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AMD Releases 2 Low-Power 64-bit Processors
rwiggers writes "AMD has released two new low power processors for embedded apps. With a power of 18W and a chipset with 3W of average consumption [PDF] it seems we may have some interesting competition with Intel's Atom."
So what's the price and how powerful those processors are?
If they come with right chipset those would be brilliant for HTPCs and quite powerful embedded devices (no fans!). Problem with Atom is that almost universally it comes with very crappy chipset/GPU which limits it's usage considerably. Since that is AMD they can use ATI integrated GPUs which can lead to some impressive performance.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
Low-power chips are great for low-load servers. I bought a cheap-o Atom nettop, no bigger than a DVD player, slapped a 2TB disk in, and installed Linux. Bam--instant offsite rsync server for my backups. The whole system uses less power than a lightbulb, makes almost no noise, and has a fanless CPU!
It may not be right for a high-load AJAX web app platform or for an HTPC, but the low power chips are more than enough for sufficiently responsive linux+ssh server.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I notice on AMD's PDF (linked in summary) that they list some of their envisioned uses. Why would someone need a modern 64 bit system for a point of sale system? Wouldn't a Motorola (err... Freescale) 68000 be more than powerful enough for the task, and way cheaper? I don't understand why some seemingly rather simple applications would require a large amount of processing power.
Compared to the common Atom + 945, AMD's new offering should(assuming it is reasonably priced) absolutely murder the Atom. The atom itself is a pretty low power chip(albeit slower than any A64); but the 945 is a nasty power hog, and has lousy 3D performance. An A64 and Radeon IGP in the same power envelope is hardly even fair, no contest, game over.
On the other hand, intel also has a low power atom chipset, with the "GMA500" they licenced from PowerVR. That particular combination will be weaker than this AMD offering; but it'll come in at something like 25% of the power draw.
This should, assuming it can score enough design wins to actually be buyable in a form other than trays of 1,000, be excellent competition for the Atom+945(being substantially more powerful, in the same thermal envelope), should be quite competitive with Atom+Ion(GPU performance will likely be a wash, CPU performance will be better, power envelope similar); but it won't have much effect on Atom+GMA500(substantially faster; but markedly higher power draw will keep it out of the smaller devices).
I'd love to see these show up in mini desktop systems, or the new thin and light slightly-larger-than-netbook laptops that are showing up.
Intel's netbook Atoms run at 2.5W/11.8W right now -- already beating them out for power usage. Because of how important battery life is to netbook users, I don't think this has much hope of competing there. Intel does have other higher-power Atom CPUs that aren't meant for netbooks, so maybe that's the market AMD is going for. I'd be curious to see how large that market is, though.
Okay, so the 18W number is "thermal design power"... sigh, another bloody spec.
Is this a typical spec that is used for comparison? I ask because I've been an electrical engineer for 15 years and, up until now, have done fine with "typical power consumption" (which is supposedly 3 W for this chip, compared to 7 W for the Intel Atom Z530) and "maximum power consumption", which is what you have to design the power supply around, lest the supply rails brown out.
Sigh... like they say: "A datasheet writer can get twice the performance out of a chip that an engineer can."
From the article: "All of AMD's embedded products are offered with industry-standard 5-year component longevity." What does that mean? Is that processor-talk for a warranty?
OK AMD, I understand some of your reasoning, but as an embedded designer, I cannot stress this enough:
If you don't support Linux, I won't design your parts in.
From the linked slick:
"Delivers a Microsoft® Windows Vista® Premium experience,
handling the rich Aero user interface and extremely
demanding application workloads with ease"
OK, I understand why you have to add that - and in and of itself, that's OK, as many of the target users will be running Windows.
However, what I *don't* see is anything like:
"Supports EXA, OpenGL, V4L2, and GStreamer under Linux."
Indeed, I don't find "Linux" anywhere on the slick. Sorry, but the gear I design needs a longer lifespan for the software - including the OS - than Microsoft is able to give me (yes, I know they "promise cross our hearts and hope to die pinky swear" to support their 'embedded' OS'es for a long time, but history shows otherwise).
So, to summarize:
BAD AMD! WRONG OS! NO BISCUIT!
www.eFax.com are spammers
On the Linux front, the GMA500 (Paulsbo) divers are unfortunately "A Bloody Mess".
Assuming you're half the Linux fanatic you're coming off as, I'm sure you already know that no one has more open documentation than AMD/ATI. Hell their open documentation and support is pretty much keeping them alive on Linux, seeing how their drivers are still inferior to those of nvidia. So because they didn't have an entire article promising to do what they're already doing, you're complaining?
I'm a little rusty when it comes to 64 bit processors. Are these processors true 64 bit processors or are they 32 bit processors with 64 bit extensions? I haven't kept up on them.
Virtualization is even better for low-load servers
Virtualization is even better for low-load servers
Yep! Virtualization is great for settop boxes and remote backup servers, except for the 99% of situations in which it's impossible.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
CAN. Many motor control chips have a CAN controller built in. Serial works too, but may be slower (or not). Then there are chips that handle USB, but I haven't seem a motion control chip with that, so you're looking at a 2 chip solution there - but really fast communication.
As for fabrication, I believe TI is also at the 45nm node and they have ARM cores on a number of parts. The funny thing about Linux is that any architecture that has an MMU and GCC support can become a player.
All AMD has to do to kill the Atom is to not impose asinine restrictions (e.g. screen size <11.7") on its usage. It's as simple as that. Do that, and you will kill a good piece of the much more expensive Core 2 Duo market as well since that's what Intel is trying to foist off on the anything-larger-than-what-we-define-as-a-netbook market.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Can't you guys search a bit for more information before submitting it to Slashdot, how hard is it, here you have more info and specs on the procs:
AMD original press release: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-press-release-2009aug10.aspx
Amd's presentation of bolth procs: http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/processors/asb1-bga/Pages/turion-athlon-neo-x2.aspx
More info on the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2.aspx
Specs for the turion: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/processors/turion-neo-x2/Pages/turion-neo-x2-model-numbers.aspx
I've had a HP dv2z with the L625 chip in it since June. Why is this news now?
On another note, it is an Atom killer imho, and if it's lucky will put a good squeeze on the ultra-portable segment. The battery life might not be quite as good when you throw in the Radeon 3410 graphics, but you can actually do stuff with it. It runs Ubuntu just great, even the wireless on/off button works without any work. It's played every game I've thrown at it in Vista as well, TF2, Aion, FFXI, WoW, etc. You can't crank the video settings, but it's more than I can say for any Atom based laptop I've ever seen.
Intels Atom is all the way down to 1w, but might be paired up with a 20W chipset with most of that consumption being memory controller. So if AMDs new chipset is 3w, and obviously the memory controller is on-die, I'm starting to wonder if it is the DDR(2/3) memory controller that is the problem getting an x86 platform down to lower power consumption?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.