Slashdot Mirror
Single-Chip x86 Chipsets Around the Corner?
An anonymous reader writes "Kontron, a giant among industrial single-board computer vendors, yesterday revealed a credit-card sized board apparently based on a single-chip x86 chipset that clocks to 1.5GHz and supports a gig of RAM. It targets portable devices — not x86's usual forte. Kontron isn't saying whether the board uses a Via or an Intel chip(set) — both vendors reportedly have single-chip chipsets in the works, part of their respective missions to drive 'x86 everywhere.'"
If they can find a market for it. Its going to be hard to unseat the arm.
"generic" embedded devices come to mind. ( but you have the pc104 standard there already..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It would be huge if x86 or x86_64 was available as a core like MIPS & ARM. Life would be much easier for the set top boxes.
I'm just aghast at the advances in PC tech in my lifetime. I've always been aware of Moore's Law and all that, but sometimes taking a step back is necessary for perspective.
Merry Christmas, and thank God for all you engineers that bless us with this stuff.
That was the best code name they could come up with? Seriously?
It targets portable devices -- not x86's usual forte
Yeah, that's not x86's usual forte because x86s are more power thirsty than say MIPS or ARM, which is why it would be interesting if the article could mention how much this new thing is supposed to drain.
You just got troll'd!
"both vendors reportedly have single-chip chipsets in the works, part of their respective missions to drive 'x86 everywhere.'"
It's not in vibrators yet.
But with so many people already developing for ARM, why would you want to spend the time and money switching to x86... it isn't like people want XP/Vista on their mobile phone (if at all) and there are already ARM releases of a bunch of stuff...
Although I am not a developer, so I am anxious to hear what people in this thread say regarding any technical advantage having x86 may have over say ARM.
-nick
What did we do to you to deserve this?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the chip is codenamed John, as the article claims, it's a VIA chipset. VIA uses biblical names for their CPU codenames.
Previous VIA CPU codenames:
Samuel
Esther
Nehemiah
Ezra
Note also that VIA combined a C3 CPU and a northbridge into a single package - it was codenamed "Luke".
Do you need a bicycle?
"'x86 everywhere.'"
Can I pass on that? The x86 architecture may be POPULAR, but it's inefficient, forced into backwards compliance with horribly outdated standards, and has been horseshoed for the past 20 years into a full architecture chip when the initial design was never meant to become like this.
If a realm of computing has x86 as the non-dominant chipset, I think that's a blessing and it should remain that way. You can't do anything about the PC market at this point, for example... but I think the motto should be "x86 only where it already exists" rather than "x86 everywhere."
-Vendal Thornheart
extra lightweight, extra thin, extra long battery life, i can see the benefits of this extra bigtime, looking forward to a laptop with this in it...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Every time I read about a shrinkage of form factors, I wonder how many you could fit in the volume of a standard 42u rack, ala blade servers.
Now I'm wondering if this form factor isn't aimed at being able to add more processor power via a Cardbus slot, as the dimensions are within a millimeter of a PCMCIA card. Or perhaps aimed at mating directly to a SSD device. Fully equipped PC the size of a deck of cards, just add input and output.
VIA products rule. Been running silent low power PCs since the Nehemia came out. They were expensive to begin with, compared to the big power hungry CPUs, cost per GHz was about 5 times the amount. After supporting them for years the cost gap has reduced so they are only about twice as expensive as big chips. But the power ratio, 7Watts vs 300Watts means I can save that in electricity over the lifetime of the board! You kinda get used to the lower CPU speed and choose efficient applications, so I run a fluxbox desktop and carefully choose my applications. That means many mobile devices will soon be more powerful than my desktop! Just one word of advice, don't buy from mini-itx.com, they are thieves who take your money and don't ship the goods. There are plenty of other reliable suppliers.
It's a shame that the x86 is such a complex instruction set; this means that the age of the handheld computer as an easy programming platform for hacking is over.
//e, I had a good majority of the opcodes for the 6502 chip memorized, laying out assembly by hand. I later learned 68k assembly, and again, it is very "understandable" to a person just sitting down in front of the computer looking at an assembly printout. In the early 90's, pretty much x86 dominated and I stopped doing pretty much all assembly programming.
