First Desktop Computer To Use Intel's XScale

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.

Comments

Re:why??

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

"1) For desktop systems power is cheap and readily available and
2) For most desktop systems, the CPU consumes a small fraction of the entire system power. Even the fastest P4 uses like 70 watts, where the entire system might consume something like 250-350 watts. So even if we reduced the CPU wattage to zero, we still would only get about a 1/4 or less improvement in overall system power.
"

Ohhhh Kayyy...I'll have to go ahead and... disagree with you on that... yea...

Joking aside:

1) My parents own a house out in the woods that we go to sometimes to stay. It has no electricity. The only power available is solar energy and a generator. What if I want a desktop computer, or more than one, up there? I suppose I could use a laptop. but still, this machine is going to have more features and possibly better power management and definately use less power. When your household has a maximum # of watts you can use at any given time, then this becomes a BIG issue.

2)Do you think it is financially viable to have 1, 2, 3, more 70W light bulbs running continuously inside your house? Unless you have a grow room full of dank bud, I would hope not. So that 70W could be saved while the CPU is idle, or half idle, or 1/4 idle... (which is nearly 100% of the time). My household has 5 computers combined, 3 of which run 24/7. It woud be nice for them to use CPU power only when needed. (The same principle holds true to your energy star monitor that goes into sleep mode and "instantly" wakes up upon use). After all power saving features are enabled while in idle state (fans slowed, monitor sleeps, hard drives spin down, cpu slows, etc..) that 300W just turned into 10-50W, somewhat like a nightlight. When under half load, sure, the HDD spins up, monitor uses 20-300W (CRT v LCD) but you can still reduce the electricity used even while you USE the machine. If you are word processing, and you have 3 cpu's running in your house, you could be using 10W per cpu insted of 70W per cpu.

Other uses are in the server room. Obviously, TCO is a big concern, and the electrical bill is a very very large part of the TCO. Remember, the Crusoe CPU was designed and is marketed mainly because of this exact feature.