harder for an IT guy to see the merits of a Transmeta chip over an Intel chip. This will be a hard battle for Transmeta to fight.
Actually, that's less than 2 watts, and it doesn't use Intel's SpeedStepping tech. The one that uses SpeedStepping reportedly consumes an average of less than one watt. It should also be a better performer than the Crusoe, no matter how inelegant some people think it is -- personally, I just prefer something that gets the job done better. Not trying to start a flame war or anything, but it sounds like you were sipping a bit too heavily from the Transmeta/Linus kool-aid when you made your post -- c'mon now, preserving CPU lifetime?? ;-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I remember my old cyrix 166 CPU had a cool feature, by adding a small patch to the kernel, you could enable "low power on HLT" since linux's kernel actualy properly uses multi-tasking features of the i386, my "wow that's hot" single voltage cyrix could run at room temperature.. but if i were to do something like play quake, or run rc5.. the CPU would ramp up to full temp.
http://www.transmeta.com/crusoe/lowpower/batlife.h tml
crusoe consumes 1watt at full usage and 8mw when idle. Intel's will consume 2 watts ALWAYS which is MORE than twice crusoe.
Ryan
Heh. The Sony Z505JS (portable) has a fairly loud fan. Unless I go to the power profile thingie and ask for low fan noise (which seems to also get variable CPU speed) it is louder then my home machine. Of corse my home machine uses the all important PC Power and Cooling Silencer fan (I think it is a scroll cage fan). The CPU fan makes modestly more noise (with the case closed) then the real fan. Of corse disk chatter is louder then both those...so I have to make sure the MP3 player never stops :-)
Still it goes to show you can make quietish desktop machines with fans, and loud notebooks too.
It would be nice if there were enough demand for quiet fans on other parts of the machine too, if the CPU fan had a scroll cage I would be even happyer. Regretably scroll cage fans appear to be expensave. I don't know if that's because they are harder to make, or just in way less demand, so less compatation, so higer price, so less demand....
If you want a quiet machine, I urge you to check out the PC Power & Cooling fans (the silencer ones, not the turbo cool), and if anyone knows where to get quiet stuff cheaper, drop me a line.
Actually, that's less than 2 watts
I don't know the detailed specs of Intel's chip, but I do know market spin when I see it:
Intel's new chips for the ultraportable market will include a fixed-speed 500-MHz Celeron, whose 1.2-volt operating voltage will reduce power under 2 watts
It doesn't say power consumption will *stay* under 2 watts.
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Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
So, what you need is a noise-cancelling MP-3 player which, in a preliminary setup steo, records the fan noise your computer makes, then subtracts that noise from whatever music it plays, thus cancelling the noise of your machine. In addition, it could also check disk activity and subtract the disk chatter...
For that matter, why don't MP-3 players come with an automatic heuristic equalizer, in which the MP-3 player sends a variable-frequency signal through the speakers, and with a microphone, measures the speaker's frequency response, then adjust the equalizer controls accordingly? I recall, some 20 years ago seeing an ANALOG graphic equalizer that did just that...
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Actually (to respond to my own post - does that lower your karma or get you some bad slash mojo of some sort?) the article on CNET is better, they indicate that the AVERAGE consumption is less than X watts of power. My question is: why does the 600Mhz PIII consume less than one watt (on average) yet the Celeron 500Mhz consumes less than two watts? Is this part of Intel's plans to push consumers towards buying the more expensive PIII (or am I just being paranoid at the end of a long night shift?)?
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Slán leat agus go n'eirí an bóthar leat
Anywho, the reported 2 watts of power is most likely the minimum amount of power the cpu can consume (following the long tradition of hardware and software manufacturers reporting numbers that are theoretically important but have little bearing on average performance/usage and are often misleading). The Intel (and as far as I know, just about every other CPU manufacturer other than Transmeta) power conservation design is very very clunky (bordering on bletcherous) which is vaguely analagous to running a car for a short period and then coasting in order to decrease gas usage. Transmeta's design, on the other hand, is much more elegant and thoughtfull. More important is the ability of the Transmeta chips to fine tune power usage for any particular application (running at the lowest speed appropriate). Relating to the example above, this would be like running at 25 mph instead of alternating between coasting and 80 mph.
Transmeta's design is not only superior and on average more likely to use less electrical power (and consequently generate less heat), but is also easier on the processor (preserving lifetime, not that that matters anymore), and in general provides for a "nicer" interface between the CPU and other components (for example, a processor that is running slower, but is nevertheless always on, responds to external interrupts better and more reliably).
