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Solar RISCOS Computer
A reader sent in a link to an ultra-low-power RISCOS computer designed to be powered by a single small solar panel. They're aiming for a complete system which draws only 8.5 watts, which would be incredible if they can manage it.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
dude... the Crusoe is a form of RISC chip. The guy who developed the concept of VLIW (very long instruction word), the same guy who suggested that RISC offers better performance over CISC, is one of the founders of Transmeta.
Crusoe is like a "super tiny number of operations" chip. It supports more advanced operations in a software layer around the chip (and that's why it can emulate an x86 chip). Of course it also optimizes as it goes.. but that's outside the scope of what we're discussing...
So, no.. crusoe is not a "power-hog compared to many RISC processors".. it should fall in the lower end of the spectrum of similiarly performing RISC chips...
-Andy
Many moons ago, for fun (and field day that year :) ), I took the guts of a "laptop" power supply, bought surplus, and fitted it to a '386SX-20 system, with 5M ram, and a 40MB hd. We bolted this to an SVGA monochrome monitor that ran off of 12 volts. All of this was powered by a large 12 volt deep-cycle battery, which was, in turn, recharged by a few 15v 2A solar panels.
:) Especially when plugged into the 2m side of the satellite antenna array (which, by an amazing co-incidence (actually, it took research to find the right parts), had rotors, both azimuth and elevation, powered by 12 volts DC).
This, in turn, was attached to a TNC, and a 2m HT. both of which also ran from 12 volts. It made a rather nice emergency system
Now, granted the whole station consumed far more than 8.5 watts, but this was all off-the-shelf hardware from 1994, so I'd certainly hope that *some* progress has been made since then.
Lemon curry?
They should change the name to Solaris. Errr. Oh wait....
www.solarhost.com already powers more than a few websites using just the free radiation from that big thing in the sky.
I'm no processor expert. But it would seem to me that if intel can build a 20-stage pipeline for the P4, they're going to have to waste quite a bit of that on misses of the branch-prediction process. The conditional execution of the ARM instruction set would provide an excellent means of reducing the need for much of this branch prediction. Its low power consumption and small size should be an excellent base for addition of further optimizations, such as a deeper pipeline, super-scalar ALUs, larger instruction caches and faster clock speeds. I'm sure if you were to flesh one of these out to the extent that the P4/Palomino have been, it would make quite a processor.
Imagine a beowulf, err...
You've made the assumption that all of the third world is represented by Sally Struthers' late night commercials. There are parts of the third world that are ready to advance along with the rest of us and they resent being depicted as all looking up in hope of the next US food airdrop. Sure they need to feed their people, but at the same time you can't stifle their ambition to advance their technological capability, because in turn that goes back to helping those starving people in some way. Whether it is better agricultural science, or analysis of conditions in villages, or a census, they serve a purpose. Even the email gives them a voice outside of their nation so that they can possibly learn about how they might improve a small bit of their condition.
Now that is making some real use out of a computer, not vegetating while playing MP3s and surfing the web.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I have been using RiscOS computers for 6 years (and I am not a veteran) and I currently feel quite happy to see that other people tend to agree on its qualities in terms of power consumption, but also modularity, ergonomy...
>A HREF="http://www.riscos.org">RiscOS is IMHO one of the most optimized operating systems ever. It usually comes in 4-8MB ROM from which he boots in a few seconds.
It includes an excellent GUI and whatever you need to start work (TCPIP stack, Draw, Paint, Editor, tools, etc.).
It is the only 100% Plug'n Play Platform I have ever used and, most of all, as it is fully modular, whatever you dislike in this system can have its original ROM module be replaced with one of your RAM modules.
Now, if you consider that RiscOS has only been ported to specific architectures such as Acorn Computers' which implement the excellent ARM processor then it is obvious why this product is so power-efficient.
Now, an even more interesting case would be to implement a RiscOS platform around a forthcoming Amulet asynchronous processor which hardly consummes a single milliwatt when on idle.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Incidently, I wonder if they're running their webserver on this board, because it's very very down right now : Slashdot effect or lack of sun ? :-)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Here is the real one:
Click here
or for you cut/pasters:
http://www.explan.co.uk/hardware/solo.shtml
-Hyperbolix
...running one of these things on a planet orbiting a binary star system?
I may be an idiot, but what about the scientists behind the announcement that Astronomers Discover Planet Around Binary Star