First Menlow Board Released

nerdyH writes "German board vendor Lippert has unveiled what it claims to be the first motherboard based on Intel's 'Menlow' chipset for ultra-mobile PCs. The CoreExpress-Menlow is smaller than a credit card, yet clocks to 1.5GHz, has 1GB of RAM soldered onboard, has multiple PCI Express lanes, USB 2.0, HD audio, an IDE interface, and a digital LVDS video interface. The board is the first in a proposed 'CoreExpress' standard motherboard form-factor measuring 2.6 by 2.3 inches (65 x 58 mm)."

Comments

And it's probably going to be damn expensive

[Enleth]

Which is a pity - it would be perfect for a SLAM-capable robot project I've got on hold since half a year because even the crappiest embedded motherboards out there are damn expensive when you want to buy just one or two of them and are a student...

Re:And it's probably going to be damn expensive

[TheRaven64]

It's probably slow too. The Ars Technica analysis implied that it would be slower, clock-for-clock, and use more power than most ARM variants. It's a shame, considering that ARM is the most widely deployed architecture that there aren't many boards that are cheap in lots smaller than a thousand. Something like this would be really nice to play with.

Re:And it's probably going to be damn expensive

[Enleth]

But it would be a lot more than enough to handle the data analysis and mapping, especially with this amount of memory. AVRs, which I'm using now, have their limits, not in the clock speed (16MHz IS a lot for controlling quite a bit of a relatively simple robot's subsystems, a few times that is enough for the whole thing) but in the memory, a whopping 4-16KB of which is build into a typical one. Just no room for any serious data processing - and chasing the robot with a laptop and an RS232 cable attached to it is no fun.

Applications barrier to entry

[tepples]

The Ars Technica analysis implied that it would be slower, clock-for-clock, and use more power than most ARM variants. I think the point of this board that is that proprietary applications for Windows Mobile, which are compiled for ARM, tend to have less functionality than the corresponding proprietary apps for Windows XP, which are compiled for i686. People want full-size versions of familiar apps on a pocket-size device, and only a processor with the i686 instruction set can deliver this.

Re:Applications barrier to entry

[poot_rootbeer]

I think the point of this board that is that proprietary applications for Windows Mobile, which are compiled for ARM, tend to have less functionality than the corresponding proprietary apps for Windows XP, which are compiled for i686. People want full-size versions of familiar apps on a pocket-size device, and only a processor with the i686 instruction set can deliver this.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

It was very smart of Intel's engineers to design and implement the CABPWAPF (Clear 'Artificial Barrier to Proprietary Windows App Performance' Flag) instruction that's in the i686 instruction set.

Re:put a screen with it...

[Gideon Fubar]

screw that.. i wanna attach a 3g module and use it as a phone. ;)

Power

[corychristison]

Well, the article is skimping on details, but does anybody know where I can find more info on the power consumption? I doubt it's anywhere comparable to ARM... speaking of ARM. Anybody know where I can get a small ARM based board? I've been searching and searching, can't seem to find anything that isn't mass-order.

Re:Power

[lenski]

There are several inexpensive ARM boards available in small quantities, look in any recent Linux Journal. I am currently running several systems built by Gumstix which work well for me and for my customers.

I have no financial relationship with Gumstix. I have several of their systems. Cheap, effective, and supported by an exceptionally active, friendly and supportive mailing list.

Your post doesn't describe required specs or desired features, so it's not easy to know what you're looking for.

Re:But does it have crypto instructions?

[TheRaven64]

In a mobile device, encryption is very important. If you have any important data on your local disk, you are going to want to encrypt it - ideally encrypting the entire volume, which means you need encryption for any I/O, including swapping. You also need encryption for pretty much any WiFi usage and for a lot of general network stuff (e.g. IMAPS, SMTPS).

Re:But does it have crypto instructions?

[TheRaven64]

It all comes down to battery life. Dedicated silicon almost always uses less power than trying to run the same algorithms on general-purpose silicon (assuming both were fabricated with the same technology). Think how much power your CPU would take trying to emulate a GPU, and then think how little power a GPU of equivalent speed would take.

The other aspect is, of course, performance. Ultra-mobile chips are underpowered by the standards of desktops or even laptops. While you can do full-disk encryption with a Core 2 without much slowdown, trying to do it with a much slower chip is likely to make things crawl, and network encryption is even worse. When I connect my MacBook Pro to my PowerBook with a FireWire cable and try to scp a file, the bottleneck is the PowerBook's 1.5GHz G4 CPU. 802.11n promises to be three quarters of the speed for FireWire 400, and even if it's only one quarter then it's still going to place a big load on this kind of CPU.

The big killer for battery life is clock speed. Power consumption goes up a lot faster than clock speed, which is why it's important to reduce the clock of mobile CPUs when they are not fully loaded to get the best battery life. If you have some dedicated silicon for a commonly-used algorithm, you can get the same overall performance by running the CPU at a lower speed, which can give a huge improvement to battery life.