VIA's New Nehemiah M10000 Processor Reviewed

Joseph Wharton writes "Mini-ITX.com has a review of VIA's new Nehemiah M10000 EPIA-M motherboard and processor. Some of the new features include a full-speed floating-point unit (finally!), SSE instructions, 64KB of full-speed L2 cache, and (get this) a hardware-based random number generator. Also, there's IO/APIC support in these new procs, potentially paving the way for dual EPIA boards."

Comments

Law of chip naming?

[JeffSh]

The name of the processor and chipset shall be inversely porportionate to the actual size of the chipset and chip.

imagine, when boards are self contained on one microchip, the name will be the "ultra gigaplexor 90000000 duplex teranaxor"

Re:Law of chip naming?

[GQuon]

imagine, when boards are self contained on one microchip, the name will be the "ultra gigaplexor 90000000 duplex teranaxor"

Perhaps they need somebody to end the madness? (One of) the first electronic computers was called ENIAC. Then came the UNIVAC and the ILLIAC, etc. So somebody called their computer MANIAC, and ended that tradition.
I like to think of Windows 98 as being derived from the MANIAC, while Windows XP is made BY maniacs.

Serioulsy though, I think microcontrollers is a kind of fusion of CPU/RAM/ROM other circuits, and they usually have shorter names than desktop CPUs have, IIRC.

Oh boy, a VIA chipset and CPU !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can have a complete system failure

Makes for a great jukebox

[microbob]

I used the 800mhz Eden to put together a great Jukebox. The digital coax out to my receiver works like a charm.

Having all my music on-line and ready to be played on any PC in the house is pretty nice.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[buffer-overflowed]

That's their target market, and boy are these things great for uses like that. 17cm x 17cm footprint and decent media performance.

IIRC a lot of "next-gen" DVD players will be using these mainboards, and they've started putting things like hardware mpeg decoding/etc. into them. They're ideal for digital jukebox/emulator/dvd player/pvr combo systems.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[microbob]

I threw it in a case like this:

-> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2729698897&category=3669

I got 2 cases for $25 (including shipping), got a 80gig HD, wireless adapter and IR keyboard.

The s-video out leave a little be desired, but it is probably my TV.

M.B.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[buffer-overflowed]

I forgot, don't expect one of these to run Doom 3 or UT2003. They will run office, and they will play DVDs. The earlier ones required no active cooling, it's still an extremely low power chip however.

I found the M10000 for $182 at directron, and here's what you get for your money:
VIA C3 1GHz processor
10/100 Ethernet
Firewire
TV-OUT (S-video, RCA(PAL and NTSC))
6 Channel Audio

Not a bad deal, methinks. Probably can be found cheaper, but I didn't want to look too hard.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! That's just the deal I've been looking for for my server.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[seafoodbuffet]

Anyone considering a M10000 should read this first. Basically, VIA released two separate boards under the M10000 name. The second of which is the only one to feature the Nehemiah core. The first series (the one from directron.com) still uses the older Ezra-T core. Right now, there's not many vendors who can reliably provide Nehemiah processors. The only places I've seen are idot.com and monarchcomputer.com.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[Milo77]

Forget that, I am waiting for the Esther-1 core, although a release date for it has not yet been prophecised...

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

My 'main machine' (this one) is a C3/866 with lots of DDR memory, I built it back at the start of last year. It takes very serious load to make it feel slow, and it dissipates very little heat. I think you could get away with passive cooling with an 800, but not with mine.

I suppose something running at that speed was state-of-the-art back around 2001. I have no need or plans to upgrade for at least a year, maybe longer.

obvious disclaimer - I do not game.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[Patoski]

IIRC a lot of "next-gen" DVD players will be using these mainboards, and they've started putting things like hardware mpeg decoding/etc. into them. They're ideal for digital jukebox/emulator/dvd player/pvr combo systems.

I don't know that these little boxes are quite powerful enough at this point to be ready for PVR applications. This is especially true if you're talking about encoding (recording a show) and decoding (watching a show) at the same time. Tom's
had a nice little VIA ITX test a little while ago and the Via processors got drilled when trying to display MPEG-* and DivX movies even in medium resolutions. Obviously the hardware decoders and other improvements VIA has made should help out a good bit on the scores. Perhaps it will be possible now to run MythTV and view recorded shows on this box and offload recording duties to another box on the network. It will be really interesting to see what these new little boards can do. I'll pick one up once they're able encode and decode at the same time at high resolutions. I'll probably be waiting a while but that's ok. :)

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[speleo]

You got that right.

I ordered a M10000 with a 1-GHz C3 CPU several weeks ago and expected it to be a Nehemiah core chip. I was disappointed to find it using the Ezra core since I really wanted to play with the hardware RNG.

Still, it's a nice setup.

BTW, the Red Hat 9 installer would kernel panic during startup but Red Hat 8 worked fine. I suspect the 9 installer is trying to run a i686 kernel when you really need a i386 for the VIA C3 CPU.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I thought at first you were joking, but found a couple of links from back in 2001 where the Esther appeared in their roadmap beyond the Nehemiah. Nehemiah was then planned for Q4 of 2001, and Esther H2 of 2002.

Reminds me a bit of the slippage with the 2.2 and 2.4 kernels.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[buffer-overflowed]

You want hardware encoding and decoding, this offloads everything off the processor. With a decent PVR card (onboard encoding) the processor doesn't do much of anything (onboard decoding).

VIA has had a hardware MPEG-2 decoder (you know, for DVDs) for some time (most of the EPIAs in fact), so that's nothing new. The boards failed at DIVX play back because of, IIRC, poor floating point performance (which the new chip corrects), the same reason they are bad for games.

I have an older M9000 with a Hauppage running as a PVR just fine thanks. Ahh, Tom's hardware, as always, providing no real information of value.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[sketerpot]

Sweet. That would be great for multimedia stuff (sound files would be simple), and I suppose you could make some sort of homebrew TiVo thing. At least you could make a DivX/DVD player. The firewire sounds nice for that too, as does the ethernet.

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[KermitJunior]

That TiVo thing....

http://freevo.sourceforge.net/

The other option is a modded XBox for about 200 with chip. Case included!

Re:Makes for a great jukebox

[kriston]

Buh? The i686 kernels on all the Unixes work just fine on my Ezra, Ezra-T, Samuel2 and Samuel systems.

Kris

64KB cache?

[Animats]

That sounds a bit small.

Re:64KB cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all the main ram I have on this C-64!

Re:64KB cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, you've asked for it:

64kb should be enough for anyone!

Re:64KB cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume it reduces heat and power consumption...

This board/proc sound great, if only they'd beef it up some.

Re:64KB cache?

[mmol_6453]

Cache is only useful when you're working on a small data set. Multimedia applications tend to constantly move through a large data set, which makes the cache all but useless. Full details here.

Re:64KB cache?

[liquidsin]

Think so? I'd heard that 64 kb should be enough for everyone...

Re:64KB cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah really, 64kb on the M10000? Cmon, pentiums are only up to the P4 and they gots lot more cache, like 512k. So M10000 / P4 = 2500, 2500 * 512K = 1250 MB. Don't go laughing at my math either, I had it double checked by good old GWB and the folks at Arthur Anderson so I *know* its correct.

Re:64KB cache?

[Hythlodaeus]

Cache is also used for program instructions, which can have more speed implications than the data cache in pipelined processors. An instruction waiting for data can be stalled while other instructions get to run, but if you're waiting for instructions from memory, there's nothing the processor can do.

Re:64KB cache?

[Dmotv8]

You're thinking of 640KB.

Re:64KB cache?

[beerman2k]

Your assertion is incorrect. While cache is useful for accessing the same data over and over again (temporal locality) it also useful for data sets that are close together (spacial locality). From the article you linked to:

If the CPU is running Winamp and it has just requested second 1:23 of a 5 minute MP3, then you can be reasonably certain that next it's going to want seconds 1:24, 1:25, and so on. This is the same with a DVD file, and with many other types of media files like images, Autocad drawings, and Quake levels. All of these applications operate on large arrays of sequentially ordered data that gets ground through in sequence by the CPU again and again.

Re:64KB cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats right. One has to remember that although dram has a very slow latency compared to cache, you can amortize this by doing larger block transfers.

Obviously media will exhibit tons of spatial locality so the cache is still very important.

Re:64KB cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

A cache doesn't need to be very large to take advantage of spacial locality, so you point is pointless.

Re:64KB cache?

[Anonymous Coward]

That got modded up as "informative"?

Ugh. Should have been "humour impaired".

