Via One-ups Transmeta

An aonymous reader submitted that"Via just announced the Eden platform, which promises lower power consumption than Transmeta. If it follows the C3 line of CPUs, I'm guessing it will also deliver much better performance at a lower cost (the C3s gave significantly better performance than Transmeta, but at just under 10W, so a bit more power)."

Comments

WinCE only for StrongARM?

[class_A]

Taken from webpage:
"...industry standard x86 architecture, the VIA Eden Embedded System Platform is fully compatible with Microsoft Windows XP and a full range of Embedded Windows, Windows CE..."

I thought WinCE/PocketPC was now only built for the StrongARM processor, or am I missing something?

Personally, I don't see low power as being Transmeta's primary selling point. I am much more interested in their code morphing software. I don't see where VIA's solution fits in. If you want a low power consumption PC type device, then are we still talking about an "embedded" device?

Where does the "much better performance" come from

[vlad_petric]

There is no indication of the actual performance of the Eden processor (i.e., results from real benchmarks ) on the page, only the halucinogenic Highest performance x86 embedded processor (trust the salesman!).

Moreover, there are some other oddities in the description, like the Integrated 192KB internal L1/L2 cache (well ... what's the size of L1 ? )

The Raven.

Re:What's with this Eden name anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transmeta's chip is called the Crusoe; Robinson Crusoe is a book about a man who gets marooned on a paradise of a deserted island...? Think, man.

Re:Speaking of laptop power savings: LED backlight

[Salamander]

So why don't we see some low-power LED-light screens?

Very simply, because LEDs aren't powerful enough. They might seem pretty bright when viewed directly, but when you're putting that light through a lossy backlight assembly onto the relatively large area of a laptop screen, and hoping that the result is sufficient to counteract ambient glare, you get a different impression. Frontlights are even worse.

Some vendors have tried replacing standard CCFLs with LEDs in PDA applications, where the screen size is smaller, and even there it has led to "customer acceptance issues". Translation: customers hated it. For the larger screens that laptops use, current-generation LED technology doesn't even merit serious consideration. With any luck, somebody will earn a Nobel prize figuring out how to make an ultra-bright LED that can compete with CCFL, but I wouldn't count on it.