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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 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
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
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.
So, why put an XScale in a desktop system?? Ideas anyone??
Given the rather high cost of this device, I would venture to say the primary purpose of this device is for folks who REALLY need one, say developers of software for the Xscale processor. With all the PDA makers switching the Xscale, and ATI making their PDA graphics chips, some might think these things will take off.
Why not emulate it? AFAIK, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to emulate RISC processors on the x86 architecture. Perhaps it is even difficult to emulate one risc architecture on top of another, such as Xscale on PowerPC.
One thing is for sure, at that price, this is a vertical market product. Not many people need it, but those who do will pay a lot for it.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
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
"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.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
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!
The reason to use an XScale is that large parts of the OS and applications are written in ARM assembler, and the XScale is currently the fastest ARM-compatible processor (AFAIK).
(No, really, the applications as well. Impression Publisher is a DTP package written in assembler, and ArtWorks from the same company a vector drawing package (later rewritten in C++ as Corel Xara). The original version of Sibelius was in assembler - apparently including a Postscript printer driver!)
So when they say 'a very fast desktop machine' there is some truth to the statement, even though an XScale processor isn't that hot in raw computing power compared to current i386 or PowerPC chips. (The Archimedes in 1987 was the fastest microcomputer in the world - for those people who still used the term microcomputer - but although the ARM series is the best-selling processor type it's now mostly embedded and hasn't kept pace with desktop chips.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com