Book of Nehemiah:

[bugsmalli]

Wasn't sure about Nehemiah, so googled and found this:
Book of Nehemiah:
This book continues the history of the children of the captivity, the Jews lately returned out of Babylon. We have a full account of Nehemiah's labours for them, in these his commentaries: wherein he records not only the works of his hands, but the very workings of his heart, inserting many devout reflections and ejaculations, which are peculiar to his writing. Twelve years he was the tirshatha, or governor of Judea, under the same Artaxerxes that gave Ezra his commission. This book relates his concern for Jerusalem and commission to go thither, chap. 1, 2. His building the wall of Jerusalem, notwithstanding much opposition, chap. 3, 4. His redressing the grievances of the people, chap. 5. His finishing the wall, chap. 6. The account he took of the people, chap. 7. His calling the people to read the law, fast and pray, and renew their covenant, chap. 8 - 10. He peoples Jerusalem and settles the tribe of Levi, chap. 11, 12. He reforms divers abuses, chap. 13. This was the last historical book that was written, as Malachi, the last prophetical book of the old testament.

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[Anonymous Coward]

i understand it's the "name" of the thing and all, but oh how i wish i didn't use up my mod points this morning...

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[stratjakt]

Twelve years he was the tirshatha, or governor of Judea, under the same Artaxerxes that gave Ezra his commission.

The Ezra-T is the name of the chip Nehemiah is 'succeeding' (the sub 1 GHz model).

Maybe that has some sort of meaning, I guess.

I had no idea there were so many Jews in Hong Kong. (This is not a racial troll, I seriously have never seen a chinese Jew in my life)

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[Thud457]

You atheist zealots are just as obnoxious as the Christian fundamentalists.

You fucking petty intolerance doesn't make you cool any more. And stop dressing in all black. Idiot.

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nehemiah and Ezra are prophets of the old testament of the bible.
They both have a book named after them.

The CEO of VIA is a fundamentalist christian and that is why he uses biblical names.
So he's not Jewish, but are bible consists of the Jewish holy books and the new testament.

And you gotta admit those Jewish names sound much more exotic then "James" or "John" (Though if we didn't translate those names they would be in Jewish "Ya'akov" and "Jochanan" respectively, which also sounds cool).

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[GoRK]

So will the 2ghz chip be named Esther?

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[salimma]

I had no idea there were so many Jews in Hong Kong

VIA is based in Taiwan, and I believe Chinese Christians have something for the Old Testament.

I always felt VIA chip naming is overtly OT - from Joshua, to Gideon, to Ezra and now Nehemiah...

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[intermodal]

um...I beg to differ. Yes, i agree that athiest zealots are just as obnoxious as the self-righteous forceful christians. However, there is such as thing as a fundamental christian who isn't a social disease.

Also, I am a christian and I wear all black. It does not make me an idiot.

Just figured I ought to share that. offtopic. whatever.

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[CaffeineAddict2001]

Ah yes, there is nothing more annoying than those damn atheist zealot kids all dressed in black, wearing silly plastic nametags like "Elder Smith".

Then they ride their bike on your lawn, ring the doorbell at 8am on saturday and insist on telling you the "good news".

Why can't they be more like those good god fearing christian boys who don't meddle into other peoples lives until invited to?

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[Chasuk]

Christians also hold the Old Testament (as only Christians call it) in high regard, so it is unusual that you would conclude that there were necessarily Jews in Hong Kong based on the name of a microprocessor.

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[Delphis]

Why can't they be more like those good god fearing christian boys who don't meddle into other peoples lives until invited to?

Never understood the phrase 'god fearing' .. do people that say that really believe in a vengeful god?

Re:Book of Nehemiah:

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Jesus told them, "I assure you, if you have faith and don't doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, 'May God lift you up and throw you into the sea,' and it will happen. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer" (Matthew 21:21).

• Intercession
• Love
• Overcoming Anger
• Overcoming Anxiety, Worry and Tension
• Overcoming Child Abuse
• Overcoming A Critical Spirit
• Overcoming Guilt
• Overcoming Lust
• Overcoming Sexual Sins
• Overcoming Temptation
• Peace
• Praise
• Repentance

FINALLY!!

[Ogrez]

Isnt this the one that can reshape itself to fit into any slot, or socket... or was that the t-m320000... I forget...

Re:FINALLY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, that's the t-1000 you're thinking of... *har har*

New Via

[_Smacndeez_]

The new CPU sounds cool, one question, with the 'random number generator' is this supposed to be paving the way for Via and 'Secure Computing'?
*sighs* Oh well, I could use a new media b0x3n.

Re:New Via

[tjrw]

A hardware random-number generator is useful for crypto. If you've ever tried porting something like OpenSSH to a platform that didn't have decent RNG support (i.e. no /dev/random or /dev/urandom like Linux has), you'll have run into the fun and games of trying to come up with a decent random source.

Hardware support for RNG is a "Good Thing(TM)", and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the "Trusted Computing Platform" or whatever the DRM flavour of the day happens to be ! :-)

Re:New Via

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Knuth recently proved that hardware random number generators can never achieve > O(log n) vertex edge disparity. Only software entropy collectors (like /dev/(u)random) are capable of finite random generation.

Re:New Via

[DarkEdgeX]

On a side note though, I've wondered why it is that CPU vendors haven't been able to integrate random number generation into the CPU itself. Intel had their RNG built into one of their chipsets (I think it was the 810 or 820?), but AFAIK their current chipsets don't support it anymore (correct me if I'm wrong). Anyways, it's always bugged me that there's not some sort of RNG instruction that fills the destination register or memory location with a randomly generated integer/floating point value.

Re:New Via

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be skeptical about a hardware-based RNG. Most conventional RNG's poll a variety of volatile resources in order to gather entropy, and then hash this data using a secure hash algorithm to actually create a pseudo-random sequence of bytes. A hardware-based RNG would most likely be very limited as to entropy sources outside of a high-resolution clock, which by itself is entirely inadequate for cryptographic purposes.

All in all I doubt this is a good idea. Chances are it won't be good for cryptographic purposes, and general-purpose RNGs are hardly stressful on a system. Note: I haven't read the article, so I could be missing something.

Re:New Via

[Anonymous Coward]

A hardware-based RNG would most likely be very limited as to entropy sources outside of a high-resolution clock

Heat from the chip can be used to gather entropy (IIRC, at least one chipset uses this method). But a hardware RNG would still only be one of the inputs used by a software RNG, hashed in with other pseudo-random data. It wouldn't replace the software RNG entirely, it would just allow it to produce entropy faster.

When /dev/urandom on Linux runs out of entropy, it hashes the entropy pool and returns that as random data. With a hardware RNG, the pool would be less likely to empty, so you'd get better entropy.

Re:New Via

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Useful, but the hardcore crypto pros will be paranoid about the design of the RNG. When Intel shipped a hardware RNG, there was criticism that the design wasn't available for public review.

I'm sure it's fine, unless there's a subtle bug in it, but subtle bugs are easy to put into RNGs.

Re:New Via

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...read /. much? This RNG was reviewed already and the results were posted on the main /. page less than a month ago. You can download the analysis from the Via web site as well.

The general conclusion was that this was a quite good pseudo-RNG.

Re:New Via

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be. But you can have pseudo RNGs in software, as devices. OBSD does this.

OBSD also supports the Via pseudo-RNG (known as padlock, if I recall), according to the crypto page. They received documentation; there was also a newsgroup/mailing list posting to this effect.

Also, /. already covered the pseudo-RNG--there was an analysis. General conclusion was that Via's RNG was quite sound.

The real advantage to the RNG is that it really offloads a bit from the processor, which may make it useful for embedded-like markets. I think the approach is similar to why Via added a better graphics setup and mpeg2 acceleration on their northbridge (at least on the CLE266)--it's sometimes easier for these things to be off processor, better upgrade path, and to reduce processor load, esp. on these lower watt (and somewhat underpowered compared to a P4) machines.

Re:64K cache

[turgid]

You do realise that the intel Pentium 4 has a whopping 20k level 1 cache? 8k instruction, 12k data? My archaic K6-2/500 has 64k level 1 cache: 32k instruction, 32k data.

Re:Benchmarks suxs

[Organic_Info]

errr beause the two are completly different uses.

The mini-itx stuff is all about power consumption or lack thereof and low noise solutions.

Why do you think I don't compare my shitty little commuter car to a bloody ferrari.

Very insightful first post.

One would hope....

[Organic_Info]

One would hope they don't host their site on a mini-itx box :)

Re:One would hope....

[dago]

I have a C3 1GHz cpu on my main server.
And see little difference with a PIII 1GHz for fileserving/http.

Re:One would hope....

[Julian Plamann]

Hahaha! I get it... because the enormous ammount of traffic generated from the Slashdot link would overwhelm the box. That's sort of funny...

