Power-Light Power Chips

DD writes to tell us ZDNet is running a story about a new Santa Clara, CA based startup that is boasting a new line of low-power, Power chips, the same architecture found in current day Macs and IBM servers. From the article: "The company's first so-called PWRficient chip will feature two processing cores, run at 2GHz and consume on average about 5 watts, thanks to an emphasis on integration and circuit design. At a maximum, it will consume 25 watts, far less than the single-core Power chips that can hit 90 watts found on the market today."

Comments

Embedded market

[Thanatopsis]

According to the article they are going to focus on the embedded market. I guess they mean the embedded market that need 2 GHZ embedded chips.

Re:Embedded market

[supabeast!]

From the article:

"The PWRficient actually won't come out for two years, so it's hard to predict exactly how it will stack up against the competition."

In two years a 2 GHZ dual core will probably be a good option for a high-end embedded CPU.

Re:Embedded market

[merreborn]

According to the article they are going to focus on the embedded market. I guess they mean the embedded market that need 2 GHZ embedded chips.

Yeah, who could ever use 2 GHZ processing power? It's not like Tivo's video encoding/decoding takes up any processing time. And lord knows I could never use that much processing power on any sort of mobile computing device, like a Palm Pilot, or Treo.

I mean, who wants to be able to process large amounts of data, fast?

Re:Embedded market

[TheRaven64]

It's not like Tivo's video encoding/decoding takes up any processing time.

No, it's not if they've got any sense. At least, not general purpose CPU time. Dedicated video compressor / decompressor chips get much more performance per watt, and usually more performance per $ as well when compared to general purpose hardware. The iPod video can play H.264 clips that a moderately fast G4 struggles with - and not because the iPod has a faster CPU.

Re:Embedded market

[AKAImBatman]

Actually, YES, the embedded market that needs 2GHz chips - folks like me doing signal processing for communications, among other things.

I'm sorry, WHY are you doing DSP on a general purpose CPU again? Methinks that's the precise reason why DSP vector processors were invented...

Just in case you're being cheeky, comparing a 2GHz DSP to a 2GHz general purpose CPU is a bit disingenous, don't you think? I mean, DSPs can have their clocks ramped up to ungodly levels because they tend to need less sophitication in the silicon than their general purpose counterparts. But if you chose one a DSP processors for a DesktopOS (or even something like a network appliance), you'd get absolutely horrible performance.

Re:Embedded market

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, WHY are you doing DSP on a general purpose CPU again? Methinks that's the precise reason why DSP vector processors were invented... (if you want a system that can adapt to new protocols - a software defined radio or SDR - you need to use a more general purpose part than the dedicated ICs for this)

Amazing

[Namronorman]

This is simply amazing, and if they're even remotely as powerful compared to their future competitors and their initial cost is not so bad, you could easilly factor in the energy savings for spending more on hardware versus spending more on electricty.

Posted by the CEO?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the orignal poster "DD" is "Dan Dobberpuhl", the CEO of the company, looking for free advertising on slashdot?

To try and forestall the Apple hand-wringing...

[diamondsw]

...since this is an embedded processor, it likely won't have things like vector processing units (Altivec) or possibly even out of order execution (as I recall the XBox 360 dropped). Take that along with the fact that it's a couple years away, and it really doesn't affect Apple at all.

Re:Apple

[Egregius]

They won't regret moving away. This startup is aimed at embedded chips, not desktops. Furthermore, Apple hasn't completely *abandonned* Power just yet. And it's not like Apple can base it's productline on a small start up with no real guarantees it can meet Apple's demands.

Re:Apple

[yamla]

Hardly. These chips aren't due out for two or three YEARS. Let's assume for the sake of argument that they ship IN BULK in two and a half years, an obviously optimistic estimate. Should Apple be satisfied with dual-core 2 Ghz laptops in the spring of 2008? I certainly hope not. While the power usage is sweet, we are looking at less than a 20% increase in speed (assuming you can safely compare clock speeds which, as we know from Intel and AMD, is not a good assumption) for a single core over that time. Even with dual core, that's pretty pathetic.

Now, if these chips were shipping in bulk TODAY and were able to be ramped up to 3 or 4 Ghz over the next six to twelve months, then maybe Apple might start regretting moving away from the G4 and G5 CPUs. That is, it'd be a toss-up at that point. As it is, this is far too little too late for Apple's laptops.

Of course, this rests on the assumption that Apple cares about processing power.

Re:25w is way too high!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The chip that you use should only consume a few nanowatts of power, so there's room for refinement.

I've used those 8 pin PICs, they are pretty nice. I ran straight from battery power, a linear regulator is too wasteful. It was for a hazardous material area where running power was undesirable and the battery cell had to last a year. I powered sensors directly from the output of one pin, so I can turn the sensors on only when taking a reading. Obviously, it's only useful for low current devices, but other than maybe the speaker, I see no high current devices preventing the technique from being used on several of the inputs.

Impressive?

[jiushao]

So, we get dual-core 2.0 GHz and 25 watts in two years? Without any more information this is far from impressive. Intel will have Yonah out in volume early 2006, which is dual-core, expected to clock to well over 2 GHz and with fairly low maximum power requirements (the current rumor is that the 2 GHz version will be in the ballpark of 30 watts TDP). In another two years this POWER chip has better offer some pretty kicking IPC or it'll be fairly uninteresting.

Here, let me help you:

[leoxx]

1) design a low-power-consumption high-performance PowerPC chip that would be ideal for Apple to use
2) keep the development so secret that spouses are kept in the dark
3) launch the product after Apple has already abandoned PowerPC
4) Ignore Apple because they are irrelevant. Instead, sell stuff to the many companies who consume more PPC chips than Apple ever could now or in the forseeable future.
5) PROFIT!