:)
When I was programming for Apple
In 1996 I was delighted when the palm pilot came out, using a 68328 (68k instruction set). It was like a renaissance, again programming in assembly and hacking other things for fun. Now, once again, it appears this will be dead!
As a question to the slashdot community, is it possible to program "naked" x86 assembler? I have never really put in the time to learn it, but it just seems exceedingly complex and tedious to program for this chip without use of a higher level crutch (C compiler...) I am sad that once again everything I know is becoming outdated...
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
What would a chip have to include for VIA to codename it Jesus?
I just spend a lot of money on a new motherboard and processor (and every other component to build a new pc). I know it's obsolete the moment you buy it, but cut me some slack.
You can find articles about the use of x86 in embedded devices at arstechnica, from Jon Stokes:
Return of the Son of Pentium in 2008? Intel's new ultramobile processors
Intel's low-cost "Diamondville" CPU to power OLPC/Eee PC mobile category
And a very interesting article why processor makers want to extend their architecture to other realms: Beyond the BlackBerry crowd: life in a post-32nm world
What would a chip have to include for VIA to codename it Jesus?
Literally.... *EVERYTHING*.
Including saving your (and my) miserable soul from going to hell.
Yes, but does it run Linux?
But seriously. Most awesome mobile phone evar.
ARM, and at a push MIPS, PowerPC and SH4 own this space. x86 needs to offer something huge to get back in the game.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
A small board is great, but a 4-5 inch screen would make a killer do it yourself pda / mini-computer.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Is there a technical reason why there have never really been x86 microcontrollers? RISC chips are readily available at reasonable speeds for $1-$20. Even ignoring A/D functionality, why can't I buy a one-chip floating point x86 number-cruncher for my embedded applications that can match my laptop?
Yeah, because there haven't been 386, 486, and other systems on a chip and Via doesn't have a 1-watt processor anywhere to be found. This is not the first 1-chip chipset for all of the x86 line. That's bullshit. An SoC is even more integrated than just having the chipset as one chip. Somebody never read the old Computer Shopper before it slimmed down. SoC solutions for x86-compatible systems have been around more than a decade. The summary is bad, because TFA does not say this is a first for the x86 line.
You're right that even low-powered x86 chips like the C7 and the Geode line are generally no match for ARM and XScale. MIPS I'm not as familiar with for power usage purposes. It'd be nice if that question was answered, but I'm afraid it'd be summarized incorrectly too.
2005 article on anx86 SoC
another 2005 article about a different x86 SoC
2004 product page for an already obsolete x86 SoC
Linux Devices list of x86 SoC solutions, some dated to 2000
2000 Register article about the year since Cyrix released an x86 SoC
Chipslist page showing availability of AMD processor with 80188 features plus DMA, watchdog timer, serial ports, and I/O pins in 1995
article on the National Semiconductor Geode (the owners of that line before AMD bought it) thin client system-on-chip
And the best proof of all: an archive of a 1996 story on the AMD Elan,which featured a 386, ISA bus, serial UART, memory controller, power management, and PLL hardware ON ONE CHIP
x86 has its market, the personal computer, but its legacy architecture should not be allowed to spread anywhere it has not already tainted. Remember Why Do We Use x86 CPUs? I thought x86 is something we want to eventually move away from (Remember VAX?), not something we want to spread.
With the MediaGX (I think) range? Integrate everything you can think of into the die including sounds and graphics.
So when can I get my small x86 based phone that when plugged into a USB charger/dock instantly hooks up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse? Laptops are weak compared to this model. Imagine if all over the world was a USB charging docking station where you could use your phone/computer as god intended, with full size mouse, keys, monitor, and while we're at it 5.1 speakers, too. It would ideally run Ubuntu and have a small easy to use touch screen interface for video chat, cell phone, ipod and video/audio recording functionality. Have an SD slot, and be cheap and virtually disposable. Any venture capitalists out there want to help me kill the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and all phones by Sony, Samsung, et al?
