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

Who's in charge of code names?

[KevinKnSC]

From the article:

Codenamed "John," the processor will integrate CPU, northbridge, and southbridge...

That was the best code name they could come up with? Seriously?

Re:Who's in charge of code names?

[brit74]

Via's code names are almost always biblical:

* Luke
* Esther
* Nehemiah

I'm still looking forward to the Satan and Whore of Babylon chipsets.

It's VIA

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

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".

Re:Great idea

[spirit of reason]

I am still waiting for a revival of the handheld computers

You mean something like the Pandora?

Also, more information here.

While it's technically meant more for a gamer market like the GP2X, the arm + linux + wifi + usb host + decent resolution screen might make it a more general purpose machine.

x86 programming

[neapolitan]

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.

When I was programming for Apple //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.

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... :)

Re:x86 programming

[Waffle Iron]

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... :)

You sure are outdated. Today's "higher level crutch" is Python.

What would it take?

[Zaphod-AVA]

What would a chip have to include for VIA to codename it Jesus?

Re:What would it take?

[Kagenin]

A built-in WINE environment.

Re:What would it take?

[makapuf]

Flash memory (or some storage). Remember JESUS SAVES !

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.

Re:Power consumption please?

[RightSaidFred99]

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.

More info for x86 in embedded dev. at arstechnica

[IYagami]

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

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.