Oh wait... it's not funny at all. I forgot -- this same joke has been repeated over and over and over and over again to no end in every single Slashdot article since the beginning of time.

Re:One would hope....

[Organic_Info]

Yep - you got it.

"Oh wait... it's not funny at all. I forgot -- this same joke has been repeated"...blah blah blah

Whatever, the joke will probably be repeated in every other article refering to a low powered box of some sort. Each time the person that posts get responses similar to the three before you that point out what causes the box to be perfectly fine for running a website and what does actually chew your CPU up (dynamic pages, db lookups, SSL). So what the orig post gets moderated funny then there are some informative responses.

Trawl through all the older articles and posts and you will notice a trend. Collate them all and you could compose a monster FAQ on a lot of subjects.

A better name...

[altek]

How about the M 1.0x10^4 ??

The the nextgen can be M 1.0x10^5, and so on... This way in 5 years we only have to remember the exponent and not the number 100000000000!

Re:A better name...

[Anonymous Coward]

To bad in 5 years it will be M1.0x10^100000000000

Heinleintastic

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm.... Scudderific...

Re:64K cache

[shayborg]

You do realise that the intel Pentium 4 has a whopping 20k level 1 cache? 8k instruction, 12k data? My archaic K6-2/500 has 64k level 1 cache: 32k instruction, 32k data.

Well, the Nehemiah supposedly has 64K level 2 cache. By comparison, the 1 GHz Celeron has 256K L2 cache ...

-- shayborg

a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[bpland]

It's almost dead but here is the page about the CPU.. interesting. hehe

"Nehemiah is the next generation C3 CPU, and features a number of improvements over the Ezra-T C3 used in all previous EPIAs. It has The 20.5 million transistors, and uses a 0.13 micron process. For comparison, a Barton Athlon or Northwood Pentium 4 have about 55 million transistors, and recent GPUs have over 100 million transistors.

The Nehemiah is designed to work at clock speeds of 1GHz and beyond - the Ezra-T is designed at up to about 1GHz.

Nehemiah has a die size of 52mm2 - the world's smallest x86 processor. It has been designed to minimize power consumption and optimise heat dissipation - VIA call this "Coolstream". Some active cooling is still required, but not very much. Let's hope for a Nehemiah Eden C3 version.

The Nehemiah features SSE instructions instead of the 3DNow! instructions featured on previous C3s. This should bring enhanced performance in 3D applications, which are optimised for more modern SIMD instruction sets. SSE optimised image processing applications should also benefit.

Full Speed FPU - the Nehemiah has a full speed floating point unit for the first time. The Ezra-T has a half-speed FPU. Floating point calculations are used heavily in 3D rendering, multimedia, and streaming applications.

Enhanced 64KB Full-Speed Exclusive L2 cache with 16-way associativity. An exclusive L2 cache gives a larger effective total cache size as it doesn't replicate the contents of the L1 cache. The more cache available, the more chance there is that program loops can run in cache and not comparatively slow main memory.

StepAhead Advanced Branch Prediction - Looks ahead and gathers the data needed to optimally run applications

A hardware based random number generator (RNG) has been added. This creates true random numbers from the random electrical noise on the chip. This is of much use in security applications, allowing a strong cryptographic key to be generated. VIA call this the "PadLock Data Encryption Engine".

Future Nehemiahs will feature IO/APIC support. An Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC) provides multi-processor interrupt management - dual processor EPIA anyone?

The Nehemiah is available in EBGA or Socket 370 packages - both are low profile and require less board real estate."

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[TheRaven64]

Nehemiah has a die size of 52mm2 - the world's smallest x86 processor.

Not quite, the 8086 is smaller (as is the 8088) although it is smaller than the 286, and much smaller than comparable x86 CPUs...

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[questionlp]

If Geek.com and Sandpile.org are correct, the Transmeta TM5800 is just 3mm^2 larger than the Nehemiah processor, yet has much more cache on-die (128KB L1; 512KB L2) and the rest is logic.

It also seems that the Transmeta processor has an average power usage of around 7W whereas the Nehamiah (according to Digit Life) has an idle power usage of ~5W and a max of around 15-20W.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[GunFodder]

Maximum power consumption of 15-20 watts? The review also indicates that Nehemiah requires active cooling as well. A P3 based Celeron is also inexpensive, can be installed in a Shuttle SFF box, is much faster, and only consumes a few more watts. I think a Celeron based system would be a much better value.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[mackstann]

Yep, I was considering an ITX machine but decided on a Tualeron+micro atx motherboard. Bigger, yes, but much more powerful, and perhaps a tad cheaper depending on what models you're looking at and whatnot.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[questionlp]

Yeah... it's not quite as low-power as the Eden platform is or the 800Mhz C3 processors. Most of the higher-end Ezra-T and now the Nehemiah require active cooling, so it can't be used too much as a quiet computing platform (though there is the neat slimcase that uses it's side fins as the processor's heatsink and is quiet).

A Celeron, mostly the Tualatin-based ones, would be a better option and provide some additional expansion slots. You can even underclock the Celeron if you really wanted to keep it running cool as well, and maybe use a really nice heatsink to keep it somewhat cool.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[default luser]

"StepAhead Advanced Branch Prediction - Looks ahead and gathers the data needed to optimally run applications"

Finally! A WinChip that doesn't insist on doing things the old-fashioned way.

Three years go when VIA merged the Cyrix product name with the Winchip line, they touted the WinChip's lack of Out-Of-Order-Execution and use of Static Branch Prediciton as "features".

This was puported to save power and make the die smaller. Funny to see them do a complete 360 only 3 years later, after their castrated chip has failed to attract a single Tier 1 vendor.

The Cyrix MII sold better than the WinChip / VIA C3; at least Compaq and Emachines were selling systems based on it back in the day. It sold where the WinChip couldn't, because it actually delivered on being both reasonably powerful and dirt-cheap. The WinChip could claim to be dirt-cheap, but reasonably powerful...welll...

So, after so long a wait, do we finally have a winner? A low power chip that can actually play a Divx movie? Perhaps they could get rid of that hardware DVD decoder too, a feature other systems havn't needed since the Celeron 400 / K6-2 450.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[Wesley Felter]

IIRC, the PowerPC 750FX is only 37mm^2 and it also fits 512KB of L2; I wonder what Centaur/VIA is doing wrong.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[questionlp]

Part of it is that the x86 architecture isn't exactly the cleanest nor the smallest architecture to build processors for. The PowerPC architecture is much cleaner and can be smaller than x86 because it's closer to RISC and doesn't need all of the decode/encode/pipeline/etc. units required in current P4 or Athlon processors, or even in the C3.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

A 360 is coming around full circle. A 180 would be a reversal.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[bzzzt]

There is no way you'll get a K6-2 (or K6-3 for that matter) to play a DVD or divx movie without skipping...

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

Next year's planned 3.5GHz edition runs so hot that cooling has become a problem. The 3.5GHz Lucifer C3 is so fast, it's as hot as hell.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Funny to see them do a complete 360 only

Would be funnier still if they did a complete 180...

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way you'll get a K6-2 (or K6-3 for that matter) to play a DVD or divx movie without skipping...

I have to disagree, My first DVD drive was on a K6-2/300 with a VIA chipset. It played my DVD films just fine with the ATI player.

Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[watzinaneihm]

.... Funny to see them do a complete 360 only 3 years later...
Hmm... after a complete 360 wouldnt you end up facing in the same direction??

How is your experience?

[GQuon]

What is your experience with VIA motherboards?

What about the VIA 82C686B Southbridge? (Any AmigaOne owners?)

ADV:
Subscribers! Post your First Posts before anybody else: Here.

Re:How is your experience?

[Indy1]

the 686B southbridge is a bit old, but its pretty solid for the most part. Supports Ata-100 and works fine in linux.

Re:How is your experience?

[Squarewav]

I have a VIA P4X400 chipset. from my exp its crap compared to the intel chipset in my last MB(same cpu and cards just new MB), for one if you wish to run winxp you have to install the via 4-1 drivers failure to do so right away after installing XP will result in lockups every few min. also the speed is not constent its oftin so slow it feals like my p4 2ghz is a 200mhz. Under linux I get all sorts of strange problems not counting the ones related to agp 3.0, like many distro's wont connect to the network like mandrake and knoppix. it will see the card and install the driver but dhcp wont connect, and yes I've tried useing 3 other nics I've had lying around and none of them will work. strangly enough redhat,debian and libranet are the ony ones I managed to get online with

Re:How is your experience?

[13Echo]

I have that chipset in my Abit KT7A-RAID board. I've had no problems with it. It's been perfectly reliable on Windows and Linux since I purchased it, which was about 2 years ago. The key is proper driver installation on Windows machines. With Linux, it's all automated. I've got no experience with Amiga systems and this southbridge.

