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Via Unveils 1-Watt x86 CPU
DeviceGuru writes "Taiwanese chip and board vendor Via Technologies has introduced a new ultra-low voltage (ULV) processor aimed at industrial, commercial, and ultra-mobile applications. Touted as the world's most power-efficient x86-compatible CPU, the 500MHz 'Eden ULV 500' processor debuted at an Embedded Systems Conference in Taipei this week. Via says its chip draws a minimum of 0.1 Watts, when idle, and a maximum of 1 Watt, making it a great candidate for consumer electronics devices such as UMPCs, PVRs, and such."
How does this chip compare in performance per watt against ARM, PowerPC and the like?
Pathetically badly. Most modern low power ARM variants are in the range 0.3-0.5mW/MHz. At 500MHz you'd see them chewing up about 150-250mW. Last I checked the Via x86 chips were single issue, so it's not too unfair to compare an ARM11 (or similar) against them. Quite frankly an ARM11 will outperform the Via chip and run lower power.
The idle power figure is a joke. I can't recall the last time I used an ARM chip that idled at 100mW. More like 1-10mW. Still, it's nice to see an x86 chip get into sub-watt territory.
Of course, ARM doesn't run native x86... and that's pretty much the only reason there's such a large market for these Via x86 chips. It's also the reason you never see them in deeply embedded systems where people don't really care so much about what ISA you're running.
Not really.
I have used every single Via CPU from the original Eden 533 up to 1.5GHz C7 and IMO the C3-C5 spec Edens are just about useful for a dedicated appliances, small firewalls, small specialised servers and such. They do not have enough grunt for a laptop. The fact that most of them have are shipped bundled with relatively weak video does not really help either. Even the mpeg support on some motherboards cannot really help. Xterm is probably the most you can do with them as far as clients are concerned. Still better than similarly clocked Crusoe though (now that is a drag of all drags).
C7 is a completely different beast. This is probably the best CPU for a corporate laptop out there at the moment. A laptop is worthless without a "link to the mothership". Intel Core and AMD have to use CPU resource to do all of the encryption and decryption. This may amount to 30-40% of your CPU on a 54G wireless lan. Compared to that Via C7 has hardware AES acceleration so you can actually protect your traffic properly while using less than 1% of your CPU. It also has enough grunt to run most common road warrior apps at acceptable speeds. It is a pity it is not available as a laptop choice anywhere outside the far east.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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Wow, flashback to the 90's. There is really no such thing as RISC or CISC anymore. Even massive general purpose CPU's like the x86 family use cores that are basically RISC by the classical definition, at least at the microop level. Conversely, today's RISC processors have instruction sets that have grown considerably in complexity since the days of true RISC chips.
Your premise is correct that it is an apples to oranges comparison, but not really for the reasons you describe.