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ARM Powered OLPC XO-1.75 Laptop Is Faster Than X86

Posted by Soulskill on from the hand-crank-technology dept.

Charbax writes "Not only is power consumption halved to less than two Watts and price of the motherboard reduced, the performance of the next generation OLPC Laptop is actually better for running full Fedora Linux compared to x86. Here's a video interviewing OLPC's CTO, Edward J. McNierney, where he explains how and why OLPC's world class engineers are making this change of CPU architecture. If OLPC XO-1 threatened Intel enough to start the netbook market and has reached two million poor kids in third-world countries thus far, XO-1.75 may help start the ARM-powered Linux laptop market. Do you think Fedora/Sugar will do, or should OLPC attract Chrome OS and Android solutions for education to get faster help from the big boys of Silicon Valley in bringing Linux software successfully to the next billion PC/laptop users?"

3 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Um, faster than...an 8 year old x86 by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The original XO-1 uses an AMD Geode LX 800, which was released in 2002/2003 or thereabouts. This latest XO-1.75 uses a Marvell Armada 610, and the marketing material I'm looking at from Marvell has a copyright of 2010 on it. The CPU in there is a Marvell Sheeva which the earliest reference I can find is from 2008, but that's not even a fair date because that's when they announced it, not shipped it.

    So yes, this processor is faster than an 8-year-old AMD Geode. I would like to see power/performance tradeoffs vs. today's Atom and AMD Fusion stuff before everyone goes nuts about how ARM is faster than x86 for half the power.

    1. Re:Um, faster than...an 8 year old x86 by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Informative

      Atom is a power hungry son of a bitch compared to Arm gear. The lowest power PineView based one is at 6.5 Watts and that is the CPU alone, the Arm stuff is all SoC. The whole SoC power budget is going to be less than that.

      Once you start to value power consumption above all else Arm really starts to make sense. When you can plug in your laptop every couple hours well less so.

  2. Re:Not an Intel initiative by Charbax · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sure mr troll under the bridge. Intel has no relations with OEMs like Asus whatsoever, and Intel also manufactures the Classmate all by themselves, not by any chance in the same Pegatron factories that make Asus Eee laptops. Asus Eee was a staged marketing stunt orchestrated by Intel for Asus to block OLPC sales, go look back.