Well... Wait a sec. I did experience some problems with these chipsets and ATAPI ZIP drives on another motherboard. But I believe that VIA resolved those problems. Our ZIPs worked fine with a 4in1 update. I'm not sure if it was a cheap hack though.

Re:How is your experience?

[molarmass192]

Have an EPIA 800MHz, works great for MP3s but bought it for a media center. Not enough "nuts" for decoding MP2 video in real time. The fullspeed FPU on the 10000 would certainly help in that department. Bogos show up as 1200 but that's only for 1+1 stuff, not 1+1.1. The best part of these little boards is they're dead quiet and generate miniscule amounts of heat. For that reason alone, I'm looking into the 10000 as a replacement for my current EPIA.

Re:How is your experience?

[ncc74656]

What about the VIA 82C686B Southbridge? (Any AmigaOne owners?)

I've had no issues with it on a Biostar M7MIA (where it's paired with an AMD 761 northbridge). I did a clean WinXP install on it the other day (swapped it back into my computer when an MSI K7D Master started acting up), and everything worked right off the bat.

Re:How is your experience?

[Flywheel]

The UniChrome MPEG2 decoder of the chipset is pure gold and I suspect that the Nehe... makes it possible to run AVI-video completely flawless, here the Ezra-T lacks a bit.

One thing I really would like is for VIA ti upgrade the Castlerock (AFAIR a refitted SavagePro) GFX to something with a bit more power - like the Xabre.

Re:How is your experience?

[molarmass192]

Yeah ... no MPEG2 decoder on my non-M series board though but hey, I only paid $95 for it so I can't complain too much.

Re:How is your experience?

[AvengerXP]

VIA motherboards are mixed results for me. They proove very stable but i get noise when i burn something in the CD-R and play music meanwhile. When i say noise i mean put your TV to channel 99999 and enjoy at volume MAX.

Re:How is your experience?

[afidel]

Are you on crack, the 686B has one of the most f'd up PCI buses in existance, in addition the PCI->ISA bridge is bug ridden. VIA totally ignore about 1/3rd of the PCI 1.1 spec with that chip. Trust me I own a mobo with a KT133a and 686B and I can't wait to get rid of it for a SiS 746 based one once I get over this unemployment thing.

Re:Benchmarks suxs

[BigBir3d]

P3 or Celeron or Duron would be.

Not that I can tell... damn /. effect already.

Re:64K cache

[Anonymous Coward]

cache eats power

Re:64K cache

[gilesjuk]

Cache also reduces yield.

Re:Rocketman, as interpreted by William Shatner

[Anonymous Coward]

wonderful!!

please join the Open Trolls Movement fellow trollah!! (the join page is not ready, please email at opentrolls@free.fr )

OTM TROLLAH #001

Re:64K cache

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the writeup said 64K "L2" cache.

The P4 as 256K L2 cache, and 20K L1 cache.

THe Durons have 64K L2 cache If i'm not mistaken.

They should have called it...

[rizawbone]

...the "Better Than Ezra".

Re:They should have called it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that funny? Is Ezra some obscure sci-fi character?

Re:They should have called it...

[cide1]

They are a band. Pretty good, I've seen them twice. Check out some music:

http://www.betterthanezra.com/

http://www.mtv.com/bands/az/better_than_ezra/art is t.jhtml

Re:They should have called it...

[SuperCal]

Better then Ezra is a band. I think thats an awsome name for the processor. I think it will start something... Intel may start using better then Pentium on its next gen chips, and then the generation after that ... nevermind.

Re:They should have called it...

[default luser]

Ummmm. You can't be that dense. You really, really, really, really, really cannot be that dense, please.

You know, some people actually recognize when a play on words reference requires no explanation.

Like Better Than Ezra.

Which received a +5 Funny rating.

Which would be nearly impossible if people didn't know there was a band called "Better Than Ezra"

And now, for your pleasure, some of my favorite lyrics ( Return of the Postmoderns )

Feeding line caught tuna to a neutered Bodhisattva,
Writhing peaches for the president out on the whitehouse lawn,
Beating Herbert Hoover with a leather-tipped pinata,
Thorn and KAty drink the milk tinted Amerasian Green

Re:They should have called it...

[superyooser]

But what is the connection between the names of Ezra and Nehemiah? Why suggest the name "Better Than Ezra" for a processor called Nehemiah?

While making reference to the band Better than Ezra (which I know nothing about, but I had heard of it), he was also alluding to the names of related books in the Bible. The book of Ezra immediately precedes the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament. They are considered a single book (`Ezra-Nechemyah) in the Jewish writings.

rizawbone made a dual reference... or am I giving him too much credit? I wouldn't have found the comment funny at all unless I had caught both allusions.

Re:Benchmarks suxs

[Organic_Info]

I didn't say it wouldn't be useful in fact for the most part it won't. I'm making a pretty good guess here that the a P4 would cream the Nehemiah M10000 at all the usual benchmarks. My point is you would benchmark against processors in a similar/related class Durons, Celerons, Nat Semi Geodes (if they are still around), etc. There is little point in comparing a truck to a car when asking which will transport more cargo or which is more cost effective for the job. You may however compare a van with a truck both are used for more similar tasks.

Re:Obligatory Goatse.cx link?

[Anonymous Coward]

No,

but here ... you like anyway.

Ghistas Ceix (as heard on the CNN broadcast from Quatar on May 10 2003) is Ghoatses Dotsee 'X

Wahh, now with working link...

[microbob]

Hrm, why the space in my ebay link? Try this one:

IBM Netvisat case

M.B.

Re:Wahh, now with working link...

[zeno_2]

Hrm, why the space in my ebay link? Try this one:

Hmm must be new here =P. After a certain amount of characters slashdot will insert a space. This was to stop those posts where there was just a long line of letters that made it so you had to horizontally scroll for miles and generally messed up the page.

Re:Benchmarks suxs

[Organic_Info]

I also would have said your unlikley to see a P4 in a minitx box....that was until I looked on the first page of www.mini-itx.com to see the headline "Pentium 4M Mini-ITX from Commell" felt like a bit of a dobber then - doh!

overclocking with Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

This review links to a method that sounds ridiculously simple to overclock the Epia M processors using nothing but a software utility, but it's a Windows utility.

Is there a Linux program with equivalent functionality? It would be nice to bump my M9000 ("borderline" in several of the listed benchmark results) to a full gigahertz and into the (acceptable) green level instead of yellow :)

Re:overclocking with Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Linux program with equivelant functionality.

There usually isnt.

Give it about 15 years, and some kid in mommas basement will work it out.

Hardware random number generator?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. given an infinite number of these processors and an infinite amount of time, these things could write code that's identical to SCO's.

Re:Hardware random number generator?

[mabinogi]

You know, if you have an infinite amount of time...you don't need an infinite amount of processors, you could use just one...and instead spend the infinite amount of money you'd need to buy an infinite amount of processors having an infinite amount of fun while you wait for the result ;)

Or you could just get the infinite amount of processors and get the result in no time.

Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Indy1]

The ceo of Via, Wen-chi Chen, is a Fundlementist Christian, so as a result this is the name source for many of their products (joshua, sameul, nehemiah).

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[the_2nd_coming]

the miricals might be myths but that does not make the story a myth.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

God Bless Wen-chi Chen.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Runny]

Where are my mod points when I need them? You call Christianity a myth now, but even God can forgive such a despicable act if you would only believe and quit ignoring the evidence.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[be-fan]

Why not talk about Christian mythology? We talk about Greek mythology, and Egyptian mythology, and to somebody who does not believe in Christianity, the Christian stories and traditions are no different. Mythology, in the objective sense, refers to the traditions and stories of a culture. In order to make the move from using the word mythology to using a term like "religious history" you have to first believe that the stories in question are true, which is not the case in the objective case.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[the_2nd_coming]

you can not believe the miricles but there is plenty of evidence that the stories reflect some historic facts.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

The Christians are in power now. Once they are history, it can be safely called mythology.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

even God can forgive

Are you suggesting that someone else is more capable?

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[darkweasel]

Yikes, other replys to this thread are a bit over the top. I guess they are pretty sensative.

Get over it. Bible stories = mythology.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[David Chappell]

Nehemiah was a 6th or 5th century BCE govenor of Judea during a time when Judea was under Medo-Persian rule. I would describe Joshua, Samuel, and Nehemiah as figures from Jewish history rather than Christian mythology.

