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CEO of Centaur Discusses x86 Strategy and Linux
An anonymous reader writes "This fascinating interview with Glenn Henry, founder of VIA processor subsidiary Centaur Technology, discusses the founding of Centaur, its strategy and products, and why Linux is fundamental to his company's success. Additional topics covered include: how to produce an x86 clone with a few million dollars and a few dozen engineers; the embedded x86 market, and how it compares to the traditional ARM and MIPS based embedded market; why Centaur doesn't compete with AMD and Intel so much as enable x86 to reach new markets; how Linux is enabling greater hardware functionality; the urgent need for pervasive security -- and much more!"
I've been wondering why some company like this doesn't create a "network appliance" specification for all of us to hack on. It would be nice if I could just go buy a Netgear router and roll my own Linux installation. I purchased a Toshiba Magnia SG10 some time ago when they were a couple hundred bucks during the end-of-life period. For a 566mhz Celeron with an honest-to-goodness hard drive and switch on the back, it was hard to go wrong. I immediately wiped the stock Linux OS and rolled FreeBSD on there.
Wouldn't it be MORE profitable for companies like the aforementioned Netgear to do this? What am I not seeing? Centaur: help us out!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Is an x86 or clone really the best chip to take to markey this way? Linux will run on other processors and the x86 isnt' the best archicecture. There are processors that are more efficient, use less power and can run linux.
Although, I'll admit some of those embedded boards that I have seen are pretty cool and easy to use.
P.S. I know I can't spell. That's why I'm not an english teacher.
Evolution or ID?
if they could take this technology and turn it into a "portable pc gaming console" of sorts(of similiar size and shape to the gba) In the article it states that they can run at 533 MHz fanless with a worst case power consumption of 2.5W. Wouldn't it be neat to create a gaming console(kind of like the phantom pc gaming console, only portable) for this with flash cards being the "cartridge"
Though licensing for the abandon-ware would be a pain. As would trying to standardize the input across a large number of games. But still, it would be friggin' cool to play leisure suit larry while you are bored in class!
Well, not exactly the same idea maybe but the story is the same as transmeta to me. One good upside to transmeta, they did not start with linux on mind.
I am assuming their product did not make too much inroads into the industry otherwise I would have expected to hear about their products before this time and from 95 till 04, it is anawful long time to stay in hiatus.
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The more I know people, the more I love animals
The biggest problem with most hardware is that it is exotic. I'm not talking about PC's, and routers have become cheaper with micto-atx mobos with dual ethernet onboard. Laptops and PDA's are where there seem to be a lack of standards. There are no displays which can be plugged into your PC without special driver circuits. Why not create a LCD that has a standard interface that is compatible with PC hardware now?
If you standardize the equipment, then you will drive prices down, and you won't be stuck throwing out a PDA that has a broken screen, or has eol'd. Just upgrade it.
Centaur is positioned to tap the largest market in the industry- the sub-$400 PC market. Right now Centaur is designing a processor that will run over 2 GHZ.
A 2 GHz machine that is x86 compatible but will it have all those nifty other features that windows can use to speed it up? If not, it would be much slower than AMD and Intel.
Although, the thought of being able to use a chip like that for some embedded app would be pretty neat and pretty powerful because you don't need all the extra stuff that windows uses.
Evolution or ID?
got sig?
I think VIAs mini-ITX range of products are really cool. However, I wish there was an equivalent based on ARM, MIPS, PPC (seemingly any kind of RISC) CPUs. Those architectures always seem to beat an x86 of similare performance when low power, low heat production, low cost, small size, etc. are concerned. I care about these things. I don't need a super fast computer, so I don't want to pay more for a chip with a messy architecture that needs more power, needs cooling, and has a large die.
Sadly, the nice, small boards and CPUs that I would like to have are hard to come by, and you pay a price penalty for that. Then, the next best thing is a sort of mainstream x86 line that aims for the same goals, and that's exactly what Centaur is doing (and Transmeta, although they seem to have failed to satisfy even themselves).
So, if anyone knows where to get cheap RISC systems (a few hundred euros tops) in the Netherlands, please tell me.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I am a long time user of their C3 processors.. His quote about the current state of the product illustrates my main reasons for using it:
The product we're shipping now, the C5P has a top speed of 1.4 to 1.5GHz, today, but the sweet spot is 1GHz. We have a fanless version at 1GHz. We also sell all the way down to 533 or even 400MHz, for low-power applications.
To give you an idea about the 1GHz version we're selling today, the worst case power -- not "typical" or "average" power, which other people talk about -- our worst case power is 7 watts, which is low enough to do fanless at 1GHz [story], and no one else can do that.
To do a fanless CPU in a small case, you really need to be under the 10 Watt range. Their CPU's do this nicely. Compare that to 80W+ for current Intel and AMD workstation processors. ( Intel's Pentium M has good power spec's, but it is very hard to find chips & boards for end user purchase. Most Pentium M boards are intended for embedded or industrial use, and are priced for OEM quantities). Add a 2.5" hard drive (at ~ 2.5 Watts vs. 15 Watts for a 3.5" drive) and you have a nice low power Linux server, which takes up very little space and can run almost silently.
I have been using an 800MHz C3 for about three years now. I run it fanless, with a big heat sink in a medium sized case. It has been completely reliable, and plenty fast for my DSL Linux services (WWW, SMTP, FTP, VPN, DNS, NTP, etc.) + LAN SMB services.
At the end of the interview, he mentions the crypto hardware they've put in recent processors.
six months after we first started shipping our product with encryption in it [story], we have three or four operating systems, including Linux, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD
This is a really great capability.. hardware random number generation, and ridiculously fast AES crypto (VIA claimed 15Gbps AES. That's probably for on-cache data. But, it's screaming fast anyway).
Then, he give a little teaser about future CPUs:
Our next processor -- I haven't ever told anyone, so I won't say what it is -- but our next processor has even more things in it that I think will be just as quickly adopted by the open source software world, and provide even more value.
I wonder what this will be, more crypto - like public key accel, or a new direction? As an HTPC user, I would like to see some better multimedia capabilities. The MMX/SSE stuff is nice, but it doesn't cut it for the heavy lifting needed for HDTV MPEG2 processing, or WMV HD processing.
I keep on having to point this out on Slashdot as many people don't realize how bad the performance of a via c3 is. The 1.0 ghz system is often times twice as slow as a 667 mhz Celeron in certain tasks. I'd label this as an ultra low range processor not midrange. I've seen simimlar benchmarks with a 400 MHZ p3 beat it handily. Benchies: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020605/c3-07.htm l
Hmmm... Pie...