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End of the Road For AMD's Geode Chip
An anonymous reader writes "AMD has no replacement planned for the aging Geode low-power chip, creating uncertainty for its use in products like future XO laptops made by One Laptop Per Child. There won't be a Geode successor and the company has no core microarchitecture planned to replace the chip, AMD executives said. The comments end speculation about the future of Geode, an integrated chip used in netbooks like OLPC's XO laptop, ultramobile PCs and devices like set-top boxes."
If you look at embedded devices or set-top boxes, you realise you don't really want Intel or AMD made CPUs. Look at most mobile devices, they all run OMAP-based devices (ARM), because of their energy efficiency and price. It also makes a helluva lot more sense to go with a SoC (System on Chip), as soon as power and size are even remotely factors in the decision making.
It's not because AMD drops out of the low-power energy manufacturing that the world is going to end, it just means they're focusing on things they're good at. I don't really ever remember AMDs being particularly energy-efficient, not nearly as what some VIA CPUs manage. I'm not talking about the Atom either, which is a whole different area.
Maybe I'm going completely bonkers, but if I were to build a low-power system, Intel and AMD would be last on my list, by quite a margin.
Proocessor->silicon->sand->minerals->rock-> Geode...get it ?
Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
AMD is NOT halting production of the Geode. They are not leaving the market (RTFM!). They have decided that it serves it's niche AS IS and will be kept AS IS. That's a very different statement. They're saying that it is a mature product (a rare thing in IT).
Currently, the Geode is good enough for many applications and would be a step up for others. The embedded world tends away from the shiny object model of upgrades. If it worked last year, it works this year, and it'll work next year. Changes in the product are considered undesirable.
AMD's statement doesn't even mean there won't be a die shrink or even a faster Geode in the future, just that they won't be updating it's architecture.
It's not a bad decision either. There is a significant niche for the Geode between the Atom (too hot, too power hungry) and things like the Dragon Ball and mips (not enough power).
Geode isn't in trouble until Intel comes out with an x86 that doesn't need a heatsink (or at least doesn't need a fan).