Of course, in the 19th century it was popular to assert that public figures mentioned in the Bible are figments of the writers' imagination, but this view seems to be largely discredited. The names of too many of these 'fictituous characters' showed up on monuments and public records uncovered by archeologists.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[jorlando]

The greeks, egyptians, sumerians and all other people of the world believed, in their time, that their gods were real and their rulers. These civilizations passed and now we call their beliefs myth. Why can't someone call the stories in Bible as myths, if they suppose that these stories aren't backed by real/historical/archeological facts? People have different views from the world, and these views should be respected. The world that we live today is a proof that intolerance isn't the best path.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

You've brilliantly taken a complex subject and oversimplified the living shit out of it. Congradulations...you are an 'intellectual' now.

Bible stories have alot of qualities really...which varies quite a lot depending on which story we are talking about. Some teach lessons, and some speak of mystical happenings that get bastardized through interpretation and bad translations. (The age of Methusala for example...he didn't live to be 800 or 900 years old at all...although he was respectably old by our standards. The problem was in how dates were recorded and in how the various dates were translated. It's been researched quite a bit actually.)

Other things in the Bible are just common sense advice that people bastardize through really closed minded interpretations. If memory serves there are passages somewhere that are critical of women with short hair, for examples - which sounds completely illogical at a glance. Read between the lines and use your head though - who had short hair back then? Prostitutes. All they are saying is "Hey...you really shouldn't dress up like a prostitute out there." Sounds kinda common sensical really.

Get over it...you can't actually go back in time and prove what happened. Can I please go on with my bad spiritual self now, without all the condescending athiest zealots looking to annoy those of Western religeons in general? Maybe if I was one of those cool eastern religeons...yeah...then I'd be cool. Whatever.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

Mythology? Such blasphemy. you will end up in hell.

.....when you get there tell Bill Gates to get shoveling them coals, im freezing.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[johnnyb]

Actually, even to someone who does not believe them, the Christian stories are different than the Greek ones which are termed as myths. If you don't believe them, you may say they have some mythical elements, but all in all the Bible has been supported in a large part by archaeology. There's no reason to believe that these people didn't exist. These are major figures, much like Muhammad. A story depicting Muhammad's life is not a myth, even if a person does not believe all elements.

Some people use the word "myth" for "instructive story", whether the original story was fully true, partially true, or wholly fabricated. With this in mind, then yes, much of the Bible can be called "myth". However, for most people, the term "myth" denotes a wholly-fabricated story. "legend" is usually used for stories whose historical status is possible but in doubt, and most likely exaggerated.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[be-fan]

Much of Greek and Roman mythology (for example the war with Troy, and the founding of Rome) also have historical basis. However, they are still commonly referred to as myths. Now one can argue that there is more verifiable evidence in the case of biblical stories, or (OTOH) that the veracity of the older mythology has had less study by modern scholars, but that's splitting hairs. The distinction isn't nearly strong enough to seperate the two into wholly different catagories of myth and history.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Indy1]

I didnt mean to imply that any Christian belief's or
historical figures were myths, rather i was using the word mythology in the sense of "These names come from Christian stories /legends / etc". Undoubtably some of these people DID exist in some shape or manner, much as Jesus did historically exist. I leave the matter of their deityhood up to the reader to determine. : )

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a set of accusations against scripture with absolutely no proof offered. For example you say:

The age of Methusala for example...he didn't live to be 800 or 900 years old at all...although he was respectably old by our standards. The problem was in how dates were recorded and in how the various dates were translated. It's been researched quite a bit actually

Care to cite a reputable source or two?

You mention of 1Cor11:15 (the passage about hair length) is sort of correct, but misses the point. In Corinth of those days, lesbians and amazon-wannabes shaved their heads, not just harlots.

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[Anonymous Coward]

I would describe Joshua, Samuel, and Nehemiah as figures from Jewish history rather than Christian mythology [sic]

That's right. As well as Ezra and his contemporary, Zerubbabel, who began to build the Second Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. However, since Jerusalem was the ancient capital of the Islamic nation of Palestine, the Jews had to first invade the city, commit genocide against the indigenous Palestinians, and destroy the Dome of the Rock. Oh wait... that never happened. There were no Muslims because the founder of Islam was born in a different country in a different era -- 1.1 millennia later in Egypt. There has never been a state of Palestine.

Yeah, I felt like a 3-way religious flamefest today. Oh yeah, and the Temple Mount actually belongs to the Vatican because of the New Covenant. ;-) <-- smiley

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[kriston]

The names come from the Centaur Technology folks, the people who actually develop the C3 chip (once known as WinChip and Cyrix3) and who are a wholly owned subsidiary of VIA now. The names have nothing to do with a supposed religious bent of VIA's CEO. The names come from Judeo-Christian Old Testament rather than strictly Christian. See www.centtech.com for more information.

Kris

Re:Why Via names stuff after Christian Mythology

[YE]

The ceo of Via, Wen-chi Chen, is a Fundlementist Christian, so as a result this is the name source for many of their products (joshua, sameul, nehemiah).

And you're a Fundlementist speller?

That's great!

[NanoGator]

But what is it?

?? Question ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the hardware RNG would be suited for cryptography applications... but wouldn't software have to be written to actually use it? How many vendors are going to go back to their code and build in support for this little used chipset? Unless Intel and AMD jump on the hardware RNG bandwagon, I don't see it being used.

Re:?? Question ??

[esquimaux]

Intel and AMD do provide hardware RNGs.

http://www.intel.com/design/security/rng/rnghow. ht m

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInfor ma tion/0,,30_118_756_3734%5E873%5E4366,00.html

Linux already has support for the Intel, AMD, and VIA generators.

Google cache links (pics slashdotted)

[whovian]

link1
und another, auf deutsch
link2

Dual boards have already been announced.

[mbourgon]

Dual processor boards have already been announced - it's been eagerly awaited in the MythTV camp, as it should allow dual-tuner support. And since it's low power, you won't need a Zalman/Thermalright heat sink and a specialty fan to make it quiet.

Re:Dual boards have already been announced.

[moosesocks]

Not sure what good a dual board is going to do in this case, especially for MythTV. As it is, the older Ezra boards had a hard time PLAYING an MPEG-2 encoded DVD without relying on the dedicated decoder. Encoding requires even more processing power. Two chips just aren't going to cut it. Compare the 1ghz Via chips to 500mhz Intel/Amd parts.

Re:Dual boards have already been announced.

[r1ch]

People are actually having a lot of success with this new board - check the MythTV forums @ http://www.gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/

before we start griping...

[iamkrinkle]

before everyone starts comparing this to p4 or athlon, it's not meant to compare to them. this chip is only 1 ghz, but the selling point is it's low power consumption and it doesn't run too hot (the slower cpu's use only passive cooling). So yeah, you're not going to be playing doom 3 on it, but you can do cool things like put it in your car or have a pc that is (almost) completely silent. So for around 200 you get a mobo/cpu/video card/sound card/etc... not too bad of a deal if you ask me...

Re:before we start griping...

[Anonymous Coward]

What does 1GHz mean in this context? Based on their run of Sandra's benches, the "1GHz" chip has integer performance on par with a Celeron 600 and FP performance half that of the Celery. The VIA gets smoked by the same Intel chip on the SiSoft multimedia benches. The only place the new EPIA board surpasses my flexATX celeron-600/i810 system is in the memory bandwidth test, which is expected from a DDR system.

Re:before we start griping...

[Anonymous Coward]

1 ghz means nothing except to other EPIAs, and even there, not really comparable, as the review showed this 1 ghz blew away the older 1 ghz model. You have to look at the real world performance for what you are doing. The EPIAs will get rocked by a PIII800, despite being 200mhz faster by clock cycle.

I have 2 of these boards. They are pretty sweet imnsho, but you have to have a *use* for them. For myself, I am building a firewall machine and a voice/data/faq server. Both I want to use in an office environment with a fair amount of (asinine) customization (for fun). Some people will find my purposes ridiculous, given you can buy a good fax server software for less than $40 or a all-in-one machine for less than $150 these days. Same with a firewall for an office. But that's what I'm into.

Others have been looking at these for PVRs and the like. They effectively fit the bill.

btw, you can remove the fans on some of these and install a heat pipe and use other passive cooling mechansisms. The hushpc, I believe, uses the 9000 model (933 mhz) without the fan and instead with a heatpipe.

No way you're going to run the latest and greatest games, but you can run a fair number of great games with a high end PCI vid card. Hell, there's no AGP. This is not the latest tech. No PCI 66 or 64 bit in any current models, and no rumors of it coming (although that, over the AGP, would be the smartest upgrade--64bit/66 plus custom riser cards and you could really rock with quad gigabit cards).

I would have loved to have one of these in college, w/o the fan driving me nuts at 5am crashing on a final paper.

btw, I have both out-of-the-box fanless models (5000 and ME6000).

