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Is the x86 Ready for Consumer Appliances?
rckymntrider asks: "By now, it's pretty obvious that the movers and shakers of the PC industry are shifting their attention to consumer electronics. Consumers today demand capabilities from their set-top boxes that PCs already deliver (examples: HDTV and gaming). They just don't want a bulky, hot and noisy PC next to their beautiful new plasma TV. Intel, for instance, announced several initiatives for bringing their technology to the media/home automation front, including the establishment of a $200M fund for companies in that arena (small change if you ask me). As a small manufacturer of media-centric devices (I will not name the company and product -- this is not a plug), I have become very frustrated at the availability of hardware for 'consumer' type of applications. ATX? Micro ATX? Too big. Eighty watt CPUs? You're kidding me! Mini ITX? Better but not powerful enough and *way too expensive*. Besides, every new piece of hardware that comes out is practically designed for Windows, and we all know that this is not the operating system that will drive consumer appliances, right? So to sum it up, do you think that the traditional x86 architecture, even with the advent of PCIX and the likes, is suitable for consumer anything? What other platforms do you see on the horizon that could still offer things like High Definition video capability and not double as mini-heaters? Have you ever heard (or envisioned) of a platform designed for powerful but still cost-effective consumer appliances? VIA tried with their EPIA platform but - in my opinion - they failed. Do you think Intel will do it? If not, then who?"
They sold off their x86 Geode platform to AMD a year or so back.
The Geode is in plenty of consumer devices, if you care to tear them open to take a look.
I have been pwned because my
Besides, every new piece of hardware that comes out is practically designed for Windows, and we all know that this is not the operating system that will drive consumer appliances, right?
Well, that's a good question. Windows is sorta big and bulky, but it runs on an awful lot of things. I mean, think about how versatile the code really is, even if it does crash. Take that requirement out of the picture - that the OS has to run on Nteen thousand different hardware configurations, just one, your superblender - and it might not be the worst choice one could make.
But then, I might be completely uninformed. It's just conjecture.
They're already here! There's an AMD 486 inside my graphite Apple Airport Base Station : )
Of course I'm joking, but what the poster really wants to know... is *Windows* ready for consumer appliances?
I think not, myself ^^
GPL Deconstructed
I've written programs on VAX, Dec Alpha, RS6000, PowerPC, PA-RISC, 6502, Sparc, Ultra Sparc, 68000 and every version of x86 since the original PC. Really, don't get hung up about x86. In the grand scheme, it's just another CPU. Unit cost, energy cost in a million unit device will more than out weigh nearly anything that might make you choose x86.
This is a boring sig
If you're asking if modern consumer OSes based on the x86 range are bullet-proof and idiot-proof enough to power a device as easy to use as an answering machine or VCR, then I'd have to say no, these are still hobbyist devices.
It's great. For larger things that you want to run Windows on (refrigerators or other such devices), the size is no issue. For media things, people expect VCR sized devices, and a VCR could easily have a Micro ATX board inside.
As for smaller devices, I for one do not want Windows or *nix to run on my toaster; it does not need a general purpose x86 chip inside, as it just does one thing. I want these little ones to do what they are asked of promptly and easily.
Not to mention, a Widows/*nix enabled popcorn popper would probably have some crashing issues...
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
I don't know what you are trying to do but I have an epia m series 1Ghz windows box that i use for a media PC. Even running XP I have yet to find a codec it can't decode realtime. It is uber responsive when doing software decoding? No but it runs my PVR even while Watching video from disk. The only thing I had to work around was disk access and adding a second and third drive fixed that. 120GB storage drive, 6GB swap drive and 20GB OS/ Software drive and everything runs fine.
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The SiS550 is an x86 SoC like the geode, elan. Theyre getting faster and smaller and more ready for embedded markets. 256MB flashes are cheap, and can carry full distros of WinCE, QNX Linux, BSD or anything you want.
