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AMD 'Venice' Core Shows Big Drop in Power Needs
dtjohnson writes "
Lost Circuits has carefully
measured the power consumption of four recent Athlon 64 cores and
has found that power consumption has been dramatically reduced in the
new 'Venice'
core from the relatively-low (compared
to Intel P4) numbers of the original 2003 'Clawhammer' core to less
than 30 watts under load and less than 10 watts for Windows at
idle. This huge power reduction was apparently accomplished by a
combination of 90 nm die shrink, Silicon-on-Insulator
technology, and something called 'dual-stress
liner technology' As Lost Circuits points out, power
consumption worldwide has been exploding as more CPUs come online and
the CPU power requirements increase so a significant power reduction
will reduce the burden on electrical grids everywhere."
Now, these numbers were completely extrapolated from the key cracking rates I saw generated on my Athlon 1200, and estimates based on published power consumption. But it pointed out to me that these distributed contests are not good for us, and they're not free. It personally cost me about $40.00 / year in electricity. So, I don't play the distributed computing games any more.
John
You are thinking Pre-2000. AMD has run cooler than Intel, cycle per cycle, for a while now. This is in addition to getting more work done per cycle. The days of AMD being used to toast marshmellows was a loooong time ago. I have both in servers. My dual Xeon server is a fine example of a great system that requires 6000btu of AC to keep a room at 72F. Great box, great cpu, unreal heat.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
... shouldn't it also reduce the heat produced by processors, therefore extending processor life?
:)
Or, for an overclocked machine, extending the amount of time it takes for the processor to die?
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Lowering the power consumption per core is a first step to upping the number of cores. I imagine that CPU power consumption for desktops will level out in the 100 W range and makers will add cores, cache, and clock speed to maximize performance within a given power budget. I could also see some innovators creating new cooling technologies to boost the power budget and thus boost the permissible CPU performance within that expanded budget.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Do they still let users overclock their cpu's? I know intel locked thier CPU's. I wonder if AMD still lets people play with their products more.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
You laugh, but it's true. I spent some time living in Kenya, and Internet cafes are everywhere. The power grids in these countries are already so stressed that to have a chip that drastically reduces power consumption in these places would be a tremendous help. And not just for Internet cafes, but for point-of-sale terminals, businesses, etc. (And yes, they really do have point-of-sale systems in the "third world.")
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.
By the way -- Sony sucks!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"I think the #1 problem AMD must overcome is the relationship Intel has with Microsoft. AMD makes clone chips, Intel makes chips that fit into Microsofts OS. Intel and Microsoft share information about how the chip will work with the software."
AMD came up with x86-64. Microsoft was only willing to support one 64-bit extension to x86, so that's what Intel chips use; they are the clones now. And Intel is the one with compatability problems (eg DMA is broken with Intel x86-64 chip, which seriously hurts performance).
I don't support one over the other. They trade performance and price/performance crowns regularly and I'll buy whoever's ahead this quarter. Just sayin' that AMD not "just a clone" anymore.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
In other words, cautiously we project the current power consumption of all computers running somewhere in the order of at least 20 Hoover Dam power plants
.04% of the annual US oil consumption.
If 9000Mw/hrs are the equivalent of 4 Hoover dams and current estimate is 20 Hoover dams, then current consumption by CPUs is around 45,000 Mw/hrs.
This site quotes 10.9 cubic meters of oil per megawatt/hour.
If my math and sources are right, then CPUs alone, worldwide consume the equivalent of nearly 500,000 cubic meters of oil each year.
According to this site, one American barrel of oil is 0.15899 cubic meters.
That means that the power consumption of all the CPUs in the world equate to over 3 million barrels of oil/year.
Perspective? The US currently uses a bit over 20 million barrels of oil/day. So CPUs worldwide are using around the equivalent of
You need to get a solar chart for your area of the world, and look up the equivalent insolation in terms of hours. Around here, we get an equivalent of 3.5 hours of maximum sunlight per day, averaged over the course of the year. Assuming your numbers are similar, you'll need about (24/3.5)*200 watts worth of solar panels -- that's 1370 watts. Assuming you get a great deal, you might pay $2.25 per watt, uninstalled cost, so that's over $3000 just for the panels. You'd also have to build a mounting system and possibly install a small motor to keep the panels pointed in the optimum direction.
On top of that, you need a battery system to provide power during hours of darkness. I could continue BS'ing the numbers to figure out how many batteries you'd need but would rather not. Needless to say, it's going to be several thousand dollars for the whole system.
(Yes, I've done this before)