More models to come?

[lpret]

I'm waiting for the 3 Ghz Jesus model to come out. Apparently it would be able "to do miracles!" I don't know about this marketing hype sometimes, you kind of have to see it to believe it.

Signing off,
Doubting Thomas

Re:More models to come?

[beta21]

I'm waiting for the 3 Ghz Jesus model to come out. Apparently it would be able "to do miracles!" I don't know about this marketing hype sometimes, you kind of have to see it to believe it.

It also rises from the "blue screen of death"

Re:More models to come?

[istartedi]

I'm waiting for the 3 Ghz Jesus model to come out. Apparently it would be able "to do miracles!"

You'll have to re-Pentium first.

Re:More models to come?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if you're willing to wait around for three days ;^)

More info from Via Press Release

[MikeD83]

VIA Press Release, April 15, 2003

Notable features:

• 10% drop in power consumption
• 50% drop in system noise
• Integrated MPEG-2 decoder
• ATA-133
• 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
• S-Video and RCA tv-Out
• S/PDif digital audio connection
• 1 avaliable PCI slot

Re:More info from Via Press Release

[MikeD83]

Or check out the product page.

Re:More info from Via Press Release

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, but does it take a half-lenght PCI card? Namely, my current TV-in card.

Any experience reports?

Re:More info from Via Press Release

[pointwood]

# 50% drop in system noise

I guess that depends on what models you compare it to...

Re:64K cache

[Anonymous Coward]

P4s and Tualitan P3s Have 512K L2 Cache, Celerons have 256, as do CuMine and older P3s, the celeron counterparts of which have 128.

I believe the original classic pentiums had 64k.

Re:64K cache

[tjrw]

The write-up is misleading...
The 64k is the L2 cache which is 16-way set-associative, full-speed and exclusive i.e. it doesn't overlap with the contents of the L1 cache. The L1 cache is 128k unless they've changed it (none of the immediately available info mentions the size, but that's what the current C3 has).

So, actually the chip has 192K of cache, configured pretty much the same as it was in the AMD Duron (128k L1, 64k L2, exclusive). Considering the target marketplace and performance of the chip, this seems to be plenty.

Creative Accounting

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a much easier explaination. Via will just keep adding zeros to the name until sales improve.

Introducing the Via Methusela M10^100!

Re:Creative Accounting

[IronClad]

Introducing the Via Methusela M10^100!

Unfortunately, "google" is trademarked. D'Oh!

Re:Creative Accounting

[utahjazz]

Introducing the Via Methuseia M10^100!

Unfortunately, "google" is trademarked.

Can't belive I'm correcting you but...it's actually spelled 'googol'.

*cough* *cough*

Hardware based random number generator?

[docbrown42]

and (get this) a hardware-based random number generator

Oh, so it comes with a pair of fuzzy dice? What about a "Type R" sticker, so it'll SEEM faster?

Re:Hardware based random number generator?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the deal with you and cars you keep raving on? Has some un-american car left you in a cloud of dust. Or are you just trying to feel good about you all american "tank" that weighs 10 tons and are as much fun to drive as a bus? It is getting tired you know, and the way you go on and on and on, seems like there is something.
Oh and by the way, I don't have a car so I wouldn't know about these things.

Re:Hardware based random number generator?

[Anonymous Coward]

Score: -1 (Funny the last twenty fucking times I read that joke)

Re:Hardware based random number generator?

[tchueh]

Dude, Don't you know? Type R stickers automatically adds 10HP to any car!

Here's the proof

I suspect

[Arbogast_II]

That this comment, although funny, is from someone who has never used the Epia 10000

Re:I suspect

[fobbman]

Yeah, but based on my experience with getting Tabasco sauce in my right eye I don't think that I'll be trying it in my left anytime soon.

Re:I suspect

[mrd_yaddayadda]

Having been using a VIA EDEN 800 board (c3-800mhz) as an IIS webserver/db server for a growing website/forum for 4 months now I've certainly got no problems recommending it as a low cost platform.

Board, stick of ram and a hard disc and you're set. If it's reliable (which it is) you can't beat that for a nice small low-cost system.

This is coming from someone who has also had problems with VIA chipset boards in the past... it's more a case of tabasco in one eye but a soothing eyewash in the other.

No Chinese Jews

[Anonymous Coward]

I had no idea there were so many Jews in Hong Kong. (This is not a racial troll, I seriously have never seen a chinese Jew in my life)

I had the same question you did. One day, a friend and I went into a Chinese restaurant to have some lunch. I asked the waiter, "Do you have Chinese Jews?" He answered, "No Chinese Jews. We have apple joos, orange joos, prune joos, but no Chinese joos."

Thank you.

Low power cpu - A great thing

[LocalHero]

I think it is a great thing that a company has started to make low power cpus. Imagine all those P4 and AMD cpus out there that waits for Word to tell them to do something. You dont need 3ghz for that. A modern P4 or AMD processor uses about 70W of energy for nothing.

Hey if you could reduce that to 35W you are not only geting 35W less for the cpu you are also lowering the power consumtion on the air condition. An office building that starts to take the power consumtion serius could save lots of cash on electrical bill and probably some on the environment to :)

Re:Low power cpu - A great thing

[godal]

Well, I'm sure you will be glad to know then, that the C3 uses about 10W and the whole motherboard (w/cpu) about 20W

John the Baptist chip

[Anonymous Coward]

The John the Baptist chip is particularly good on headless systems.

Re:John the Baptist chip

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it this was a funny line, that is if you knew your history. Josephus would turn in his grave.

"optional" lvds connector?

[pangloss]

anyone know if the optional lvds connector they mention in the review could somehow be used with a dvi-d equipped display?

Random Noise Generator

[mdechene]

A hardware based random number generator (RNG) has been added. This creates true random numbers from the random electrical noise on the chip. This is of much use in security applications, allowing a strong cryptographic key to be generated. VIA call this the "PadLock Data Encryption Engine".

VIA Engineers also note that this was previously a set of registers that they just couldn't iron the crosstalk kinks out of. As such, it was rebranded a feature in classic computer tradition.

Bubba Says, EPIA M10000, Very Nice!!!

[Arbogast_II]

I have been using it for a couple weeks (actually the Ezra and not Nehemiah version). SuSe Linux 8.1 Pro 256MB Ram 80GB HD It runs quiet and I have been very surprised how much I like it. This is a very nice board, very quiet and unobtrusive, extremely reasonably priced. I use it to do family geneology stuff at relatives houses (old people love it cause it is small, quiet, and appears like a DVD player hooked to a flat screen (15"LCD) TV. Also, is a very nice MP3 player. If I need a powerful computer, I still have my Wind Tunnel to fire up... I would probably recomend this more than any computer I ever bought for an ordinary computer user. ( Heck, Linux people can always put a Wind Tunnel in the closet, hook it to LAN, and have power and quiet.)

Re:Bubba Says, EPIA M10000, Very Nice!!!

[nmos]

How's Linux support for audio, video, and TV-OUT?

Re:Bubba Says, EPIA M10000, Very Nice!!!

[Arbogast_II]

I dont watch TV, DVDs or videos, so I dont know. I play MP3's with MPG123 shell script playlists, runs great for hours and hours... Photos work fine in Perl/TK scripts, the Gimp and that Pixie viewer doodad.

Re:Bubba Says, EPIA M10000, Very Nice!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Audio is supported by Alsa (0.9.3 recommended).

Video (including Xv and TV-out) is supported by XFree CVS.

What is not supported:

MPEG-2 decoding (in works)

pardon the noob-ness

[jonnyfivealive]

i was wondering how these things are powered

Re:pardon the noob-ness

[GlassUser]

They use the standard ATX power connector. Personally, I usually use a 12 volt dc to dc converter, and use a power brick (though I'm working on a large 12vdc power supply). They work just fine off a standard ATX power supply though.

Re:pardon the noob-ness

[Anonymous Coward]

With electricity.

Re:pardon the noob-ness

[jonnyfivealive]

really? you know, i hear theyve got computers on the internet now!

NEVERMIND - I LEARNED TO READ

[jonnyfivealive]

thanks anyway

I suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

That this comment, although unfunny, still makes me giggle about your existence

yeah, but does it

[geekoid]

have a moon rock needle?

Bubbas EPIA 10000 experience

[Arbogast_II]

Everything I tried on SuSe Linux Pro 8.1 just worked without any fuss. MP3, Perl/TK stuff, gimp, mozilla, NFS, etc... quiet, portable, cheap, reliable... If you want to edit alot of 50MB TIFF and JPEG files, or play video games, fire up your wind tunnel computer

Re:64K cache

[Puu]

Note that it's not a direct comparison because P4's 8k L1 instruction cache contains micro-ops (organised as "traces"), not x86 instructions.

