Slashdot Mirror
AMD Stirs Athlon Into Geode Embedded Soup
An anonymous reader writes "AMD, which in recent months has gained ground against Intel in the battle for the desktop, today announced the addition of a line of high-performance, low-power embedded processors to its Geode embedded x86 processor family. The new processors will be known as the "Geode NX 1500@6W" and the "Geode NX 1750@14W," reflecting a new naming convention based on relative performance and power consumption. The Geode NX 1500@6W processor operates at 1GHz and the Geode NX 1750@14W operates at 1.4GHz. The two new embedded processors are essentially identical to AMD's Mobile Athlon processors, including packaging, but with tweaks to process technology and transistor selections that result in lower power consumption at reduced clock rates." If it meant better battery life, I could live with a processor this slow in a laptop, but according to the linked story, AMD doesn't see much of a market for that.
Ok, check me on this. "The Geode NX 1500@6W processor operates at 1GHz and the Geode NX 1750@14W operates at 1.4GHz." However, 1500 x 1.4 (since the 1500 is 1Ghz and the 1750 is 1.4Ghz) = 2100. So shouldn't the 1750 be the 2100, or are they no longer trying to be even internally consistent?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
How do these new processors compare in power usage to their athlon mobile counterparts? How about compared to the desktop machines?
If they use less energy, does that also mean that these processors will give off less heat?
Processor makers have made their living by speeding up their chips at a Moore's Law pace with faith that the latest Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Photoshop and 3d shoot-em-up game will find a use for the newfound power.
But really, I think the processor market is about to hit a wall where faster really doesn't speed things up much. Afterall, you need hardly any proc power to browse the WWW, read e-mail, or do IM chat. Sure, some people want "desktop replacement" laptops, but others want their laptop to just do some simple things.
I think the next killer app processors are a generation that use less power and run cooler. The only problem is that consumers have been trained to only ask "How many MegaHertz does it have?" when shopping for processors. Therefore, there's going to be quite a bit of marketing work that needs to be done before such chips become viable.
Couldn't agree more. In recent years, maybe intel sitting on top of the heap wondering what next is what lead to the current enviroment. They know where they came from, Operation Crush is almost computer legend now. The future looks bright even if you can only see it in an electron microscope.
It wasn't long ago that 1GHz was the magic number that both Intel and AMD were trying to hit. (AMD won).
The performance of a 1GHz Athlon is plenty for a home server, and probably just fine for 90% of desktop PC users. My stepfather noticed zero difference moving from an Athlon 800 T-bird to an Athlon 1600+ Palomino, but it would be very noticeable for many people to not have the noise of a CPU cooling fan. Passively cooling a 6W processor would be a breeze (no pun intended).
As an added bonus, the extremely low power usage and low heat output (thus lower air conditioning bills) would allow the chip to eventually pay for itself. I do hope that these chips are eventually made available through normal retail channels such as Newegg.com, since Transmeta products have certainly not been a choice outside of small laptops and diskless X terminals.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
I've got an Epia M10000 but the only way to upgrade will involve me buying a new Epia mobo/processor in a single package. I would love to have a Geode-based chip and mini-itx motherboard that could be upgraded separately.
I'm running Gentoo on a celeron 566@850, and it's more than fast enough. I mean for crying out loud, how often do you need to install a large piece of software *within the next 5 minutes*?
I even have gentoo on a p166. It's a bit slow, but you know what? Set PORTAGE_NICENESS to 17 and let a new kernel compile for a few days. If it's a security problem I can build a kernel on another system and copy it over in a few minutes. Big deal. Your assertion that "silly kids" run Gentoo is entertaining, yet there's a ring of truth to it. I'm certainly no kid, but I would agree that there's a good deal of, how shall I put this, one trick monkeys out there that fear new and improved ways of doing things. It's true in any field.
On a topical note, I love the move toward low power chips. It'll save me more than the value of the chip in energy costs over the life of the chip, as well as enable me to build systems without active cooling (Though I'm looking at their 30W and 55W Athlons for that job)
I have a small box running 24/7. It doesn't do much, but it still needs to run 24/7. I have been using a Via C3 for over a year now with very happy results. The only downside being that a 800Mhz C3 is well... slow. Now to be able to put a AMD at twice the speed (4x the performance?) and still use that level of power is fantastic and I will be first in line to check these out. At 6W Fanless CPU heatsinks are a reality. Compined with a good case and a quiet hard drive and you have a little box you can run 24/7 without worrying about power or noise.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
If it meant better battery life, I could live with a processor this slow in a laptop, but according to the linked story, AMD doesn't see much a market for that.
A month ago I was in the market for a notebook, and I saw the regular P4 books, Celerons, Centrinos and the Apples, and I thought having an Apple would be great.. but the MHz for the price was just too low. Could I live with a 1GHz iBook I wondered?
A month later, I'm here sitting in my garden at 1.37am with my 1GHz iBook, and honestly can't work out why I'd need those extra MHz. I program, do some MySQL stuff, SSH a lot, play MP3s.. it seems the 1GHz copes with this excellently.
