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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.
Intel's XScale site is here: http://www.intel.com/design/intelxscale/
"All for £1299"
Now I just have to drive God knows how many meters to get to the trade show.
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Ouch. OS in flash ROM is cool, but what are people going to be buying these for? Are there legacy apps in RISC OS that people need to run faster?
I want one, anyway.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Here's the XScale link and the Solar PC link.
If they can add a built-in touchscreen, a battery, and make it fit in my pocket, I think they have a winner!
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
...if this is supposed to be an alternative OS to Windows, MacOS and Linux. I mean, if it's 1299 UK pounds (about $2000), I can get a MAD Win/Lin/Mac PC for that.
It's a 600Mhz Processor (blah blah Mhz Myth blah blah) so how powerful is that compared to AMD or Intel chips? Benchmarks anyone?
No AGP slot?
Can someone please, other than for RISC OS development, explain to me why I would buy one of these?
vk.
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
The whole point of the XScale is to save power through voltage scaling. Voltage scaling involves reducing the CPU voltage(and the CPU performance) during tasks that aren't time-critical, and during system idle time. This doesn't make much sense on a desktop machine for two reasons:
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.
So, why put an XScale in a desktop system?? Ideas anyone??
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
I think the first question from the /. crowd will have to do with a Beowolf cluster of these things.
"It's a dog eat dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear."- Norm (from Cheers)
>> You know the first question 'the public' will have is... "...but does it run Windows?"
I was going to respond by pointing out that, with 2 PCI-X slots and on-board gigabit ethernet, it's clear that this machine is built to be a server... then I noticed the integrated sound and Geforce2MX400 video. What a poor, mixed up little machine this is.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I've got an Acorn Achimedes with an ARM 3 (8mhz)and 4MB ram in it along with 500 MBharddrive. If this were a PC is might just run linux.
It runs a FULL GUI with anti aliased fonts. Multitasking and a better DTP program than i have on my 2 ghz PC. I easily drag stuff from my scientific notation package to a WP.
If only modern stuff ran this well.
Iwillbe looking seriously at these things
You know the first question 'the public' will have is... "...but does it run Windows?"
Or more accurately, does it have any useful applications? Without applications, the greatest CPU and the greatest OS in the world are only of interest to Slashbots. If it's aimed at consumers, it's got to have Office and it's got to run games. If it's targeted at business, it's also got to have Office, and it's got to have the relevant vertical market applications. If it's targeted at workstation users, it's got to have CAD/CAM software or whatever.
Without these, it's dead before it's even launched. Be should have taught you that.
Well, as one of the nostalgics I have to admit there is a fairly resounding ring of truth to your question of whether we are just trying to revive old memories. Having said that, I use RISC OS every day , for web development and DTP/design tasks. Maybe I can explain why. I have a fairly new (800Mhz Duron) Win2k/Linux machine and a rather elderly (40Mhz[!] ARM710) Risc PC. There is nothing I can do on the Risc PC that I cannot to on the other (the reverse, I'm afraid, is by no means true). However, there is very little that I would not rather do on the Risc PC. This is mostly learned behaviour of course, but I still insist that RISC OS is very pleasant to use. Its a remarkably efficient GUI which, despite running on a chip that is 20 times slower (in MHz) than my Linux box, feels only slightly less responsive. High-quality software (e.g. Cerilica's Vantage, one of the flagship apps) tends to be somewhat cheaper than 'equivalent' software elsewhere. The GUI is consistent across almost all applications. It doesn't try to hide the system file structure, but instead uses a structure that is fairly simple to understand. Since around 1990 it has had a better anti-aliased font renderer that I have seem on any other platform (does any other system use hinting?). Just lots of little things really. There are of course lots of downsides, and we have only survived at all because Pace have taken advantage of RISC OS's stability and used it to run TV set-top boxes. The number of users probably barely crests 10,000 and so the hardware is expensive. There are big gaps concerning e.g. Linux software compatability and Java. Nevertheless, I will buy one.
--hey, check out the other slashdot story today about the "littlepc". It's 12 volt dc! Just the ticket for your solar cabin. You could probably even modify any old case, the littlepc fits in one of the larger drive bays. You could cut it open and make it so the lcd screen and keyboard fit inside for traveling. Granted, not a laptop, but still,a possible nifty project. We run on solar and watch our watts as well, the deal with laptops is the stupid adapters waste watts converting the juice, tons of waste heat off those things. Hmm, for that matter you might be able to adapt a small UPS battery inside your project case as well, so you'd have a built in "emergency power".
If I was going to do it, I'd use an old busted mac 6400 tower case, for the killer built into the case sound system. I had one, just amazingly good sound from the internal speakers.
Of course if you really want to run this other OS, oh well...carry on
Because they can't figure out a way to make 'em leak oil... ;p
RTFM dimwit. XScale is a version of ARM made by Intel and probably named so stupudly because Intel are embarrassed to have to rely on some body else's design to be able to make a low energy cpu. As is usual for Intel they've managed to make it a more complex part than really needed with a longer pipeline than other ARMs. They seem to have a hangup about 'my pipeline is longer than yours'.
Everybody and their dog makes assorted kinds of ARM. ARMs are everywhere; PDAs, cameras, printers, mp3 players, DVD players, radios, fax machines, routers, all that sort of thing. Even Motorola eventually caved in and licensed the ARM architecture. One day the secret feature will be enabled and control of the world will revert to the British Empire! You will all have to learn cricket and proper accents! So there!
--check it oput sometime, you can get 12 vdc and 24 vdc appliances. A lot of times as close as your nearest marina boat store or RV place. We keep trying to gradually change over to all dc appliances, or if they were already dc to get better ones. Example, we had 12 volt incadescents, we switched to fluorescents. Next step is LED strip lighting. The vacuum cleaner, switched from a 110 AC to a smallish but still "good enough" 12 volt vac I found, a small step up from a normal car vac. Our tvs are 12 volt, but the color/vcr combo one crapped out on the dc part so had to switch that one back to AC, (well, that's for the girlfriend here, she's the movie nut), I have a small 12 vdc black and white I use whenever I really want to follow a breaking news story as I sit at the computer. I've got laptops and desktops, but this project I just thunked up is intriguing me now, laptops just got too small of a screen, and 99.99% of the time they sit around for me as a desktop, so I just use the energy hog desktop so I can have a bigger monitor. I know I could run the monitor from the laptop, but the desktop is a bigger better computer.
If this littlepc was cheaper-down to 500$ maybe- I'd consider it, but a grand right now..well..guess I'd still go a hundred bucks more and get an iBook. I mean, you still need to get the LCD monitor, and they *ain't* cheap.
As to the solar itself, going on 4 years now for us, my only regret is not doing it a decade earlier. I'd encourzge anyone to at least start on it, decent battery bank storage, a panel or two and a charge controller and possibly an inverter. I'd size the components in advance so you could add extra PV panels as you want to and can afford it. I'd start with the solar rig running the computer in the home as it makes a *nifty* UPS system, beats the pants off buying a dedicated UPS. all ya got to do is check the battery size difference, heh, my "backup" batteries would run this desktop for days and days without any solar input from a decent full charge. Also note this last ice storm, millions still without ANY power. Having guaranteed SOME all the time is a lot better than ZERO when you really WANT some power.
... is the best in the world. It's wonderful, superb, fantastic, beautiful. By far the best assembler I've ever used (I've used 68k, PPC, x86, PIC, ZX80 and 6502, and perhaps some more). And RiscOS is/was a fantastic OS (font anti-aliasing from the late '80s, etc.), with the best editor ever, which is currently nearly completely ported to 32-bit status.
James F.
I was going to respond by pointing out that, with 2 PCI-X slots and on-board gigabit ethernet, it's clear that this machine is built to be a server
;-)
PCI-X is new, but are you aware that most Macs have come with built-in Gigabit Ethernet for some time now? The Power Macs and PowerBooks all come with 1000BASE-T. The iBooks and iMacs, I believe, still come with puny 100BASE-T, but you get what you pay for.
The day is coming, sooner rather than later, when all computers that currently have built-in 100BASE-T will have built-in gigabit instead.
I write in my journal
How much noise does an XScale CPU setup generate vs and Athlon? I'd be willing to bet that the Xscale runs much cooler, requiring less noisy heat-dissipation mechanisms, and making the PC suitable for places like the bedroom, livingroom, or say, the office...
I don't know, but to me the noise factor is a really big advantage.