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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."
How long before "Nano" gets renamed because of another electronic processing device.
Intel's chip has a power draw of less than 2.5 watts for the highest-clocked chip. I don't see how a power draw that's twice that amount would bring Intel's atom to its knees.
Also, I don't understand this necessity for cheesy bad-action-flick terminology ("Intel's chip brought to it's knees!") when all that has happened is a bit player releasing a product with no performance figures.
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.
Intel has 65nm Core Solo processors (the U1300-1500) that are spec'd at 5.5 watts TPD, and they tend to be conservative on that. Now I suppose it could end up that the Via chip does more per clock than the Core Solo, but I'd want to see some real world benchmarks before buying in to that. Via has traditionally not been that powerful per clock, and Intel's Core chips are some of the most powerful per clock of anything we've yet seen.
Also reading the article, 5 watts isn't the max, 5 watts is the TDP at 1GHz. Going up to 1.8GHz you go to 25 watts. This is very similar to the Core Solo (5.5 watts for 1-1.33Ghz, 27 watts for 1.66-1.83GHz). So it seems to me this isn't really a competitor to the Atom, more to the Core Solo. However the Core Solo is a pretty impressive chip,, so to be a real competitor this will need to be as well.
Also Intel has a 45nm factory up and running full steam, with parts available retail. Currently it's Core 2 desktop components it's making, but there's no reason that it can't do these Core Solo notebook chips as well. Of course, going to the smaller process would mean even less power usage.
So we'll have to see how this chip does in real world benchmarks once it's available to third parties. However, it isn't some new part that comes in below what Intel is offering, rather it is in the same segment as their Core Solo. That means it faces some reasonably stiff competition on the performance front.
Why would this worry Intel? Not very many comparative benchmarks, but the IPC of the Nano and a Celeron-M appear to be similar (extrapolating from the bottom graph in TFA). That means a 1GHz Nano (TDP: 5W) would have similar performance to a 1.8GHz Silverthorne Atom (TDP: 2.5W). The 1.8GHz Nano has a TDP of a whopping 25W - that's Core 2 territory. Intel won't be very worried, especially since their parts are built on 45nm, so they get far more chips per wafer.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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/
but considering that all of my experiences with Via's products have been problematic at best, I will give this product the same shunning I have given their motherboard products. At least until I see a couple of years of good real world reports... Frankly I am surprised that the company lives
It appears Via has a decent product, but nothing that will cause Intel to break the crease in their designer jeans.
Invenio via vel creo
I liked the iPod Nano. It made me imagine full-sized iPods that were 10e9 times larger. This is less fun.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The noble gas is xenon, not Xeon.
I know both OpenBSD and NetBSD have had support for the earlier Via hardware crypto devices; if the new ones are sufficiently similar, the support should follow very shortly.
(Anonymously, since I don't want to lose the mod points I used)
You might want to check your facts better, before posting. "MICRO SIGN", unicode code point 0x00B5, 0xB5 in ISO8859-1.
1997 called. It wants its obligations back.
i forget
Actually, Slashdot goes a lot further. Regardless of the encoding used, HTML entities should be properly handled by the browser - so when I type ☺ the browser should display a smiling face regardless of how theye characters are encoded. Since HTML entities already are written in ASCII, compatibility between Latin-1 and UTF-8 s not a problem.
Slashdot, however, actively filters out most HTML entities. I've been told this was to avoid certain site-breaking characters, but it would be easy to whitelist a whole range of characters, for example most of the BMP.
These restrictions are entirely because the Slashdot admins want them. Period.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
"While direct performance comparisons are still missing"... you can get the indirect ones for now.
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6932&Itemid=1