Theyre still a far cry from ARM cores though, and I'd only use x86 where win32 binary compatibility is absolutely required. Things can and do get complex on x86 SoCs, and ARM cores will give you that 'simple and efficient' feel nothing else will.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
As far as not being able to HDTV you're dead wrong, I've got an HDTV decoder in it which runs flawlessly (want a 40gb HD version of the superbowl? mail me a harddrive). Gaming is a no go for modern FPS, but even without using one of the 2 pci slots (riser card) the onboard video will run Half Life rather well, and most RTS (save WC3) and of course anything MAME can throw at it... Who wants to play an FPS on a TV but doesn't want a console anyway?
In short, if you think VIA has failed with their MiniItx form boards and the C3, justify that conclusion. All your complaints are either incorrect or baseless. Divx DVDs and HDTV all run beautifully on the VIA. As for gaming: the most powerful console on the market runs at less that 1 ghz and boasts a far from cutting edge graphics card so it's not lacking in power, just in development support. PC game companies aren't interested in supporting anything but bleeding edge tech, and in all likelihood people who want games on their TV will be looking to the real players in the market: Sony Nintendo and Microsoft.
Yawn.
"Is the X86 ready for consumer appliances?"
I'd say so, I have an old 486 chip supporting the short foot on my dryer. It has very low power requirements in this capacity and it does a fantastic job of keeping the dryer from wobbling across the basement floor.
The downside is I have to use plenty of Bounce sheets to keep from ESDing the chip.
Unknown host pong.
The only reason that x86 has endured on the desktop is that it was rapidly adopted by the masses in the early 80s, and being intelligent companies, intel and IBM built upon the platform while maintaining FULL BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
This doesn't make it the best for most uses. It just makes it the most practical for a general purpose computer. But not necessarily an embedded device.
In the 90s, new, better architectures were introduced, but x86 endured mostly because of the large installed user base. PowerPC, Alpha, and SPARC, if given enough funding during development, would have easily toasted any of intel's x86 offerings. DEC had 64-bit chips before intel had pentium.
Many new platforms designed specifically for embedded devices such as MIPS and ARM (only ones which come to mind) have developed over the last few years. Backward compatibilty is not an issue here.
Look at TiVo. They used a 66mhz PowerPC in their 1st generation boxes because they ran fast and efficently, and without active cooling, and it was open and cheap (PPC is a VERY open platform). There is no way that an x86 at this speed could have performed the complex tasks TiVo needed it to.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It's the primary thing that keeps x86 out of the "appliance" market. No one wants to wait for their device - be it refrigerator, TV, etc. - to boot before being able to use it fully.
... and ...
Before you argue that many machines don't need to boot, please keep in mind that MANY do, and can't stay on 24-7. Hell, even the ones that can should shutdown or hibernate in order to keep peoples' electric bills sane.
Anyway, x86 needs to defeat these hurdles to compete in the embedded arena:
a) boot a kernel that is bigger than 1M (like ARM can) - why? because if you want to boot a device FAST, you use an uncompressed kernel; and uncompressed kernels are BIG
b) get over the POST time - POST'ing on most motherboards (yes, even VIA EPIAs), takes 10 seconds or more. I know firsthand because our app was initially built on one[an EPIA-M]. Asking a user to wait for 10 seconds for the Hardware to POST, PLUS another 10-20 for the OS to boot is highly unacceptable. Mark another win for ARM here...
Anyway, the answer to your question is ARM. It's Intel's existing answer. Have a look at an XScale CPU solution young grasshopper.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Your link just bounces to the front page of groklaw, you probably ought to check it...
The issue here is whether the x86 platform's issues, like excessive heat and power consumption and the requirement for a separate memory controller, outweigh its advantages, like the large variety of hardware already available to interface to everything under the sun and the fact that it's a well-understood architecture.
Now that's out of the way, here's my two cents: the x86 architecture, or at least the implementations currently available, simply isn't cut out for most embedded applications. While x86's limitations have been addressed with lots of extensions (MMX, SSE, 3dNow, etc.), those end up adding complexity and drawing more power than a chip designed without those limitations. Also, the x86's pitiful lack of registers compared to architectures like the PowerPC (another choice for embedded applications that require a good deal of power) means that almost any complex operations mean lots of going in and out of cache, or, worse, main memory. While x86 is acceptable in an environment with a 300W+ power supply and user tolerance for a good deal of noise, it won't cut it in your VCR. x86 might see some use in applications which require rapid development and lots of power, but in most cases there is already a good solution available.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Get on the phone and call up the manufactures. Get something custom desigined, or at least get pointed at the non-consumer grade web page. If your doing any kind of volume at all, it wont be that expensive. Its not quite as easy as building a computer from componets in your basement, but PC technology is standardized components. Hell, if they have an autorouting board designer they could likely so something from scratch in an afternoon.
Dialogic Telephony E1/T1 cards have used 386 chips as embedded chips (mainly for encoding/decoding) for quite a while now. The architecture is obviously good enough for the job.
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It all depends on how much it has to do and how much it has to cost. I really don't know why the EPIA platform "failed" as you say, I don't think the EPIA platform is meant to be a straight-up appliance. if it was the m1000 boards wouldn't have VGA, they would have NTSC (or PAL) outputs only.
It seems the way to implement x86 appliances would be to use low power procs like the VIA and outboard processors to take the load off the little CPU. A VIA M1000 board with the built in MPEG decoder comes close. With the addition of a WiFI card you have the capabilities mentioned in the above Intel link.
While the EPIA is quiet and powerful enough (in the right configuration) they don't have a very good NTSC out (IMHO). An EPIA box with a Hauppauge PVR-350 card in it with MythTV or something like it can be a fine little appliance.
I have one of the Hauppauge cards an old 950 Mhz Athlon box here in my office right now to play music and watch (and record) TV. Very quiet too, once I added a low-noise power supply. (SuSE 9.0, old Athlon, WinTV PVR-250, Matrox G200 video (for the NTSC out) If I could afford another PVR-250 or 350, it would easily handle multiple video streams!
This sig kills fascists.
The x86's have been used in embedded apps for quite some time now. I distinctly remember discovering an 80186 in a microwave I disassembled, and many industrial applications use them, due to their well known characteristics.
All these comments about POST and other silliness come from the PC architecture, not the CPU itself. Amazing how many people are willing to comment when they really have no clue.
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"if you build it, he will come." x86 the architecture itself may be ready for the set-top box and the digital streaming stereo thingy, and good software foundations are out there (for appliances, think QNX Neutrino, embedded Linux, PalmOS 6, and so forth), and there are low power chips like Geodes and C3s. (I've even heard that people are experimenting with Transmeta's processors for appliances.) So the architecture is ready and the software is ready. But there aren't a lot of people out there who seem really interested in making good hardware (mainly motherboards) to fit this niche, and I think that's mostly what the author is frustrated with. (Mind you, VIA is going in the right direction with their new nano-ITX board, if only they'd drop their price a whole heap.)
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
The x86 architecture, well, is just plain silly by today's standards...
A RISC CPU and a few DSPs could perform a lot of set-top applications, with tremendmous savings in both power usage and perhaps area (size).
High Performance doesn't not mean +100W consumption. If you don't need 4-way out-of-order execution (which is a really, really, really complicated thing to implement), complicated branch prediction, large multi-level caches, etc, then your power consumption will be ** A LOT ** less.
The fact is that many signal processing applications, don't require large amounts of memory, and they are highly parallelizable. Their algorithmns tend to be much more predictable.
Also, all processing & interrupt delays are known precisely in DSPs (this is a requirement in realtime stuff). This is also why caches, etc are not desirable, since their performance is not constant.
Simple DSPs can outperform desktop PCs for a great many applications, using 1/100th the power, cost, etc....
First of all, IMHO it's not about the x86 architecture per se, but rather the concept of a (mini) PC. PCs appear to be attractive in any area simply because most of the hardware already exists, and there's a huge and relatively mature codebase available. In this light, embedding PCs is like making it do what you want and then rip-out anything you're not using.
