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Shifting Apps To ARM Chips Could Save Laptop Batteries
An anonymous reader writes "When is an Intel PC not an Intel PC? When it moves applications such as Internet browsing and email on to an ARM processor because it can get longer battery life. And according to a story at EE Times, this hybrid Intel-ARM processor approach is being taken by PC makers as prominent as Dell. The problem for Intel: Why would you switch out of 'all-day' mode and use the Intel processor? The problem for ARM: lacking support from Microsoft for Windows; the applications it runs for the PC have to do so under Linux."
Not a problem for everyone. I've already got an ARM-based Linux running on a NSLU32 NAS head - 32Mb RAM, 32 Mb flash. If I could get a lightweight laptop with a modern ARM chip, I would be over the moon.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
And this is how Linux will win. Not with a bang but a whimper. Embedded appliances, dedicated purpose applications, and multi-platform compatibility.
Firefox, Thunderbird, and (hopefully) soon KDE.
MS users who don't know any better, will win this for us.
Geeks like us have already dominated the server-side of the Linux equation, now fools will win the desktop for us.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Or... you could just switch to linux.
Nah, too easy.
Reminds me of the days when Acorn Computers were around with their RISCPC - A machine that was ARM powered, but you could also attach an x86 processor.
This is so 1990's!
Frankly I would love an ARM based notebook except for just a few issues.
1. Flash. Like it or not Flash is everywhere and I have not seen a Linux ARM version.
2. Java. I need it and JavaFX could be a nice alternative to Silverlight/Moonlight.
I see Flash as the big issue for most people. I would love to see ARM back on the "desktop" even if it is on the laptop. A ARM with a good GPU really would be a nice netbook system.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Funny...I read the story and was going to ask on this thread, "Where could I get an ARM-based laptop to run Linux on?" All day on a battery would be fantastic.
Constitutionally Correct
So what we're talking about here is a Linux running on a decent ARM SoC most of the time... which I agree with, it's enough for the common case.
If we need performance for any reason we switch on an attached x86 and run that performance application (which of course is an x86 binary).
Or we run a VM on the x86 into which we put Windows, for compatibility.
Or we create a Mac OS X like fat binary system for Linux that includes both ARM and x86 variants, but imagine the pain in switching between the two! I think it's far far easier to make a quad-core ARM Cortex chip to get some performance for the ARM binaries than to switch them to x86 with all that pain if they need performance.
Of course eventually you drop the x86, connect the x86-attached GPU to the ARM and move on from there.
Would such a system actually use ARM Linux? The reason I ask is that the ARM processor is commonly used PDAs and therefore has Windows CE (or whatever they call it now).
So I wouldn't be surprised if M$ just renamed it Windows 7 Green Edition and rolled it out for such netbooks. Joe Public would be all oooh it runs powerpoint and word and IE and they'd be happy.
I'm wondering if, the the overall scheme of things, the price we pay for the x86-ness of Intel and AMD's CPUs is that high. All their CPUs are basically RISC things, with a very optimized x86 compatibility layer running on top. Is that layer that expensive performance-wise ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
The display uses far more power than the CPU, so the benefit of adding a second low-power CPU will only be realized with a different display technology that has much lower power consumption for a static image.
When traveling, most of the time, I really do want a long battery life and don't need much compute power. But when I arrive at my destination, give a presentation, and demo some software, then I want compute power.
So, as far as I'm concerned, having a high power and a low power CPU sharing the same keyboard, screen, drive, and power supply is actually very much what I want. I hope it becomes standard.
Don't ARMs also run BSD ? It would seem that Apple might have a solution for their laptops, if they decided to go that way.
Freescale and Pegatron showed a prototype at CES:
http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2009/01/meet-pegatron-199-arm-based-netbook.html
Sean Ellis
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Basically, in 1991 I was an Acorn geek and had a good knowledge of ARM assembler. I'd had a A310 (an ARM2 I believe) and I'd just upgraded to a RISCPC (with the ARM3 and the FPU I think) for university, while also learning *nix in the Sun lab.
