This is Intel saying they MIGHT outsource some manufacturing to TSMC for the Atom SOC applications. Intel has their own pretty substantial fab facilities. However, they're out on this netbook limb now. If it takes off, they're going to need extra manufacturing to meet demand. If it doesn't take off, they don't want to have a lot of capital tied up in extra fab facilities.
I'm not a big Intel fan, but this is a fairly astute move on their part and buys them some flexibility in the medium-term depending on where netbook sales go.
Best,
Seems to me this is the likely reason, in addition to this from the summary
This will effectively allow other customers of TSMC to easily build Atom-based products similarly to how they might use an ARM processor in their own designs.
ARM-based products are the major competition with Atom in the up and coming smaller device market. If they want other OEMs to use Atom, they'd have to do something like this, or make them themselves. Given the current economy, this gives all the more weight to the "using TSMC as possible additional manufacturing capacity".
Hear hear.
I should know by now to filter anything posting by this "moderator". I mean, do they let kdawson continue to post articles (and I use the term loosely, since they've posted things without even citations lately) just to see what kind of stupid crap kdawson will come up with?
While I agree with some of what you're saying, you're also forgetting something.
4/ The fact that the used game market exists allows developers to sell more new games to people that wouldn't otherwise be willing to spend the $50-$60+ per title specifically because they can turn around and resell that title later.
Your 2 and 3 are missing a large part of the puzzle. Steam works well because items hit decently low priced bundle packages very quickly. Orangebox is a great example. The only Wii equivalent (WiiWare and VirtualConsole) items run between $5 and $15, a far cry from the $50-$60 you'll see on the shelves.
Are you sure? Have you compared a 33Mhz ARM to a 33Mhz x86 chip? Is the performance that different?
Clock frequency is a horrible comparison statistic. Note that AMD chips for years have had similar performance with increased clock cycle lengths. It's not so much about MHz, it's about what you actually get done during that cycle.
There is no way to do an apples-to-apples comparison here, because I don't think anyone makes x86 chips that are as slow as ARM chips. The instruction set doesn't have that much bearing on performance.
I don't want to be rude, but you're obviously just an arm-chair commentator on the subject. While it's true, the fastest ARM based processor doesn't run any faster than 1 GHz (Cortex based ARMs, or the ARM being used in Qualcomm's SnapDragon platform) you can make direct comparisons against Intel's Atom processors, which do run at those frequencies. The power comparison is bad for Intel, very bad. Especially when you consider how much power the ancillary hardware required for Atom uses. I'm not saying that MIPS/W is a great benchmark either, but it makes a lot of sense in small devices.
Instruction set makes a huge difference on performance. Otherwise, we'd still be using CISC instruction sets. Heck, even Intel converts CISC x86 instructions to RISC versions under the hood. This has a huge impact on power. ARM has conditional execution of just about every instruction, reducing the need for branching. This has two main benefits: less required additional hardware (branch predictors, speculative execution) to deal with a potential pipeline stall (and Intel's pipelines are very long) which saves considerable power.
But power use goes up according to the square of the voltage, and voltage increases when clock speed increases -- so it is all about the megahertz.
You're forgetting something that comes with that power equation that you're using. You're assuming that both processor have similar effective resistance. It's a poor assumption to make, and only works when you're taking the same processor and increasing the clock frequency.
In any case, what I'm trying to impress upon you is that instruction set matters (and x86 has been both a blessing and a curse to Intel over the years), and that clock speed isn't a good measure of performance or power consumption.
Yet, we have enough people that have posted to the CFL discussions with evidence that even with this, you're releasing less mercury into the environment overall. This is mostly due to the fact that a huge amount of electric power is generated with coal, which releases a fair amount of mercury.
(Yes, this is a [citation needed] moment, I apologize.)
You're forgetting something: he represents California. They're into the "nanny-state" there. Just how many labels are forced on all kinds of products because something about that product is "known to the State of California"?
OTOH, future cellular devices might incorporate enough improvements into power efficiency (e.g., e-ink displays), such that you could significantly extend battery life and perhaps even power a very basic subset of the phone when the battery runs out.
IMO, future cellular devices will probably use something based on IMOD display technology. It has all the power benefits of e-ink, but considerably faster switching. They're also already available, albeit at pretty small sizes. There's also color versions of these IMOD displays avaliable, but they also suffer from the current size problems.
The Wikipedia article is somewhat short on the details, so the Qualcomm PR page is here. Like I said, it's really a PR page trying to promote their solution, but the whitepapers do have some interesting information on how it all works.
You're thinking of a different case.
The RIAA voluntarily dismissed this case, and it's in that motion that they are seeking to impose "discovery sanctions" on Mr. Beckerman and Ms. Lindor.
True. The point I had intended to drive at (and failed) was that a CDMA signal (using spread spectrum) is virtually indistinguishable from background radiation unless you know exactly what you're looking for. Hence the problem is avoided.
