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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.'"
AMD makes a whole line of embedded x86 processors. http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863,00.html
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".
This isn't true because of some "law" that says x86 must be power hungry, it's true because nobody's really sat down and done an x86 processor for the embedded market, or at least not donw well. Check out Silverthorne, it has power use comparable to MIPS/ARM.
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
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
Well, this discussion appears to be about an 'x86 Chipset,' not an x86 processor. Which means more than just the processor. So there is an 'x86 architecture.' If there wasn't, this topic would be meaningless.
I think you're asking about the 80186 and the 80188, which have had a long history in embedded use. They're not particularly popular anymore. They'd match your laptop if you still use a Toshiba 1000SE, of course.
Similar parallel offerings from Intel were the 80196 line.
Well, this discussion appears to be about an 'x86 Chipset,' not an x86 processor. Which means more than just the processor. So there is an 'x86 architecture.' If there wasn't, this topic would be meaningless.
My earlier post may have sounded more caustic than I intended it, but I meant what I wrote literally.
A "x86 chipset" just describes the supporting chips (usually memory, bus, and I/O) that let the CPU-which-happens-to-speak-x86 do its thing in a way familiar to programmers and users of non-embedded PC hardware. Although the PC world has a somewhat standardized set of these, by no means do all x86-speaking CPUs require similar enough supporting hardware as to justify the overly broad generalization.
Simple example - The earliest x86 chips manually controlled DRAM refresh. Then that moved out into the chip-set (a large collection of single-purpose chips each doing their own thing - including a memory controller as one of them). Then a handful of those merged into a single-chip solution that handled all the critical non-CPU functionality (but had basically nothing we would think of as actual features by itself). Then as more and more I/O tasks also merged into that one chip, it eventually split into the Northbridge (bus and memory) and Southbridge (I/O). And now, we have CPUs with integrated memory controllers once again (though they have dedicated hardware for it rather than needing to tie up actual processing cycles for the job). Which of those would you call "the" x86 chipset?
Perhaps you could more accurately say that this provides for a single-chip PC architecture, since most of what the chipset does has little to no relevance to what language the CPU speaks.