On a side note, I'm really waiting for RSFQ technology (Rapid Single Flux Quantum logic / memory, which (BTW) requires superconductors so I'll probably not see it anytime soon) which uses so little power that you should be able to operate in the 1 teraflops range using less than a tenth of a watt.
On my laptop, I'd happily have it run at half the
speed (or less) it does now if I got double the
battery life.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
And have to save and exit?
If I've got a debug session running when I leave, I want it still there when I come back. If I've got a compile buffer open and am working through it, I don't want to lose it or have to save it to a file. Windows people may be used to having very few apps open and saving often, but in a lot of places the whole shutdown/startup thing just doesn't fly. Or I may have that $@#% DHCP daemon serving to the embedded box I'm hooked up to (and have an active serial connection to) and have to shut down several other services and whatnot to get it back up.
The conveniance factor of leaving the machine on all the time is quite strong.
How about using these low-power CPU's in desktop computers ? Without going in the matter, it could be seen as an useless idea : why put a less powerfull computer ("only" 500 Mhz) in a desktop PC ?
Mobile computers have one feature in common with iMac's : they haven't any fan. The current trends in computer is the more fans in the box, the better computer (see this recent Slashdot Poll, too). It's usual to find one big fan for the power supply, one or two of them on the CPU and on the video card, and even on the HD, the CD/DVD player, and on the CDR.
It makes very noisy computers ! Now, I've noticed that the evening, just after turning off my computer and calming down in a quiet room, my ears continue to burden, just as they continue to buzz after a hard rock concert (just a slight exaggeration, here). This can't be good. Really, that noise annoys me.
That's why I'd like to see low-power CPU's in fanless desktop PC's, just like in iMacs. I, for one, just don't care about speed on my desktop PC : my old P-II 266 Mhz is enough for my daily needs.
(And I'm not even talking about how inelegant is the principle of fans itself.)
Stéphane
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Have you checked out Badtech The daily online cartoon?
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
CPU's certainly chew up their fair share of battery life, but I would look toward that large lush active matrix backlit LCD for the reason your battery life is so low. Also, don't forget about those hard drives, they suck power like nobody's business.
Well, some of us like to travel instead of being tied down near our LANs. How fast do you think that network connection of yours is going to be when you're thousands of miles in the air? It's also usually a lot quicker to put in a CD or DVD than it is to download it remotely, not to mention the space waste of storing everything you might need on your laptop or server just to avoid a CD/DVD drive. Add in the nicities of being able to pass the time on your flight by watching the latest video release on DVD, and I wonder how you could possibly think that the drives wouldn't be great for some people. Sure, you might not want one, but c'mon...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
If it uses less power and can attain 500Mhz, then I would assume there would be less heat generated which would be great for overclocking! Hey maybe Intel would use this technology to do >2GHz for their future CPUs.
Maybe you're shopping in the wrong places if it's your experience that a DVD drive adds three kilos to the weight of a laptop. I've never seen anything close to that. Along with the advent of not-at-all-heavy DVD drives, technology has also given us the video rental outlet. It's not too hard to find a good movie that you've never seen before. Maybe I'm just too picky and not frugal enough, but I'd much rather pick up something that I actually want to see for less than three bucks, rather than be subjected to a free movie that I "can stand to watch" -- I "can stand to watch" a chick movie when I'm coerced into it, but I want to pick out the movie myself for those other times when the threat of sexual denial isn't hanging over my head. ;-)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Look at it from this angle: 600 employees x $1000 for a new computer = $600,000 / $20,000 per work year = 30 years for it to be cost effective.
Besides, in a company with 600 employees, $20k is not a whole heck of a lot. One clerk's salary.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Here's a chart I put together from Intel's Mobile Power Guidelines Rev. 1.00, which lists target power consumption values for notebooks. I've included Intel's numbers for the Maximum, Minimum, and Average (when running Winbench 3D) power consumptions, in watts.
Please excuse the formatting, Slashdot seems to strip out extra spaces, so I put in underscores. Plus, I'm also having trouble with the lameness filter.
The high maximum value for the hard drive comes from the power required for the initial spin-up. I didn't see a listing for separate L2 and CPU power consumptions, but as you can see, together they take up about 1/3 of the average power consumption in a full-sized notebook, with the graphics system (chip plus screen) being one of the components that takes up another big chunk.
