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.'"

Comments

Re:Great idea

[bombshelter13]

Yes. That's ~exactly and exclusively~ what more (giga)hertz means: it's faster.

Now, what it doesn't say anything about is whether it's higher performance.

x86 should be like slavery in the 1820

[kiyoshilionz]

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.

Re:x86 should be like slavery in the 1820

[evilviper]

I thought x86 is something we want to eventually move away from

You were wrong. x86 isn't particularly impressive, but it's just a CPU, not a war crime.

It's pretty much inevitable that x86 will move into new areas, as embedded systems need more and more processing power for multimedia, x86 vendors spend more and more of money reducing power consumption, and the economies of software development more and more favor reusing x86 software, rather than spending time on optimizations for the other architectures you use.

Since Intel can't seem to make money on any architecture other than x86, they've eliminated their StrongArm/XScale line, and are replacing it with ultra-low-powered (sub-1watt) x86-based CPUs. VIA has long be trying to make inroads in the high-power, higher-performance embedded market with their own CPUs as well.