While browsing comp.sys.os I found a post from some bloke called Linus who was offering a *nix kernel that could be compiled for x86 and we started having an email chat with him about how I'd go about porting it to the ARM hardware. I took it know further when all he asked for was $20 or so as, frankly, I was a student (so had little cash) and I didn't know how to get a bankers cheque in USD.
And that, my son, is why I didn't surf a wave of Linux on ARM...
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
It would make more sense to move to an architecture where you have something like a traditional Intel or AMD CPU, where the cores would just shut down when not in use, etc...
Having two CPUs of different architecture is ridiculous. How are you going to make that seamless? For example, how are you going to access memory from the ARM? The memory controller is in the Intel/AMD CPU. If the AMD/Intel CPU is powered down, so is the memory controller. If the memory controller is powered down, the ram won't get refreshed.
So you'll basically need an off-chip memory controller. If you do that, then all of a sudden you have even more headaches, such as trying to synchronize the caches on each core of the Intel/AMD cpu, etc. (And this is overlooking the instruction disparity)
If you are talking about having a separate operating environment/desktop/etc completely separate from the main environment, that is going to be awkward for a lot of users, as many will expect seamless integration and data sharing, etc.
Also, don't fool yourself and think that just because your hybrid is running an ARM that you will magically get all-day battery life. The CPU is not the only power drain on the system. You also have the wireless radio, the LCD display, and the graphics processor, etc.
"Have you used Windows Mobile? That's something I reserve for inflicting on only my worst enemies and only as a last resort. It's the Jack Bauer option of OSs."
That is an insult to Jack Bauer. He is competent and works 24 hours a day.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
"Have you used Windows Mobile? That's something I reserve for inflicting on only my worst enemies and only as a last resort. It's the Jack Bauer option of OSs."
That is an insult to Jack Bauer. He is competent and works 24 hours a day.
But only one day a year.
WINE is just Win32 for POSIXy platforms. It's not able to rewrite x86 binary for ARM.
Indeed, *wine* doesn't do it itself. But nothing prevents you from running a separate layer to do the translation.
QEMU has a Linux-on-Linux mode, where it doesn't emulate a full blown virtual PC, it only runs the application targeting a foreign architectures inside the emulator and passes along the calls to the actual native OS and libraries.
Darwine has been doing exactly this to run x86 Win32 application on PPC Mac OS X using a combination of Wine and QEMU. It should be possible to build a similar stack to run x86 Win32 application on ARM Linux.
But don't expect much performance from it on an ARM netbook. It will probably OK to run a couple of simple tools. It won't probably work with games or other more resource intensive application.
But gamers aren't the machine's main audience anyway, the ARM netbooks are targetted at people who just want Web, Email & Chat, with the longest possible battery life.
Although, you probably could get better Win32 performance (at the cost of battery life) with dual-chip machine (like DELL Lattitude ON) or using accelerator boards if the ARM netbooks has some standard connector (like Xpress card).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What's the current state of OLED?
OLED display have been spotted in the wild (sony, available since 2007). They are ultra thin, size 11".
But they still cost an arm and a leg. And OLED currently still has a shorter life time.
But as production ramps up, price will probably fall down. After a couple of year, OLED will probably cheap enough for netbooks.
Electronic paper?
Still suffers from really slow refresh rate. Good for e-book. Bad for anything which needs higher refresh rate.
The good thing, with eink is that, when not refreshing, it costs exactly 0 W. (Under sunlight. Otherwise, you still have to light it up somehow).
Maybe that display from the XO?
The first gen XO uses a normal LCD screen, but with a LED backlight that doesn't use coloured filters, but prism that split the light to generate the colours.
Thus having a better efficiency. Also works in B&W under sun light.
Currently, XO-type display are the best compromise in quality and price.
OLEDs are going to be the next-big-thing once 11" displays stop costing prices in the thousand dollar range.
Beside, given the power consumption of ATOM's chipset, a whole Intel-based solution still has a much more higher power drain than an ARM based one (which has everything into a single SoC - and can even embed RAM in the same CPU package).
So even if ATOM vs. ARM differences aren't big, Intel netbook vs. ARM netbook still makes a difference.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yeah, but he spends the rest of the year describing everything he did on that one day to ad-nauseam, and he always makes it sound like he saved the world.
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