Slashdot Mirror
AMD's New Low-Power CPUs
illumina+us writes "AMD has released a new family of CPUs targeted at the portable computing market. The new CPUs, collectively named Alchemy, consume less than 1Watt of power. The CPUs have already been named the CPU of choice for Tivo's new Tivo-To-Go technology and are powerful enugh to run DivX, WMV9, and MPEG. The AU1550 consumes just 0.5 Watts at 400 MHz and the AU1100 consumes 0.25 at the same clock speed. These processors consume so little energy they don't even need a heatsink."
Wonder if these will pop up on PDA's and stuff soon..
My Blog
with processors that create that little heat. That would be nice if they could clock them faster also.
The writeup says you can run DivX, etc... but they don't say at what resolution or framerate. I've got PXA-255 based PDAs that can run DivX/WMV...as long as it is no larger than a postage stamp and encoded at more than 15 fps. The processor is still dog slow at stuff like compiling though. The writeup nor the articles give a good impression of exactly how fast these guys are, and that's a little worrysome. I don't mind energy efficent processors, but the last thing I want is something underpowered in my media center (oh, it can't handle 640x480 DivX, yay!).
I read the internet for the articles.
While I love the size and versatile nature of Via's Mini-ITX line, I have found their systems to be very unreliable.
These AMD systems would be perfect for many linux applications;
firewall, file servers, dumb-terminals, HTPC boxes, hell make a cluster out of 100 of them and they still waste less energy then a P4!
It would be cool to see how a cluster like that could handle mpeg4 encoding/decoding.
You also have CarPC's and many other options.
I want some, can ya tell?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
dare i say it? this makes transmeta all the more irrelevant. once a cool company with innovative technology, now they are no more than third place runner-up in the processor company race, and falling behind fast.
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
powerful enough to ruu DivX, WMV9, and MPEG
Why on earth would TiVo be running this on the main CPU? I had thought the direction for DVR's was to offload most of the encoding/decoding to the video card/cards, no?
It's not terribly impressive to say "can run MPEG-2 for video encoding!" when the main CPU's not doing the actual work...
Probably zero.
There's no evidence there that the MIPS32 core they used implements the (optional) floating point instructions. Of course you have to sign up for details so I can't say for sure...
Since the video capabilities are handled by an accessory processing unit, and since they were trying to cut power consumption, I'd be surprised if there was an FPU in the general purpose core.
AMD is a much more interesting company that we geeks often realize. Too often we think, AMD=Athlon/Opteron, but I find their gadgety endeavors really interesting.
Apple's Airport (and maybe extreme/express, dunno) has a tiny AMD processor , and as the parent points out, now their playing with MIPS archs. A friend of mine worked at the fab in Dresden and said that a third of their operations had to do with flash.
Call me a fanboy, but I sure do like the AMD kool aid. They make neato products and deserve mucho respect.
I was thinking the same - they quote power consumption between 400mW and 1W. *ONE* watt. At 400MHz. It consumes the same as older processors like the Z80 (while smoking it in processing power)! Even Transmeta couldn't get below 5W with their crusoe line - yet, the Crusoe is x86.
If AMD markets this thing right and performs as promised, they will make a killing out of it. There's a lot of money in the embeeded systems market.
Perhaps this technology comes from their strategic partnership with Transmeta whom has always put great emphasis on energy conservation. Decent Google search here.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
A low-power firewall acting as a VPN concentrator could certainly take advantage of crypto hardware.
Or, for the pathologically paranoid (join with me, my Pathanoid kin!), quick swap encryption sounds pretty tasty.
Does anyone have links to implementations of this MIPS arch? Are there embeded versions of Gentoo or Debian that have been showen to work on this chip? Are there any media players like mplayer that are designed to support its instruction sets. What type of embeded boad solutions are there? Has anyone tried this and what are your experiences?
Looks like VIA will have some competition. I've got a few Epia boards which I mainly use due to the low profile/power consumption.
Once I see how well the AMD products (including the motherboards for the chip, etc) work with linux I may consider a switch. At 400Mhz equivilent they could do nicely for servers and the video capabilities would make them decent enough for small media units. Wonder how well they would handle DVD, etc playback and TV out... as my M10000 does quite nicely for that with fairly low CPU consumption.
Already done: http://www.orionmulti.com/ 12-node cluster built on Transmeta chips, feeds on only 200 Watts altogether. A little larger than a desktop case in size.
Wristwatch Linux - cool.
Wristwatch Linux that can boot Knoppix-on-thumbdrive - cooler.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I live near Chicago, and my room used to be the coldest in the house. During the winter, frost would form on the walls.
Then I got an Athlon-650 computer in there and a 19" CRT monitor, and from then on, it was the warmest room in the house, even in the winter.
Also of interest would be AMD's Geode line of processors, found here: http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/Pro ductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863,00.html.
It looks like these guys run on about 1 Watt and are x86 compatible.
SIGFAULT
Actually low power chips are gaining popularity in super computer environments. A major cost of operating a huge cluster is power and getting rid of all the heat.
Low power chips are therefore much cheaper to operate, and can be packed more densely as they require less cooling. The future of computing lies in massively distributed low power solutions, it simply makes much more sense than the alternatives.
.: Max Romantschuk
This comes out of AMD's aquisition of Rich Witek's startup (named Alchemy). Rich Witek was one of the original guys working on the Alpha chip (among other projects). Alchemy originally targetted PDA's with their low power MIPS32 processors and on-chip peripheral support.
Interestingly, Dan Dobberpuhl, another Digital alumnus who was influential in the Alpha project, also founded his own company to make MIPS based processers, though for a slightly different target market. That company was SiByte, and was acquired by Broadcom in 2000 or 2001. He has since moved on to start PASemi, which seems to be in the same general business.
Digital may be gone, but it's engineers are still making waves!
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
I can EMULATE x86 on a PowerPC 750 and get better performance/watt than VIA's EDEN chips. Really, VIA chips have always been seriously weak sauce, just because they can't clock them well and they use not-much juice doesn't make them superior in any way.
The Pentium-M and AMD GEODE NX CPUs produce MUCH more horsepower per watt than VIA's chips. VIA's only advantage is that they mass-produce Mini-ITX boards and sell them to distributors. If someone mass-produced a GEODE NX bMini-ITX board, it would wipe the floor with the EPIA, fanlessly.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails