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Solar RISCOS Computer

Posted by michael on from the sunshine-my-only-sunshine dept.

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.

2 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. multi-scalar ARM processors? by spongman · · Score: 4
    Is it just me or would ARM processors be a great platform for high-power computing? Surely their low power consumption, which is one of the main things slowing down the mega-processors of today (read: x86-base monsters) gives them much greater headroom than their large cousins.

    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...

  2. Link broken by Hyperbolix · · Score: 5

    Here is the real one:
    Click here
    or for you cut/pasters:
    http://www.explan.co.uk/hardware/solo.shtml

    -Hyperbolix