Now what happens when you do not start out with a standard PC, but one with special hardware? For example: an x86 processor WITHOUT PCI or a PCI mainboard with an ARM or PowerPC cpu. You loose a major part of the benefits: your favorite PC development environmet no longer works out of the box, you may need a new compiler, new libraries... (This is where portability of OSS is a major benefit).
In any case, programming a PC is a different game as is programming embedded. With embedded you will worry less about (backward) compatibility and more about simplicity, performance/watt and - last but not least - support/documentation/tools available for the choosen hardware.
--
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are so poor at I/O.
can post in under 2 seconds if not in hardware-change-check mode.
Besides, if you were making an appliance, I'm sure you could write your own BIOS (take LinuxBIOS, for example). That'd make it boot instantly into any size kernel image you care.
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x86 is only one of about 60 different processors that can be used in consumer electronic devices.
...
The only question that needs to be asked about whether or not x86 can/should/will be used in consumer electronics devices is the per-unit price.
If you can't get an x86-based chip for integration into your embedded system for, say, $10 - $15, then its not going to happen. The competition in this sector is too fierce. Other, nice, lower power, fun-to-use (RISC, even...), easy-to-integrate processors are out there, which will definitely give the x86 a run for the money.
The only thing x86 has going for it in this space is the development realm - yeah, its great to cross-compile for your target processor, but in the end, its also fun to just run the same binary you just built and run on your PC.
x86 has to get cheaper. Show me an x86-based chip that has tons of SOC-style integrated peripherals, and I'll show you a chip that is just too expensive to compete with the other cpu's we're already using to control stuff, just fine, in consumer electronics-land
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THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It seems a lot of people here are assuming that the x86 as an embedded platform somehow still requires an OS like Windows or Linux.
...
Just so that its perfectly clear, Linux is both a desktop Operating System, AND an embedded operating system. Linux scales better than a whole lot of systems, QNX and VxWorks included
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
However there are some minor signs this may be changing. Most of this is rumors but I think the X-box2 and the new gameboy are both going have more then 1 cpu. Plenty of phones already have more then 1 cpu to spread the load of the increasing demands of the software on them. All the chipmakers seem to be working on putting more then one CPU on a single core.
So if phone companies, console makers and chip companies think it is the way of the future why not for consumer appliances?
Think about it, exactly how much cpu power is needed to decode a video stream when a cpu can be dedicated to that task and nothing else? You don't need to go with a SMP like setup. You can simply have one simple processor wich does all the interface stuff. One wich decodes the video. Another perhaps wich decodes the sound. All geared and dedicated to their specific task. Costly? Well to a certain point this is already how PC's work. GPU for visuals. Soundcard for ehm sound.
Of course such a board will be far more expensive to design then a simple board you pick up of the shelf. With consumer electronics like this still extremely unproven the cost may be too high. Until then simply accept the bigger size and other bad points of PC architecture. Have you ever seen the first generation tv's? Video records? Mobile Phones? Etc Etc? They all had one thing in common. THEY WERE HUGE. Hell the first pocket transistor radio's were so big that the sellers had special shirts with enlarged pockets. (got it from an interview with sony people years ago I am sure someone else can better tell this anecdote).
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If my laptop can play back video, than you can use x86 as a consumer platform, go to whoever supplies the boards to the major laptop manufacturers, and buy how ever many you need, stick a moble chip in, mold a plastic case and cut the headers off of any port you don't want. for that matter, if your just making a demo, close the laptop, buy a PS2 stand thingie, and stick it upright and there you go, i mean, if the Playstation can sit next to the tv, so could my laptop. the trick it standing it on its side, makes it look sexier.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
I'll put forth AMP's PC104 Transmeta Crusoe. Fanless 1ghz fun complete with dual display and embedded mpeg2 acceleration. 5v and 2amp max.
I'm working with/on one of these now, if you have any questions.
Model: Tiny886ULP Better buy in bulk, not cheap.
Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
From what I can tell there has been a big trend to move to lower powered devices, while at the same time look for more processing. The x86 is a poor player in this field, since compared to other chips on the market it consumes a lot of power. The two big chips seem to the PowerPC and the ARM chip. Both are RISC chips. My perspective is mainly based from looking at PDAs and the direction that game consoles are going.
If you think to the contary, then please tell me.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I have and help set up a group for hacking an old set top box made by Acer. Inside was a nearly bog standard PC motherboard. It had all the regular parts of a motherboard. There was one ISA slot (used for a modem or NIC). There was a header for a COM port (you had to add a particular Maxim SMT part to get it to work - most people used it for a mouse). It came with its own wireless keyboard, and used a AMD 586/133 for the CPU. IIRC, it had 8 meg of RAM. It also had a smart-card reader. All packaged in a slick, small TIVO-like case. It ran QNX originally, but we got it booting DOS, Win9x, and Linux in the end (oh, there was also a header inside for an IDE drive - one could mount either a small laptop drive inside, or a PCMCIA/flash drive). The original purpose of this box was to act like a Web-TV type system, also it could read data in the VBI to give it links/commands to go to a special server that could display web pages based on the show, or semi-transparent overlays, etc. There was also a remote, now that I think about it. Basically, the only thing that survives to this day of it is the software - it is used by many cable companies (I know Cox uses it with their digital settop boxes).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Wasn't there a slashdot article about someone using a tiny Intel CPU to build a whole computer on a chip only 5-6 by 1-2 inches big? Wouldn't that be useful? I visited the site when the slashdot article went up, but now I can't find it. Anyone have a link?
The reason why you'd want an x86 is to leverage all the existing code which runs on it--practically none of which is relevant to embedded devices.
It's not as if you were going to program your embedded application in Visual Basic, or as Lotus 1-2-3 macros, or something.
Designing a consumer appliance with an x86 processor in it makes about as much sense as designing a rocket ship that runs off 97-octane gasoline, just because gasoline is more familiar, more available, safer, and more competitive in pricing than nitric acid and hydrazine. All true, but that doesn't make gasoline an appropriate rocket fuel.
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I remember reading about 20 years ago, the cpu architect who designed the x86 was essentially said that he designed the wierd x86 cpu memory access simply for the fact that intel had to get certain patents on this new cpu design that made it different that other cpu's..(this from a company that gave us the 8080 cpu design where everything (including I/O operations) went throught the accumulator register). Then, intel screwed up the 286 (both intel and MS worked on that design)...and so on, util here we have most of the cpu's here on earth with win and intel inside....and we also have lots of applications (for PC and web and games and multimedia) based on x86 and we wonder why there is such a market push to use x86 in appliences??
Open up a TV or a VCR. do you see a standard bus in there. No! And why? Because everything in there is designed from scratch to play nice with each other. Standard products carry extra capabilities that a fixed large volume product does not need. You'll know that STBs and DVRs have hit the big time when you see a single board with custon chips, the code in ROM and no I/O besides required cable/AV in and AV out.
If it were me, I'd buy a small CPU like an ARM7 and do all my heavy lifting like transcoding in hardware.
at full resolution?
Last year I though about making my own media box (via-based) and so I googled a lot looking for performance issues.
The only place I found (where someone did talk about via processors decoding divx) was somewhere in the newsgroups (cant find the link). And they said it didnt handle it at all.
Please dont tell me it works fine... Not now that i have an Xbox.
You should have stuck your head inside and turned it on.
Advansys is selling Ezra-800MHz SOM (system on module) in ETX form factor (3.7 x 4.5 ") for twice EPIA prices, at this link; while their EVA SOC (system on chip) only reports 80186 performance levels, and have embedded RTOS, probably TRONso it's not what you're looking for.
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TI's Omap processor; low cost, high performance(some bench it to be as fast as 400 mhz xscale)ARM core+dsp+controls for various subsystems such as usb, serial, sd/mmc, etc.
got a 126mhz model in a palm zire 21 runs for
12 hours continuusly on a single charge.
and it has a native linux port as well as various codecs that use the dsp for acceleration 2d/3d. also unlike the XSCALE this chip has builtin coprocessor and 192k L1/L2 cache as well as a 1.5mb cache all done on 90nm process
I know the Nehemiah series chips are much better than the Ezra variant, but I had trouble with latency on my Ezra-based EPIA-800.
