NetBSD Powered iSCSI Accesible Appliance Released

hubertf writes "TeamASA and Wasabi Systems cooperated to bring out a new "Personal Internet Network Attached Storage/Server" which runs on a 733MHz XScale CPU, does LVD SCSI and Gbit Ethernet with AppleTalk, Samba and most interestingly iSCSI to access the system. And of course this runs on NetBSD! Check out the appliance's web page." Looks like a really nice box.

Comments

Re:Xscale Vs. Pentium+

[darkov]

What benefit does the Xscale line offer over a power-conserving pentium/2/3/4?

An Xscale, and any ARM based processor, will make any Pentium look like a bar heater. They have very, very low power consumption for the performance.

Re:Xscale Vs. Pentium+

[questionlp]

An XScale processor will run at very low power, even compared to most ultra-low voltage Pentium II/III processors and much lower than Pentium 4 processors. Also, the XScale processors include a lot of logic built-in so that it doesn't need a full northbridge/southbridge (which adds to the power consumption and board space).

Also, in most cases, you can run an XScale processor without any active cooling... a basic heatsink (or none at all) should do the trick. Again, that shrinks down the overall size of the device.

Also, in those kind of embedded devices, you don't need a processor with an FPU... instead, you just need code that is optimized for the specified purpose.

Re:Xscale Vs. Pentium+

[questionlp]

I forgot to add a reference to the above power usage statements. Accord to Intel's 80200 product page:

Even at 733 MHz the Intel 80200 processor dissipates less than 1.3W! This is accomplished using the Intel® Superpipelined RISC Technology-the 7-stage integer, 8-stage memory superpipelined core achieves high speed with ultra-low power consumption.

Try getting a Pentium 4 to dissipate less than 5W of heat during normal usage. An Ultra Low-Voltage Pentium 3 can probably get that low but only in power-saving mode.

It looks like you still have to add an external controller chip for devices, but it's probably smaller than the ICH2 and ICH4 found in almost all Pentium 4 systems.