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

[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: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.