I intended to use it as a 'multi console emulator' emulating game boy, NES, Genesis, SNES, and some VERY old DOS games. I kept noticing 'lag' when using the joystick and Mario 3. I would hit the jump button and the delay was much more than the console had accustomed me to. DOS games were bad too, but I attribute that to BOCHS more than the CPU.
Are you running Windows on your EPIA? I don't think there are adequate free (beer or speech) drivers for the hardware video decoder built into the M-series EPIA mobos, so they're definitely out of the question for a lot of us.
Also, when I did hook my EPIA up to a 'real' monitor I noticed it was WAY blurrier than when I hook up my Mac or ATI-carded PC. It was unacceptable in my opinion. The sound was pretty shitty too, very 'buzzy' and bad response on the lows and highs compared to my desktop systems.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
with a Celeron 700 in it.
The system boots into networked linux in seconds from a stock BIOS and the system consumes less than 45W idle with a normal, 7200RPM hard disk spun up.
Pretty good, huh?
It's essentially my firewall/router/WAP/webserver.
And you could easily do a lot better in the power department by using flash storage and lower the clock speed and chip voltage, or by going to a newer CPU (coppermine).
I'm, I get your point, but it's a bad example.
What needs to be emphasized is the difference between a 12W draw in well engineered case with x86, and the 2W draw from a typical ARM based WAP. It won't make or break a sale, but it's a consideration, especially since higher power handling necessitates bulkier hardware construction and maybe passive heatsinks (heavy, thus expensive in production)
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Why bother with x86 for an embedded hardware system? its going to be much more expensive to build a unit than doing it theright way with an embedded processor and DSP's and ASICs for the heavy lifting. I could see it if you're in a race to prototype or hit a market first, because you can leverage a lot of code. But otherwise you're going to do alot of work trying to make x86 fit a niche it isn't made for, when you can do it quicker and cheaper with other solutions.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Do you really want to embed windows in a consumer device? Probably not - I certainly wouldn't. Since you are posting on/., you probably have some affection for Linux. But there are plenty of much lighter wight systems around, like QNX, vxWorks, which are also much more suitable for ebedded work. Windows is very, vety heavy. Yes, you can buy a 3GHZ x86 to run Windows - but a 1GHX Risc processor optimised for embedded work wil outperform it by two or three things and undercut its power consumption by 20 times.
Once you have ditched Windows, all the other OSes run on multiple platforms - Arm, PPC, MIPS, Coldfire, Hitachi H series... Linux is certainly available on Arm, PPC. Most of the others are available on more architectures.
Which means that if you chose one of these OSes and (usually) C++, you can move platforms with a recompile. (Not quite true, but near enough for overnment work).
I have experience of the Arm family, and they go like lightning when programmed right - much faster, MHz for MHz, than you would expect compared to Windows. And the power consumption is small to minuscule. And there are some very interesting new CPUs coming along obviously targeted as set-top boxes (sorry, NDA doesn't permit details and Google doesn't know yet). So what you need is for the set-top manufacuters to agree on a common OS like the mobile phome manufacturers have done (how about the same one, as a suggestion) and use the best of the new generation embedded processors.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Xbox.
I'll leave it to you to decide if this example is good for x86 or not.
(IMO, Xbox is a great example of the x86 chip succeeding in the CE world.)
As already mentioned, the older Airport Base Station has a 486 in it.
Even with these successes, it really depends on the device. x86 is a general purpose architecture, designed to do everything good enough. There are other chips that are much better designed for specific applications (example being PPC, which while still being a general purpose chip, smokes x86 clock for clock in multimedia applications).
Smaller devices seem to be leaning towards ARM based processsors recently. (Newer versions of PocketPC, PalmOS 5+, Zaurus) I'm assuming these chips have much lower power consumption or something.
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