Putting the Intel VS Transmeta thing aside. Look at what is really being accomplished here. More processors on the market that use less power will help the portable PC market grow. Right now the processors in Palm Pilots and other handhelds aren't so good. New processors like this will soon change all that. (I know what most ppl are thinking: 'What do I need with 500Mhz on my palm pilot?' But eventually, one day, notebooks will be as small as the palm pilot, but as interactive and useful as your home PC. This is making it one step closer).
I think alot of the negative comments that seem to be posted here are because of all the AMD vs Intel junk that has been going on for awhile and now they seem to think Transmeta is going to recieve the same type of match.
But look at what it did to AMD? They were very much a struggling company until the K7's hit the market. Transmeta is the same way, maybe Intel coming into the light will force newer and better chips from both sides.
And on a personal note, I would love to see Intel crash and burn and AMD take over in the processor market. But Intel has been around for such along time I doubt it is going to happen.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
You moron. The kernel has to be changed for any processor in runs on. You can'y simply compile the Pentium kernel for a MIPS or PPC machine. Most if not all of the hardware controls and addressing need to be rewritten for each specific processor.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Man you're cool.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Is it just me, or is it kind of strange that Transmeta isn't on the PC EXPO 2000 list of exhibitors?
After reading a lot about Transmedia and recently Intel's chips, and its variable frequency, I can't help but imagine that this chip would be rather cost effective not only for portable computers, but in companies.
In a larger company where people leave their computers running all day, and all night, these newer variable CPU's could show a good amount of return in their low energy consumption. All I've seen though is that people have been touting the portablability of these chips (which I'm not denying their worth), but on an even larger scale, would there be a market for low power, high performance, chips in large companies?
Not even just for companies even though. For those people that weekly run LAN parties, the power consumption of a dozen computers on a weekly basis can be rather high. I'm curious as to if there'd be much cost difference in an environment such as this as well.
Strangely enough, Intel proved that branding can be applied even to something as disconnected form the user as a CPU, the ultimate "black box" that by rights should be brand-neutral from a user/consumer perspective. Nonetheless, the "Intel Inside" branding strategy has been a success, with most PC makers touting the Intel branding on their boxes.
Don't underestimate the stickiness of a brand and a product that people know to work. Transmeta has none of that cachet - in fact, the Trnasmeta cachet is of ".com media darling" - which is probably exactly opposite to what CPU branding should represent.
If Intel can get close to the Transmeta power consumption goals, its game over for Transmeta.
While its not a major budget item for a large company, it's certainly something they would consider, especially since the cost of power consumption (not just the power itself) is considerably hiogher than you estimated
Air conditioning has to dispose of the heat once it leaves the machine. It takes more than 1 watt of energy to move 1 watt of waste heat (if you could move 1 watt of heat for less than one watt of input, on a large scale, you could do stuff that verged on 'free energy' -- i.e. use 200W to move 1000W of waste heat into a 50% efficient heat engine to generate 500W, then, if you really want to push it, use the 500W to... well you get the idea) While new HVAC plants are quite efficient, using 1.5W to remove 1W of waste heat is not unreasonable for the national installed base (HVAC updating is very expensive) when you consider all ancillary costs
An office worker generates only 100 cal (400 joules) per hour of waste body heat. A desktop computer (w/ monitor) can generate up to 225 kcal (250W*3600sec = 900K joules). There's a lot more forced hot air streaming out of your PC than convecting gently from your body. Of course humans and PC's are hardly the only heat sources in a building, but you get the idea:
Buying big A/C capacity cost $100K's. A maintanence contract cost $10K's/yr. It cost $10K's to power the PCs and 1.5 times as much to powert the AC. An AC failure can cost $10's-100K's per hour as Important CPUs are overheated by waste heat from idle CPUs. And not one dollar of all that directly generates new revenue. CFOs hate that.
It adds up to a cost that management may want to cut -- especially when a company is expanding, and the choice is "more AC capacity and costs" vs. "making do with existing AC capacity"
Office leasing makes it worse. Why invest (or co-invest) in infrastructure for a building you don't own?
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Crusoe's *peak* power consumption is less than half the *idle* power consumption of this new chip. That's a much larger advantage than a factor of two. Setting even that aside, the difference between three hours of battery life and six is pretty visible and important to customers.
By contrast, AMD seem to barely pip Intel on the price/performance scale, and they get enough market share out of it to fund healthy future development and maintain their role as a David to Intel's Goliath.
I could be wrong, but I'd be interested to hear why.
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