New VIA x86 CPU Takes Aim At Intel Silverthorne

Kaz writes "While not operating on the same scale as the two major CPU designers, VIA has been gaining traction in the world of UMPCs and thin clients with its Eden and C7 lines of processors. While past architectures have been considerably out-of-date in terms of modern features, the new Isaiah architecture looks to be very competitive with what AMD and Intel have lined up for future ultra-mobile products. It features an out-of-order, superscalar execution core, 64-bit support, virtualization, and even SSE3 — all on a 94M-transistor, 65nm process die. The initial offering will be single-core only, though VIA says that multi-core ability is already designed in. Is Isaiah going to replace your Core 2 system for gaming? No, but it might give Intel's Silverthorne a run for the money."

Comments

Follow The Trend

[dsginter]

The next big step in integration is integrated memory. Cache memories are consuming most of the die in your typical high-performance CPU, these days. If you can find a CMOS-compatible, high-density (e.g. - SRAM's six transistors per cell is toooo big) memory technology, then we're going to be at the point where we can simply replace the cache memory with on-board memory. If said on-chip memory technology is nonvolatile, then we're talking panacea cakes, batman.

Naturally, this will first occur in low-performance devices where huge amounts of memory are not necessary. Then, it will work its way into the PC and up from there.

This is why Intel is divesting itself of discrete memory technologies - they don't want to be holding the bag when they're obsoleted by on-chip memory.

SPU manufacturers had better be ready for this because discrete CPUs will be going the way of the horse and buggy if anyone can ever do such a thing.

Memories

[Tribbin]

Ooh I love this game:

http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/511/isaiah_arch.jpg

Re:Troll. Was Re:Follow The Trend

[morgan_greywolf]

You, and whoever last moderated the grand parent's post, aren't getting what he's saying.

What he means is: forget on-chip cache -- on-chip main memory. IOW, instead of having main memory on the motherboard, it would be embedded into your processor, running, presumable, at the same speed as the CPU.

If you follow the trends happening in CPUs, including this one, faster CPUs aren't the big issue. The real issue is the bus. The bus is slow. The more you put on the other side of it, the better. A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo.

Re:Sorry, brother.

[RingDev]

VIA's Pico-ITX full systems (not just the chip) have already by clocked at 14w idle, 16w max in pre-release reviews from 6 months ago. The previous generation C7s can easily be throttled back to stay at 5w on the proc as needed. I'm not sure if such functionality is available on the new Pico systems though.

Intel is "shooting for" a 5w processor (no clarification if this is max load, or idle) in 2010.

VIA's Pico-ITX is already available at 1ghz, and the previous generation C7's are available up to 2ghz.

Intel's Silverthorne processor is also aiming for the Pentium M era performance (900mhz - 2.3ghz).

Yes, the initial Silverthorne release is slated for Q1-Q2 2008, but the performance goals you mentioned aren't slated until 2010. So what I'm saying here, is that you can already buy everything that Intel is "shooting for" 2 years before they plan on reaching those goals. With all likelihood, the 2008 release of the Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak. Which will put it right in competitive range of the C7 and new Pico-ITX.

-Rick

Overengineered against the Silverthorn

[Calyth]

The curious thing is that the Isaiah is heading towards OoO, whereas Intel's going to build the first in-order chip since the Pentium in Silverthorn.

C7 already has a good track-record for small form factor, low power, and providing acceptable performance at that category. IMO with the OoO they're heading more towards the laptop market, and I think they could've done something at least less conventional with the design.

Imagine that they modified the C7-M in-order execution core to a 4-way, fine grain interleaved multithreading, and have 2 cores. The existing C7-M has a short pipe, so pipeflushes aren't as penalizing. At the clockspeed that they're starting at (2GHz), each thread would have acceptable performance for your typical workload. And as OSes are becoming more thread happy (OSX is definitely one of them), such design would be at least something different than ordinary. It would be like having a cut down Sun Niagara in your laptop.

The current design would make it work decently well for low end laptop and desktops, but I can't help but think that the core now has a bunch of stuff that they can't exactly turn off - I haven't heard of a CPU that could switch off its OoO and retire queue, and the die size has increased significantly compared to the C7.

