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First Desktop Computer To Use Intel's XScale

Posted by timothy on from the if-it-does-what-you-need dept.

Ian Chamberlain writes "Drobe, the leading RISC OS portal, has reported the release of Iyonix, the first desktop computer to use Intel's XScale processor. The XScale is now famous for its increasingly widespread use in PDA devices, used because of its low power consumption and high performance processing. The Iyonix runs a new 32bit version of RISC OS, the operating system orginally developed by Acorn, but now owned by Pace." The same site links to a pair of reviews (one translated from heise.de) of this machine. RISC OS is also what powers the solar PC mentioned a few months ago.

6 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Intel Link by L3WKW4RM · · Score: 5, Informative

    Intel's XScale site is here: http://www.intel.com/design/intelxscale/

  2. Chopped links? by MagPulse · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the XScale link and the Solar PC link.

  3. it looks like by foonf · · Score: 4, Informative

    Based on the image of the motherboard here this box looks to use a standard ATX-factor motherboard (aside from the "podule" bays and rear port arrangement, anyhow). Anybody know who makes the board, and if they are available separately? I don't think I would pay over 2000 bucks for a whole system, but since it uses pretty typical PC hardware, if the board were available for a reasonable price (even "reasonable" like the $500 for some of the open PPC boards) it would be a cool alternative to the x86 orthodoxy, even if its somewhat slow by modern standards (especially in light of the fact that it should be trivial to get NetBSD and probably Linux running on it).

    --

    "(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
  4. For those who don't know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Acorn was a British computer company which was more or less dissolved a couple of years ago.
    They designed and released the BBC computer for BBC TV corp. in the early 1980s for their "The Computer" television series. It was like the Commodore 64, only better... Definently the best mass-market desktop computer of the age.
    Acorn then moved on to thinking about their next-generation computing system. They found the 80286 and 68000 too slow and expensive for their tastes, and instead did the foolhardy thing of designing their own R.I.S.C. CPU - the ARM (XScale is an evolution of the ARM, like how the P4 is an evolution of the 386). ARM CPUs typically use amazingly small amounts of electricity, and run up to several times faster than an X86 cpu at the same mhz.
    In (I think) 1987, after having been bought by Olivetie (an Italian electronics company), Acorn released their first Arm based system. Over the next couple of years, this evolved into the RISC Operating System / ARM computer platform, which was relatively popular, especially in schools, in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and parts of Canada and Mexico. RISCOS/Arm is virtually unheard of in the US, but it was an important platform once. In 1998 my high school had mainly Acorn computers (and my school in 1996 was still using Acorn BBCs).
    Acorn arguabily suffered from mismanagement in the 1990s, and failed to properly market and give direction to their system. The company decided to stop producing Acorn computers in late 1998 (a fast new yellow G4-cube-like computer - the Phoebie was in late development at the time) on the belief that the next big thing would be set-top boxes and the like. Of course they got it all wrong, and Acorn more or less went down the plughole and was subsequently renamed "Element 14" (huh?) which means Silicon, then merged into some forgettable company.
    Luckily the ARM-cpu-producing division was held as a seperate company and survived... ARM cpus are widely used in certain areas. Last weekend when I was at a computer shop, they had a whole range of ARM based PDAs.
    RISCOS was licenced to Pace. I don't know the whole story, but I think Pace managed to hire some of the Acorn staff.
    RISCOS is ultra-fast, tiny (several megabytes), runs from ROM for bootup speeds which put BeOS to shame, easy to program for, easy to use so long as you can understand its weird 3-mouse buttoned gui, and still has a userbase of maybe several hundred thousand.
    Linux can be run on Acorn systems too.
    There are usergroups, Acorn computer fairs, and companies dedicated to the Acorn platform in the UK. It isn't going to go away any time soon. This is why they've put together this Lyonix computer, and a couple of other companies are putting their own Acorn clones too.
    If you're wondering why it is the price it is, well they're coving themselves because low-production-run motherboards are highly expensive to produce. My guess would be there'll be substancial price-drops for new RISCOS/ARM systems within a year when they can be more certain of production numbers, and competition arrives on the scene.
    There is alot of freeware and educational software available for RISCOS. A commercial game called "Tek" was released for Riscos recently.

    Btw, is there anyone in the US using RISCO? If you are, I bet you weird out all your friends ;)

    1. Re:For those who don't know by jd678 · · Score: 4, Informative
      Just a couple of additions to do with the processor and early ARM processors. It was originally called the Acorn Risc Machine, however in 1990 it was spun off into a seperate company known as Advanced Risc Machines, owned 40% by VLSI, 40% by Apple, and 20% by Acorn. Apple then went on to use this processor in the Newton.

      What they did in producing the processor was incredible, they had a working RISC processor, running at the time very quick, and with minimal man-hours of developemend, it was something like 10 man years, unheard of at the time for a new processor. Some of the features like a full 32bit shift being available without using another clock cycle have yet to be surpassed. It was true RISC, at a time when other RISC chips had something like 60-80 instructions, this made do with just 44 - there wasn't even any instruction for divide, and the concept of subroutines and return was done purely in programming as opposed to calling functions of the processor.

      As far as the OS, the version on release was the very undeveloped Arthur, and RISC OS was released late 1988 as it's much better replacement. At the time, there was full (cooperative however) multitasking Windowing system, with 256 colours, and was much better than anything else on the market.

  5. Re:why?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Both you and the person who moderated your post to +1 insightful have no idea about what you're talking.

    That the Xscale just happens to be designed to be low-power is not the reason why they chose it.
    This computer is being sold because it runs RiscOS, an OS developed in the UK and still used by many people. RiscOS only runs on ARM CPUs, and the Xscale happens to be an ARM CPU.