Random number generator?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I don't need dice when I play Dungeons and Dragons! Thanks VIA!!!!!!

slow post

[Anonymous Coward]

plow sost

???

OT:

[Thud457]

Thanks for keeping me honest there.

The dressing in all black crack was shooting for the cheeseball goth (whatever they call it these days) type that seems to think mindlessly slamming those that have some sort of faith shows how smart they are. Secularists can be just as idiotically dogmatic as anyone else.

Re:OT:

[intermodal]

well, that much is true...guess i misread part of it. But you're absolutely right...i find the people who consider what they learned in college to be right above all, and make damned sure everyone hears about it, are just as bad as jihad-shouting muslim fundementalists and fanatical public-outcry-loving fundamentalist christians.

RNG, really?

[limekiller4]

From the article:
"A hardware based random number generator (RNG) has been added. This creates true random numbers from the random electrical noise on the chip."

Why do I get the feeling that "random electrical noise" is anything but?

Re:RNG, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I get the feeling that "random electrical noise" is anything but?

Because you don't know much about semiconductors?

Analog noise generators simply amplify the noise from a lowly diode. It is an old trick.

ToolBox PC

[Cpt_Kirks]

I spent the weekend building one into a small toolbox. e-machine PS, 3.5in HD, short DVD drive, ATI TV Wonder VE, with room in the top tray for cables and a wireless KB.

It's a portable Tivo/DVD/Divx/MP3/low end game/whatever box.

Damn quiet too...

Re:New Via HW RAND

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot find now the article on /. where a student used a heat source to flip bits in a chip's memory to affect JVM and .NET virtual machines to circumvent the typing system. The same bit-flipping technique can be used to make HW RAND more random. And there is a lot of heat these days dissipating from the chips. Finally, there is some potential for its usefullness.

Hardware random # generation

[Junks Jerzey]

The Atari 800 had one in 1978. And Commodore 64 programmers were used to using some values from the sound hardware for the same purpose. It's funny how some ideas go away for a long time, only to resurface after most people have forgotten it.

Re:Hardware random # generation

[The Lynxpro]

And the Atari 800 also had the SIO (serial-input-output) port on it too: a universal connector for all peripherals outside of joysticks. They even had a hub for the SIO port as well. Its no wonder that the engineer responsible for the SIO port now works for Intel and holds co-patents for USB, an updated idea from Atari's heyday...

Re:Hardware random # generation

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it a real random number generator or just digital pseudo-random shift registers?

Re:Hardware random # generation

[Junks Jerzey]

Was it a real random number generator or just digital pseudo-random shift registers?

It was pseudo-random, but it updated every clock cycle. The asynchronous nature of it is what made it very useful.

Via's next processor

[Anonymous Coward]

Codenamed: Esther
Designed to work in a harom... I mean cluster.

Can it run fanless & widescreen?

[kjeldahl]

Can anybody with a clue comment on whether this latest relase would be able to run fanless (e.g. using a hustechnologies.net case), and would the linux/XFree drivers be able to support widescreen resolutions (the review at mini-itx.com says only traditional resolutions are supported, but this might be different in the linux/XFree world)?

Re:Can it run fanless & widescreen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in Windows you can fudge the INF file that comes with your drivers and edit the supported resolutions to get widescreen support. I imagine you can do something similar in linux.

Re:64K cache

[Anonymous Coward]

So, actually the chip has 192K of cache, configured pretty much the same as it was in the AMD Duron (128k L1, 64k L2, exclusive). Considering the target marketplace and performance of the chip, this seems to be plenty.

Yeah, 192K ought to be enough for anyone!

Embedded processor

[vlad_petric]

With just 64K of L2 cache, a PIII or Athlon running at the same frequency will just beat the shit out of it. So this processor is clearly targetted to the embedded market.

No the problem with this market is that x86 compatibility doesn't matter as much as in the desktop market, and ... ARM is pretty much the king here. IOW - I won't be buying VIA stocks any time soon.

Re:Embedded processor

[OAB]

Hello, earth to vlad_petric, it's for QUIET PCs, you know, surf, MP3s and a little bit of MS Office. Twat.

Re:Embedded processor

[ChaoticLimbs]

calling someone a twat is INSIGHTFUL???? WTF, moderators???! (although the post IS insightful to some degree, it's a fairly good thing we don't have a POLITE tag for moderators.)

Re:Embedded processor

[Anonymous Coward]

With the amound of development going on for x86, this thing can straddle the line between markets. Sure it wouldn't be as fast as an AMD or Intel chip at the same frequency, but without the need for heavy duty cooling, it would be much quieter.

A set top PVR box comes to mind as a good use for this. How about a low cost Tablet PC?

And BTW ARM vs the M10000 in a benchmark setup would be just as unbalanced as the M10000 versus the top of the line P4.

My mini-ITX webserver now up for 7 months

[shoppa]

I host a dozen or so websites on a little mini-ITX server I bought last fall for $200. Two of the sites have been slashdotted in that time, and the server cruised right through them maxing out at a few percent CPU consumption. (Static pages, of course!)

See the uptime report here.

Performance per Watt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there any published numbers on the performance *per watt* of the Nehemiah vs the mainstream desktop and mobile P4/Athlon/P3/Centrino/Crusoe etc? Everyone seems to say "an xyz cpu at 1Ghz absolutely smokes the C3" but I think this misses the point. Performance relative to power consumption would seem to be a better indicator of overall efficiency and good design of the processor.

VIA's reluctance to support Linux

[phliar]

On the Via Arena Forum for EPIA-M Linux support the outlook is bleak. Via seem reluctant to fully support Linux, in particular with the MPEG hardware and the EHCI USB. One person trying to develop a distribution for EPIA-M says:

The EPIA-M's aren't very well supported on Linux at all. The bare minimum will work, but there is a lot of work to be done, especially on VIA's part.
...
VIA should not claim that the EPIA-M is Linux compatible, unless it is actively supporting the Linux community by improving support to at least a level of being able to take advantage of most of the hardware's features. I hope VIA becomes more actively involved in the future.

Here's the complete summary of hardware support for EPIA-M by "jonthorpe" on March 10, 2003:

USB 2.0: I have been in contact with David Brownwell for the past two months in an attempt to resolve the issues with the VT8235's EHCI support in general. Most people will experience system hangs when they attempt to use the EHCI controller, although it is improving. VIA has apparently provided David with hardware, but with little support. As of late, the problem seems to extend beyond the VT8235's EHCI - on another VT8235 based board, it was revealed that there are IRQ/PCI issues causing any USB 2.0 card (e.g. an NEC which is usually stable) to hang.

Audio: ALSA should work for the EPIA-Ms with their ALC650, but the OSS drivers are still a better option in my opinion. The original EPIAs will experience problems with ALSA (crackly sound on new versions of ALSA, no sound at all on previous). The OSS driver in newer kernels (e.g. 2.4.21-pre5-acX) works well with OSS playback, but there are two major problems:

1. ESound does not work. This limits the user to only one stream to pass through the sound card. This can generate problems with applications such as web browsers which use the Flash plugin (especially if another sound application is already running - e.g. XMMS)
2. Recording does not work whatsoever. This is a major problem that I am yet to talk to Alan about, but there is absolutely no recording with OSS drivers. ALSA drivers have more success with this, but the audio quality is poor.

VGA: This will work nicely if you're running one of VIA's supported distribution versions. This is not good for people like myself who insist on using updated kernels to work with other features of their hardware. This limits us to using the Slim driver for the CLE266, removing MPEG2 hardware acceleration. I am developing a distribution that is to be bundled with EPIA-M systems, and even after mentioning that, sending two emails to VIA and signing up on the driver request page has proven fruitless and are completely ignored.

I haven't tested this myself, but I believe there are problems with VIA's CLE266 drivers when it comes to virtual screens. The driver simply cannot handle them.

NIC: This works flawlessly, with the via-rhine driver. There are no problems to report.

FireWire: I have no idea about this one either, but I can say that the host controller is at least recognised by the Linux driver. I'd love to hear from anyone who has tested the EPIA-M's firewire on Linux.

Warning Off Topic Post

[Mooncaller]

The Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah were originaly one book. From a historical perspective, they are important in that they provide information about a critical period in the middle east. The events chronicaled have reprocusions for the next 5 centuries, until the destruction of the Temple in 70AD. The culture of the post-exilic Nation of Isreal, was fundimental different from that of any period befor captivity. The last half of the narative ( Nehemiah) explains why these changes happened. And most importantly, documents the change in the World View of the Hebrew people, that underpinned their new culture.