So, you could say I'm a convert.. not just to Apple or OS X, but to the concept that more megahertz aren't always needed. Unfortunately PC diehards (as I was) find this a really hard barrier to break through, and want the 2-3GHz crazy stuff going on in their notebooks. Well, I know my battery here will last me till at least 6am (though it's a bit too cold to stay out here till then, I think!) and I know it's fast enough for everything I want to do.
Could AMD convince people of this? Sadly I don't think so.
Well, I think it has something to do with the fact that there are two dimensions that consumers are using to quantify merit.
A processor that emits 1000 cluons per microsecond, but dissipates as much heat as a blow-dryer might be far inferior to a processor that only emits 500 cluons per microsecond, but will run on the electricity from one key lime, depending on the users' application.
As much as consumers want to have a single "figure of merit" to make their shopping easier, it just ain't so.
Actually, this single-number-shopping has always driven me somewhat crazy about the wintel hardware fanboys -- and how the One Metric That Matters changes over time (remember when disk drive vendors proudly published the avg. seek time? Now it seems to be RPM. Next year, I assume it will be specific gravity).
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
I've often had 3 or 4 FireFox windows with 6+ tabs in each, plus 4 copies of MS DevStudio, Foobar2k running, and a few other assorted apps open on a 600MHz P3 with no trouble with responsiveness. 768MB ram (not even ddr), though I do have a significant amount of swap space.
Either hardware has gone downhill, you've got some lousy software, or you're just being picky.
I wonder if they do SMP, or can be made to do SMP by cutting a couple of pins? With six watt power consumption you could build a big SMP box and use less power than a single Xeon.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
From what I recall 'Geode' is what National Semiconductor kept of Cyrix after they bought it & then sold it to VIA.
'Geode' being National Semi's name for Cyrix's MediaGX line. The MediaGX being basically a Cyrix 686 with a IO/logic chipset (memory controller, PCI & ISA bus, Floppy/IDE controllers, Serial/parrallel/PS2, etc, etc), video chipset & Audio all embedded on the core.
The concept was to make it possible for venders to build really super cheap Pentium clone systems, as not much more would be needed on the motherboard but a propietry CPU socket, a RAM slot, the drive connectors, the backplane connectors & the BIOS flashchip, plus no video card or audio card would be needed either.
You see Cyrix saw this as the only way to get the economies of scale to beat Intel. As many venders were happy to pay more for Intel, they saw the only way to beat them was to provide a platform that undercut Intel so much that venders wouldn't be able to resist 'taking the Pepsi challenge'.
Now even though the Cyrix 686 had the fastest X86 integer core ever (per clock), it's floating point performance was weak & it just didn't ramp up clock wise. Of course this was more a problem of perception & marketing than reality. The vast majority of office productivity apps (circa 97) worked quite competitively on it, but clock speed was the marketing king & gamers 'n benchtests were heavily floating point biased & gamers 'n benchtests had heavy undue influence on what systems people bought.
Which gets us to Cyrix's 7G Joshua/Cayenne core. The pre-production samples had the 686 Integer core (still quite sufficient as it was still the fastest & most efficient X86 integer core per clock ever), 2 floating point cores (& each one singularly outperformed the old 686 one), 2 3DNow units, 64KB of L1 cache & 256KB of L2 cache, all running on a 133mhz bus.
Only problem was it still had the 686 issue of poor rampability. This meant that VIA (whic,h as previously mentioned, had purchased most of Cyrix from National Semi) released the pre-production samples with too overly ambitious/misleading PR-ratings, meaning they benchmarked against their competition piss-poorly, even though if they were benchmarked on the bassis of their real clock speeds they out did anything released by Intel & AMD at the same clock speed. Of course that means nothing if the oppositions ramping at much higher speeds. Which is why VIA went with the IDT Winchip II 'n III & the VIA C3.
It was this problem that killed Cyrix's super cheap Pentium clone platform based on a propietry 886 with embedded everything chip, the Cyrix MediaGX. However National Semi saw the potential of such a chip in the embedded market, which wasn't so influenced by Moores law. Yes in the embedded market a X86 chip with embedded everything can be quite useful, even if it's not ramping up at the same speed as the PC market does. So National Semi kept the MediaGX & renamed it the Geode.
What this has to do with AMD I don't know? I assume, going by this thread though, that AMD must've bought the Geode off AMD, & AMD's now basing the Geode off Athlon cores.
My question is do these new Athlon Geodes have a IO/logic chipset (memory controller, PCI & ISA bus, Floppy/IDE controllers, Serial/parrallel/PS2, etc, etc), video chipset & Audio all embedded on the core, like the Cyrix MediaGX did? Which would I assume mean a propietry form factor?
I'm waiting for solid-state laptops. My desktop systems use about 2.5 - 4GB of disk space, with my files on the server, but I could get some serious stuff done with an 8GB solid-state laptop, and they'd be virtually indestructible.
Maybe it would work better to have a boatload of RAM (4-8GB) caching the most-used parts of a filesystem on a very low level, so the drive only spins up when the cache can't satisfy. The RAM could also hold a shadow file for periodic writes to mass storage (be it network or spinning media). Your hard drive would only kick in for a few seconds every hour to flush it's write buffers.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails