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VIA Introduces the Nano Processor
Vigile writes "While the VIA Isaiah architecture had been previously discussed, the new x86 processor is officially being released as the VIA Nano. The Nano marks VIA's first 64-bit, superscalar, speculative out-of-order CPU design and is being built on Fujitsu's 65nm process technology. While direct performance comparisons are still missing, the products being released could bring Intel's Atom platform to its knees: clock speeds as high as 1.8 GHz or as low as 1.0 GHz with a maximum power draw of only 5 watts! VIA's recently announced mini-note OpenBook platform is a likely candidate for the Nano the processors but they will likely find their way into mainstream desktop and notebook computers as well." Reader MojoKid contributes a link to HotHardware's story on
the chip now known as the Nano , as well as a January interview with VIA's Centaur design center president, Glenn Henry, who
"went into fairly deep detail on what VIA had in store with Isaiah."
I must admit that a 5-watt, 64-bit processor sounds pretty spiffy, but I'd really like to see how it compares to the low-power 32-bit machines that are available now.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I should rush off to trademark Muon, Quark, Lepton, Meson and Positron. But seriously, the sudden movement at the bottom of the processor market highlights a seismic shift toward ultra portables. The Asus eee was the vanguard, and I suspect we'll see literally dozens of decent machines in this market segment by the end of the year. It remains to be seen whether anyone will actually make money in this segment, though. Asus set the bar low with a $299 machine and consumers are expecting to be bowled over by increasingly capable machines at that price point.
Slashdot encodes its pages in ISO-8859-1, which is standard for the www. In fact, according to HTTP 1.1, it is the default if no content encoding is specified. Unfortunately, ISO-8859-1 is quite limited, and does not include support for the Greek letter mu, nor the micro symbol, which look identical, but actually each have their own code in Unicode.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Exactly. Atom may not be lightning fast but that's because it's scaled back to sip power. If someone wants to run the thing at 5 watts, like the nano, then I wouldn't be surprised if the kneeling were the other way around.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
It's definitely not a straight-across comparison. Intel always includes a footnote stating "TDP specification should be used to design chipset thermal solution. It is not the maximum theoretical power the chipset can generate." while Via reports the maximum theoretical power consumption.
4) CPUs spend most of their time in idle - Nano uses 100mW here for all but the highest-end Nano.
That's the bit I didn't understand: why does the 1.8GHz Nano idle at 500mW, five times the idle power of the 1.0GHz to 1.6GHz parts? Either it's a typo, or perhaps it's not a "Nano" core at all.