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AMD Launches Low-Voltage Processors
mgoulding writes "CoolTechZone reports that AMD has released its low-power Athlon processors, which are designed to target the ultra-lightweight notebook market. The low-voltage chips will use smaller batteries and produce less heat. Acer plans to ship systems using the processors by the end of May." Acer plans to use them in their Ferrari line of thin laptops.
here is some tech info in case it gets /.ed
The other models - 2800+, 3000+, and 3200+ are rated to operate at 65W while the 2700+ is rated to operate at 35W. The Pentium M processor models - 1.5Ghz, 1.6Ghz, and 1.7Ghz are set to operate at 24.5W. The AMD 2700+ budget Mobile processor still consumes more power than the Centrino platform, which uses Intel's Pentium M chips. Another big difference between the rest of Athlon64 Mobile processors from AMD and the 2700+ budget level Mobile processor is the amount of L2 cache. The 2700+ processor has 512KB cache while the rest of the models house 1MB cache. The 2700+ is clocked at 1.6Ghz; the same clock speed as the 2800+, which has 1MB L2 cache.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Generally, the less heat there is, the more room you have to try OC'ing. The current line of Mobile AMD processors has done very well.
Let's analyze and translate the above post shall we:
ok, it runs on a lower voltage.
That much is said in the article.
But isn't the reality that they have a lower wattage?
"wattage", also called power, only has to do with voltage for a fixed resistance. I suppose AMD lowered the voltage to lower the power consumption too, though, so what you said is obvious.
Wattage being what really matters when it comes to power consumption and heat displacemnet.
Yes, power is indeed what matters when it comes to power consumption.
In short: what a stupid post that was...
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Don't touch the VAIOs either.
:)
Stick will IBM, Toshiba and Dell.
Or, if you have money to burn, get a Tadpole.
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Voltage is a squared term in the general power function for a CPU. Lowering the voltage will have a significant effect on power consumption. As you might imagine, the chip's operating frequency is another term in the function.
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IANAEE, but Ohm's law would suggest that a reduction in voltage would pull less current assuming the resistance is constant(V=IR). Power is equal to current times voltage (W=IV). Lower voltage leads to lower current which leads to lower power.
Transmeta Review
Cramped keyboards? The 15" PowerBook I'm typing this on has a keyboard with full-sized keys. They've got less travel than a normal keyboard, but that's the only difference.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
The announcement is of the mobile, low-voltage Athlon 64, not just the mobile, low-voltage Athlon -- which has been in the very machine I'm typing on for nearly a year. This is referenced in one place in the article, but the chips are misleadingly referred to simply as "Athlon" in the title, and several more times.
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Stastically, AMD isn't doing anything new really. However, in terms of mindshare, they're doing quite well. Remember the X86-64 spec? Intel seems to have copied AMD. This shows that AMD is ahead in something.
:-D
Frankly, whoever gives me a 5GHz 64-bit processor for $100 first wins in my mind
My other car is first.
No. Ohm's law is in play. Charging a capacitor takes in energy, yes, but that energy is stored as charge, not radiated as heat. The heat comes from I^2*R loss. The I part comes when the capacitor must be charged.
So, it's really pretty simple. Lower voltages mean that the capacitors don't take in as much charge, and therefore don't require as much current to charge up. Less current == less I^2*R loss == less power consumed.
You can get similar improvements by reducing the size of the capacitances, which can be done by reducing the size of the FET gates... which means a smaller feature size.
You are correct that the transistors look mostly like capacitors, but you are incorrect in stating that power is stored in the junction and that creates heat. Power is dissipated in the interconnects, sources and drains, and in the vias between layers. This is also one big reason why we went to copper - lower resistance interconnects == less power lost to resistance.
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"Cheap, light, and fast, pick three; I like cheap and light."
OK, then.
Go on eBay. You can get a Compaq Armada M300 (PIII 600, up to 384M of memory) for around $350. It's got a 11.5" XGA screen, it's 3.1lbs (including battery), and very thin and light (magnesium alloy case). It runs Windows XP and Linux fine, has a Cardbus slot for a wifi card, built in 56K and 10/100 ethernet, ATI Rage graphics with 4MB (horrible 3D, but fine for 2D), and a nice keyboard. Not to mention the fact that the power adaptor is tiny, and you can get a nice dock which only increases the thickness to around 1.2" (without changing the size otherwise) and adds a floppy + another drive (DVD-ROM+CD-RW, DVD burner, etc.).