These Books are also very well written from a liturary point of view. The style is clean and accesible, even in translation. The narrative is well paced, with plenty of action to prevent it from bogging down. There is also some subtle humor throughout. The story itself is engrosing with a lot of human drama.

Christians should read this book ( along with the rest of the Bible). It illustrates some important spitual concepts. Learning these concepts will help a Christian to get past the first rest stop on their walk with Jesus. Reading Nehemiah will also benifit non-Christian people of Faith, anyone with an interest in Spiritual matters.

One does not need to be a Jew or a Christian to get a lot out of these books. They are well worth the effort from a liturary or historic perspective. That they also are powerfull in guiding the Spiritual walk of those of Faith, is an added bonus.

Re:64K cache

[turgid]

Does it really? How does that work then? That's very interesting.

C# Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this compare to a transmeta crusoe and will we see these things in laptops??

To me, a P3 500-700 is plenty of computing power, for a laptop, so this sounds like the perfect cheap alternative.

If it's not available in a laptop, is anyone interested in a startup designing cheap laptops?

Less biased source?

[iamhassi]

Could you find a less biased source for the review than mini-itx.com? It's like reading the review for the new Intel chip at Intel.com (Score:-1, Worthless info)

Who cares about Cryptography?

[AvengerXP]

I just want my characters to roll critical strikes and my monsters to roll critical failures once in a while. I'd cut and paste one of the fights i've had in NWN (but don't have one right now). You'd be amazed how shitty random generation is. I went 5 minutes without scoring a hit once, was pathetic.

Quite funny

[niom]

And somebody moderated it Offtopic. These moderators have no heart. (Yep, and I know somebody's idea of a joke will be moderating this as Offtopic, too).

So what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The more powerfull country in the world is governed by a Christian integrist, and no one cares !

So why do you think we would care about an obscure CEO :P :o)

who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

15 whiny linux losers versus several thousand happy windows users. Who will they pay attention to...

But will it walk or run...

[hughk]

on water cooling??? Sorry!!!!!

Myth vs. Legend

[Cato the Elder]

I think it's less about how fabricated they are then what the context they supposedly took place in is. "Legend" is used for things which should leave a historical mark, and that explain history--the seige of Troy, the Exodous, etc. "Myth" is used for stories that are purely spiritual--the Garden of Eden, for instance, or the birth of Athena from Zeus's forhead.

Request: please use mips/flops

[Anonymous Coward]

How in heck did we ever get away from quoting cpu power in mips/flops?

The clock frequency between the different cpus is less meaningful (celeron at 2ghz is about a 1.2 ghz p4)

Re:Request: please use mips/flops

[Hoser McMoose]

Err, perhaps since MIPS/FLOPS become a totally meaningless measure of performance. Hell, it's just as bad as clock freqency!

Think of it, one CPU might be able to accomplish a given task in small number of instructions, possibly just a single instruction. Another CPU might require twice as many instructions to do the same thing, or more (think CISC vs. RISC here, though the difference between the two has become rather blurred).

What's perhaps more important is that chips these days have huge theoretical maximum MIPS/FLOPS, but they never come close to reaching those maximums in any real-world situations because of data starvation, ordering restrictions, branch mispredictions, etc. etc.

In short, MIPS doesn't mean anything. Clock speeds don't mean much, and model numbers are rather arbitrary. The only thing that really matters is how fast a given chip performs in the application(s) you need it to perform in, and how much that chip costs.

Hush Silent PC

[tom taylor]

One of these chips coupled with one of the new Hush Silent PCs, could make a great HTPC and DVD replacement. Shame they're still quite expensive in the UK.

EPIA platform makes a good web server!

[MsGeek]

One of my friends up in Santa Barbara is in the process of building a server farm entirely out of EPIA Mini-ITX machines. Web serving, file serving...those are the kind of things that this platform excels at. It's only now with Nehemiah that one can even think of doing other things with the machines, like media boxes. They are still not too great for high-end gaming. You can play something along the lines of UT or Half Life C/S but don't expect to play UT2003 or anything more modern than that even on a Nehemiah.

I'm waiting on my private server to go up at this server farm. It should rock.

Youre laughing now but...

[VTS]

When AMD and Intel introduce DRM....

The next VIA chip...

[Anonymous Coward]

is named Soddhom

Oops?

[superyooser]

I wasn't aware of the existing Ezra-T core when I just posted. So, I stand corrected somewhat: Seeing a biblical allusion was obviously not necessary for it to be funny.

I still strongly suspect that there is a biblical theme in the processors' names. Ezra and Nehemiah are very uncommon names in most of the world. I think it's unlikely to be a coincidence.

Discussing Literature Correctly

[billstewart]

The term "Myth" implies a literary structure, as well as often being a comment about whether you believe in something. While literature doesn't have the same level of precision in its language as programming, the terms really do have meaning, and if you want to convey information it's worth using them correctly. Greek stories about Zeus the God are myths; Greek stories about Socrates the philosopher or Pericles the politician or Thucydides and Herodotus the historians of the Pelopennesian Wars are history (though the quality of those histories is variable); Aristophanes's play "The Frogs" is entertainment drawing on mythological sources mixed with contemporary political commentary. Homer - well, you can argue how much of that was meant to be myth as opposed to entertainment fiction.

• Referring to the earlier parts of Genesis as "myth" is appropriate - stories about how the creation happened, where man came from and how we got into this sorry position we find ourselves in, etc. Many of us believe these stories to be true, in various ways, but they're not the same kinds of literature that history is. (They're also not the books that Via is naming chips after - "Genesis" would be the Intel 4004...)
• Many of the books are historical, particularly the ones these chips were named after. They're not structured as myth, and they're not teaching moral lessons or philosophical in the ways that myths do, though you can often learn those things from them. So-and-so was the king, and his sons were Joe and Fred, and they went out and invaded this territory and killed the people there and attacked that city and got killed, and his brother took over and was an even worse king and then the Babylonians invaded... Most of that's unarguably objective, though there are bits of commentary about how God helped the Israelites the times they won, and how the kings who lost lost because they were idol-worshippers and God was judging them. But even if you don't believe that God spoke to the priests, there's usually no reason to believe that the priests didn't speak to the politicians; it certainly happens today.
• The Psalms aren't myth or history - they're devotional poetry. They're really much more about the emotional life of the various authors.
• The Proverbs aren't myths - they're moral teachings.
• The various books of the Prophets are mostly not mythology either - most of them have some combination of history (who the prophet was and what was going on around him and what king he told off, since that was usually what prophets did) and mystical literature (what the prophet saw), though some of the events like Daniel in the Lions' Den can be discussed as mythical.

Also, terms like "Christianity" and "Judaism" have meaning, and while Christians believe in the Biblical books used by the Jews, they're Jewish books, and we're the latecomers here.

Depends on their net connection

[billstewart]

If they've got a T1 line, and are doing simple clean static web non-SSL pages, a Pentium 60 ought to be just fine, and a Mini-ITX is way overkill. Shouldn't be any trouble to keep a 10 Mbps Ethernet full, though I'd recommend doing some benchmarks (on almost any platform) before trying to fill a T3 with it.

The places you get into trouble are where you're doing fancy dynamic web pages (usually not too much of a problem), or using SSL for all your pages (easy to burn CPU that way) or cranking more disk access than a single IDE drive can handle (not the problem here), or maybe doing aggressive database applications with it.

Re:64K cache

[discstickers]

Only the instruction cache, not the data cache. But thats a moot point since we're comparing the C3's L2 cache to the P4's L1 cache.

(offtopic) Re:a bit about the cpu since it's /.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

"Funny to see them do a complete 360 only 3 years later, after their castrated chip has failed to attract a single Tier 1 vendor."

Wouldn't a 360 be a complete turn where you are heading the same way you were heading before? Don't you mean 180?

I'm waiting for...

[MarcQuadra]

GODOT!

MPEG4 Playback

[tangent3]

I was considering one of this for a system to playback my DivX/XviD CDRs. However the tests only include DivX 3, DivX4 and the 0.91 version of XviD, all of which use only the MPEG4 simple profile. I would definitely like to know if this solution can handle advanced profile MPEG4 with the later development versions of XviD and pro versions of DivX5, both of which utilises the more CPU-intensive operations of Quarter-pixel, Bi-directional frames and Global Motion Compensation.

Nehemiah 1Ghz as an N64 Emulator

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone try this? I'm wondering if the m10000 has the muscle to run a nintendo 64 emulator at full speed, with or without the help of a PCI video card. I have an Ezra-T 800Mhz C3 that will run all of the NES, SNES, Atari, Sega emulators without issue, but the N64 emultaors run at about half speed ~30fps