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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."
A nice laptop cpu if I ever saw one.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
So like. . an intel 2 duo that takes a room and miles of cable?
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Without actually taking the time to do any calculations, shouldn't this chip be a little weak to be powering PVRs and other media devices? With the proliferation of HD, I see more and more people (thankfully) going to h.264 to reduce their file sizes. However, to play a 720p file that is encoded with h.264, you need some serious punch in the processing realm. Recording/encoding to h.264 is a level far beyond that. I don't have the specs in front of me, but even the most minimal player is going to require more than 500 MHz. Now, if you're talking about a few of these in one system you may be on the right track. Anyone have more experience than me in this kind of thing and can comment further?
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
Isn't everybody always complaining how x86 is an awefull archtecture dragging 20 years of backward compatibility like a block of concrete? A one watt processor surely aims at the mobile/embedded market. Backward compatibility is not an issue there. I can't see anybody running his old Windows 3.11 accounting software on his mobile, and this thing won't come with a "Vista-ready" sticker...
Linux and Windows CE (or whatever they call it today) run just fine on ARM and similar. Will a low-power x86 compete performance-wise with a low-power RISK architecture?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I wish the EU would start rating PCs by their energy consumption, perhaps accompanied by an energy tax for the worst categories. The amount of power in a modern PC from CPUs & GPUs wasted as heat, fans etc. is just ridiculous.
Exactly. Who cares? People are generally selfish and sometimes you must do things that benefit people as a whole instead of individuals. If slapping a tax on the most energy consuming devices in some category causes people to buy the more efficient ones, that is a benefit to every one. If you still want to buy that device despite the tax then nobody is stopping you. But I guarantee that for everyone who does than many more will choose one which doesn't.
It does not mean either that you're getting a crappier machine as a result. While there is a relationship between CPU / GPU performance and power, I doubt it is a 1:1 mapping. Some processors and GPUs are going to deliver more operations per watt than others. Companies and consumers should be encouraged to favour the more efficient designs over the less efficient designs and a tax for the worst offenders in any class is one way of going about that.
Not sure if parent was a joke, but i found it funny.
In some EU countries economic cars have less yearly tax already, I think it's calculated from the CO2 emission pr. km.
And cars that can't perform 15km/l or more, have had their price tax raised, while longer running ones have had it reduced.
If I was as pragmatic and objective as I claim to be, would I be commenting?
Of course you can compare them. Let's see... ARM CPUs draw less power than x86. There. That wasn't so hard, was it?
How on earth would you decide what CPUs to use for what purposes if you couldn't compare them, because they were different? Is this a 'embrace diversity' PC thing?
x86 remains a good choice if you have to run x86 binaries, like Windows, or if you want good performance at mass-production prices. Apparently 'the world's most power-efficient x86-compatible CPU' still doesn't cut it for embedding. Stating that is not grounds for being sent to reeducation.
RISC is an instruction set thing, with the caveat that RISC instruction sets lend themselves to pipelined instruction execution as a by product.
Yes, modern x86 processors have RISC like microcode implemented using pipelined cores, but the x86 -> microcode converter is extra logic RISC processors just don't need.
There is no way you can implement an x86 chip in the same number of transistors as a RISC chip like ARM or MIPS, hence this VIA chip having considerably more power draw.
Eh? Google seems to suggest plenty of Via CPUs are available in socket form.
(Score:4, Wrong)
comparing two chips on their power:mhz ratios... Not exactly a good comparison, even within the same general architecture (say both are x86), but when you go cross arch, it gets worse.
Ex. Take an Barton core Athlon and compare it with a 1st Gen P4, running both at the same clock speed. That Barton will significantly outperform the P4, even with the same Mhz. Conversely, thake a Core2 Duo and an Athlon64 X2 of the same clock speed - the Core2 Duo will wipe the floor with the Athlon64 X2.
Mhz only means something when the processors are of the same line. Different lines in an arch can drastically modify the CPUs relative performance by Mhz, varying app to app, and changing the arch completely will destroy most comparisons.
Another example, would be to compare a 500Mhz EV6 Alpha to a 1Ghz Athlon - There are many tasks at which that Alpha will pretty much destroy the Athlon in terms of performance, even at half the clock speed.
So, what you want is power:performance-at-desired-tasks ratios, it's more complex, but it's not useless (and in some cases, counterproductive/counter intuitive)
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Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
0. Your use of punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and grammar makes me think you actually put effort into making it this crappy.
1. I point at my wrist because you aren't paying attention. You might not realize the words, but the motion is undeniable.
2. I search for the remote because while the channel may eventually be changed, the remote is still fucking missing.
3. Fuck you and your 4 pounds. Either you're part of the EU or you're not.
4. Maybe you're not waiting for a bus.
5. "Are you alright" is a simple of way of asking if you can talk, move, respond. If you don't, you're not. You probably deserved the punch anyway..