Everyone, please take a step away from the keyboard and visit this site:
l ec trical_energy_measured.htm
http://www.nmsea.org/Curriculum/Primer/How_is_e
It's a very nice, plain english, tutorial about the relationship between Volts, Amps, Watts and Joules (the electric pantheon so to speak).
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You can buy the Athlon XP Mobile chip now, and it works in a regular Athlon board. I'd imagine the same would be tru for the Athlon64 mobiles.. 'less you're talking about OEM machines.
mrg
Actually they had Athlon XP-M low voltage models too, in the same range of power consumption as the new (Athlon64) ones. Fujitsu used them in their thin and light line, as well as Averatec. Probably a couple other thin and lights with them, as well. The summary for the article is a bit misleading, it makes it sound like these are the first LV cpus AMD has released. The actual news is that they're releasing LV Athlon64s.
Or do the next best thing:
1) Buy an Athlon 64 PC
2) Enable PowerNow! power management
3) Buy a power supply with a variable-speed fan (I recommend this one) and enable CPU fan speed control on the motherboard (Q-Fan in ASUS's BIOS, IIRC).
When you're just reading Slashdot, the CPU runs at 800MHz and power consumption drops waaay down. When you're playing UT2004, the CPU runs flat out and the fans speed up. It works extremely well.
Here we go again...
It always has been, and still is, entirely possible to have a system without any fans.
Just about any processor can be run with nothing but a large heatsink provide that you underclock it significantly. Drop a 2GHz processor down to 800MHz and you probably won't need a fan.
Oh, so you want a your system without a fan to be fast, eh? Well there's always water-cooling. But of course, you don't want to spend that much... Well, you can't have it all. If you choose silence, you have to spend a lot of money, or get poor performance.
Personally, I think the best way to just to replace the crappy fans and heatsinks with a tempurature controlled themaltake... Then when your processor is cool the fans will be slow and silent, but when your processor are running hot, the fans can cool everything down. I happen to like that tradeoff the best.
Choosing between AMD and Intel is difficult. Intel processor have a higher maximum tempurature, but they run cooler under typical load. AMD has recently been trying to fix this. This just happens to be a subject I detailed in my latest Journal entry.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No, wattage has to do with voltage times amperage. Resistance doesn't really eneter into it.
It's not good to guess. AMD could have lowered the voltage while increasing the wattage.
In fact, it's basic electronics that, when lowering voltage, you have to increase amperage to maintain the same performance. Since amperage is what is consumed, just decreasing the voltage would be a step in exactly the wrong direction.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Lots of incorrect knowledge has been passing around /., so here's a nice quick tutorial about basic electricity.
Everything electric needs a certain number of watts to operate. Your Computer is about the same as a 100watt lightbulb. Wattage is voltage times current (amps), which means, less votage requires more current to do the same ammount of work.
Since voltage is not consumed, but current is, it only makes sense to use higher voltages, in order to preserve current. This can be seen very clearly on the specs of your computer's power supply. Your computer may need 100watts to operate, but you can choose between two different voltages. If you are running at 110v, you are drawing nearly 1 amp. However, if you throw the switch and plug in to 220v, you can operate the same equipment at under 1/2 amp.
I know this is a bit difficult to understand, so let's go with the shower analogy... Voltage is like water pressure, and current is like the volume of water. When you screw-on a "water conserving" shower nossle, what it does is increase the pressure. That makes the water spray just as far, while using less water to do it.
So, if you get the idea, you'll understand that decreasing a device's voltage does NOT mean you'll have better battery life. In fact, if all else remains equal, it guarantees worse battery life.
Now, I'd bet that AMD is decreasing the current used, while also decreasing the voltage, but that's just an asumption. The story only says it's decreasing voltage, which doesn't improve your battery life at all.
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Unless you have the ability to change R, that is impossible. In itself less voltage = less power and less performance.
Lower power consumption means you can have higher transistor density though, which is what gives higher performance. I don't know what electronics class you went to, but I'd get my money back...
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these are the benchmarks that you are looking for.