Re:I've got a C7 running a home email server.

[tknd]

For a while I was on a mission to build a really power efficient PC. Unfortunately when I got my AC power meter, I learned a number of disappointing things:

• Power specifications are incredibly hard to find. One good resource is actually Dell's specification sheets.
• Most of the inefficiency is in the power supply. In the past PSUs were made incredibly cheaply and even good brands were selling 70% or less efficient PSUs. When a system consumes 100 watts at the plug, that means 30 watts are wasted at the PSU. This has become a lot better with 80+ ratings, but you still have the issue where efficiency tends to drop as power consumption drops.
• The next big culprit is the video card. The best card I ever found was an ATI Radeon 7000 AGP. They still make them and the power consumption is somewhere in the low single digit watts. Other good options are probably Intel's onboard graphics chips. I think the latest intel integrated x3100 has a max draw of 9 watts (found it somewhere on dell's spec sheets).
• Another huge culprit is the motherboard. Motherboards these days come with everything. For something like a server you don't need the fancy soundcard. The fancy secondary raid chip is also probably useless. They simply don't make plain vanilla motherboards anymore. Also the chipsets (especially nVidia's chipsets) are horrible with power consumption. There are nearly no specifications available for motherboard chipset power consumption but from my experience it can be anywhere from 10 to 30 watts total.
• Laptop parts are the best. If you can build your entire server out of laptop parts, that would be ideal. Laptop parts usually have the right configurations for clocking down the CPU, not having a power hungry motherboard, and having efficient parts along with it (wireless, hard drives). For example a 2.5" laptop hard drive even while spinning will consume around 2 to 3 watts. A normal 3.5" hard drive on the other hand can suck 7 watts while spinning. I still haven't come close to beating my dell pentium M laptop in terms of power even with a Via Eden 600mhz system with nothing but a hard drive attached. The laptop would idle at 26 watts (screen off) while the Via would idle at 40watts.
• Todays CPUs (intel core, a64 single cores) are incredibly efficient. For example I was able to build a 45watt idle AMD64 single core system. The trick is you have to pick the other parts carefully. The board I have (Asus Via board, they no longer make it) allowed me to clock down the CPU to 1000mhz and lower the voltage.
• For really small server tasks, you may want to consider purchasing a wireless router and turning it into a server by using custom firmware like DD-WRT. Some wireless routers come with usb ports which will allow you to easily attach some flash memory for storage. Routers are also naturally headless so you don't have extra useless overhead from sound and video. To top it all off they come with 3 interfaces! One for the wan, another for the lan, and a wireless interface. What more could you ask for!

Re:Troll. Was Re:Follow The Trend

[LWATCDR]

"What he means is: forget on-chip cache -- on-chip main memory. IOW, instead of having main memory on the motherboard, it would be embedded into your processor, running, presumable, at the same speed as the CPU."
  Memory on the die has been done in micro controlers for years. It isn't going to happen on PCs for a long time.

"A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo."

What is sufficient memory? 4 GB or Maybe 512 MB? There is a reason that they use Static ram for cache. It needs to be fast. So lets say that you get 512 MB on the die are you not going to allow the user to add more memory? Or how about this. You put 512 MB on the die and then let them add memory on the buss if they need more. And then you could have it swap memory from the slower buss memory in to the fast on die memory to speed everything up... Yea and we could call it a cache!

Until you can put the full address space on the die it will not work for anything but microcontrollers.

Re:Sorry, brother.

[RightSaidFred99]

You're full of it. Silverthorne is due for Q1-Q2 2008, 1-2 watts, and Pentium 3 performance circa 2004 (which still puts it well ahead of what Via is doing anywhere within 10x that much wattage).

My first clue you were full of crap was this: "Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak". I'm not sure if you pay attention, but Intel has Core 2 Solo chips running at 1.06/1.2Ghz that peak at 5.5 watts. Silverthorne is a 45nm chip running on a simplified core-2-esque march, and you're making this ridiculous claim that it will "suck down" 20w at peak.

Seriously, 2006 called, it wants its news back.