Hit me up.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Surely you meant to bring up the mobile-ITX form factor, which is half the size ;)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
So let's take a von Neumann architecture, which has inherent security problems due to it using the same address space for data and code, and use it to replace the usual DSP (which is superior, in at least the security sense).
Ah, nothing like ubiquitous insecurity...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
That's the sound of the joke flying over your head.
Modern x86 chips have had fairly non-x86 internals for quite some time. I believe in Intel's line the Pentium Pro marked a shift away from fairly-literal implementations of the ISA to more or less translation: although the x86 ISA is thoroughly CISC, the Pentium Pro is mostly a RISC design.
They can't be completely decoupled of course, but it's hardly like x86 chips are designed by taking the ISA and literally implementing it in silicon.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Or not.
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/06/07/via-mobo-is-smaller-than-a-business-card
-Charlie
The "x86 everywhere" dream is coming to an abrupt halt anytime soon.
There'll be a new open RISC architecture along soon enough. It's a matter of time before the early-generation ARM patents expire, thus removing one of the barriers preventing wider adoption (it's a nice enough architecture, ARM just got greedy with their licencing). Every instruction being 32 bits long won't matter now memory is so cheap.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Comparing an instruction set with slavery belittles both subjects.
Because Slashdot mods are retarded and can't tell the difference between "Troll" and "Offtopic." Fucking retards.
How about off a bridge? Just a thought!
This could be of great interest for very low cost PCs or small form factor boxes. Or even auto-PC.
Today you can buy a motherboard with integrated audio, video, network, sata, usb, etc... the next step is to have everything on 1 System-on-Chip (SoC) rather than multiple chips.
The motherboard would only have two chips: 1 x86 SoC, 1 flash for your bios. Thats it, then its just a bunch of slot for your DRAM some connectors and your done.
...perhaps I'm missing something obvious.. ..what is the 'pleasethinkofthechildren' tag for? I mean, it's generally a good idea, but, what's the point of the tag? Are there some posts here that are inappropriate? ..I don't figure it's in reference to the single-chip chipset..?
I am not an atomic playboy.
I'm still looking forward to the Satan and Whore of Babylon chipsets.
The Satan chipset can divide by zero with a random result to push.
The Whore of Babylon chipset? I don't know about that. There are two unrelated bridges, one called the Whore chipset of Babylon, and then another called the Babylon Whore chipset.
The key point here is that you can get the best performance/watt around from ARM chips. AMD's Geode series has a 1.5-watt Geode LX900 (600MHz) and a 0.9-watt Geode LX800 (500MHz) (link). Note: AMD's site rates these at higher power (2.6W and 1.8W respectively) here.
ARM chips have always been more efficient than X86 chips and always will be due to CPU architecture and the way that every instruction is encoded. Each ARM opcode has got a 4-bit conditional field that governs whether that opcode is executed or not. In an IC, you've got quiescent power (always there from the moment you switch on) and dynamic power. Dynamic power comes from switching transistors on and off. If an instruction isn't executed, there is less switching and less power consumption.
With a "save the planet through electronic design" attitude, I'd love to see a large proportion of X86 desktops replaced with ARM-based machines. Especially when you consider that saving even 1 Watt per PC scales to many thousands of megawatts , especially when you see how many PCs are in use now.
As ARM CPU speeds increase beyond the point where you can have a modern, complex OS and good office software running at a comfortable speed to the user, isn't that a goal worth aiming for? The practical sides of that dream are daunting. I'd be naive to think that the world will port its software just because it's a good idea to save electricity where possible. A fresh start would be bigger than Haiku in it's ambition. Is it worth it? I'd like to think so. What's 10 years of OS and application development that could make a good dent in global power consumption that would last forever?
I wish people would stop complaining about the x86 architecture (which to be fair is outdated and forced into backwards compatability) and instead put their heads together to build a decent future proof architecture that they can then use virtulization and emulation to run all existing x86 code. As far as i'm aware intel tried to start from scratch with the itanium and nobody brought it. We are FORCED to keep the backwards compatibilty but until we can run all our usual x86 based crap nobody will buy new chip(sets)