GSM forces all the transmit power into a narrower spectrum, so the signal is very visible. I missed on the fact that it's the spiking on and off in that same slot that really causes the problem.
3G (WCDMA or UMTS, pick your moniker) isn't a TDMA RF scheme like GSM/GPRS/EDGE so the problem doesn't happen.
The main reason is that WCDMA (as the name implies) is just wideband CDMA (5 MHz vs ~1.25 MHz). Now, CDMA based systems don't cause this problem because the transmit power is spread out over that entire frequency range, rather than the 200 KHz (or so) that GSM systems use per channel.
You're too busy eating what your favorite party is feeding you. Have you bothered to look at the financial statements of any of these corporations? Of course not.
Exxon has an 8-10% net profit margin (don't look at operating margin, that's before taxes). The rest (Shell, Chevron) run in the 7-8% range. That's fairly standard, if not a little low. There's a reason these companies make billions in profit. it's not because they're over charging, it's because they have huge revenues (approaching 400 billion for Exxon). Take a quick look at old financials for Exxon during this "300% price/p increase". Net profit margin stayed right around 8-9%.
I don't see people bitching about Intel, which has a net margin around double that of the big oil companies. People just complain because it's oil, which makes it a politically convenient target, nothing more.
How the hell is this modded up so high?
A five for a flame? Chemisor has a valid (if somewhat paranoid) point. This IS the wet dream of a totalitarian regime. Such a system could be abused in this way and it's something that should and must be considered. It's not a strawman every time someone may disagree with you.
Mod parent up.
CDMA is considerably better technology than GSM, for other reasons that just the TDMA carrier that GSM uses. CDMA is also considerably newer, so there's no stone age involved.
GSM is an evolutionary dead end. What the European companies had to do was to swallow their pride and adopt an evolution of the CDMA model. They call this UMTS, but it's really just Wideband CDMA. They took CDMA, quadrupled the band size (to 5 MHz from 1.2288 MHz) and reversed a bunch of the bit definitions in the air interface (power control being the best example here) to avoid CDMA patents. The only part of GSM that was carried over was SIMs, which was a good choice. The lack of a SIM like device is my only gripe with CDMA.
Anyone else notice that the motion also seeks to sanction the defendant and her lawyer for "discovery abuse"? The RIAA's lawyers actually have the gall to accuse someone else of "discovery abuse"? If there's worse case of the pot calling the kettle black, please let me know.
How was this modded insightful? Can we all start making unfounded claims and get modded up? Let's be serious. If you're going to make claims like this, even a modicum of evidence would be nice.
It's always easier to blame someone else. The real problem is that security is the last thing on most people's minds.
1) This CPU runs on **4 watts!** I'm not sure my cell phone can run on 4 watts in standby.
Just to give you an idea - even the top of the line smart phone right now doesn't consume anywhere near 4 watts under full load.
Atom is an interesting idea for a MID device, but the power consumption is still far too high for too many smaller applications.
Let's think about it, if your cell at idle used anywhere near 4 watts in standby, you'd kill the battery in less than two hours with the largest of cell phone batteries.
"We have acknowledged that we manage peer-to-peer traffic in a limited manner to minimize network congestion," Comcast's statement continued.
Meanwhile the FCC is saying:
"Based on testimony we've received thus far, this equipment was typically deployed over a wider geographic area or system, and is not even capable of knowing when an individual... segment of the network is congested."
If you're going to lie, Comcast, it helps to not have glaring contradictions in your testimony.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish I could mod the parent up. This is the first thing that came to mind when I read this article.
This is Intel saying they MIGHT outsource some manufacturing to TSMC for the Atom SOC applications. Intel has their own pretty substantial fab facilities. However, they're out on this netbook limb now. If it takes off, they're going to need extra manufacturing to meet demand. If it doesn't take off, they don't want to have a lot of capital tied up in extra fab facilities.
I'm not a big Intel fan, but this is a fairly astute move on their part and buys them some flexibility in the medium-term depending on where netbook sales go.
Best,
Seems to me this is the likely reason, in addition to this from the summary
This will effectively allow other customers of TSMC to easily build Atom-based products similarly to how they might use an ARM processor in their own designs.
ARM-based products are the major competition with Atom in the up and coming smaller device market. If they want other OEMs to use Atom, they'd have to do something like this, or make them themselves. Given the current economy, this gives all the more weight to the "using TSMC as possible additional manufacturing capacity".
Hear hear. I should know by now to filter anything posting by this "moderator". I mean, do they let kdawson continue to post articles (and I use the term loosely, since they've posted things without even citations lately) just to see what kind of stupid crap kdawson will come up with?
While I agree with some of what you're saying, you're also forgetting something.
4/ The fact that the used game market exists allows developers to sell more new games to people that wouldn't otherwise be willing to spend the $50-$60+ per title specifically because they can turn around and resell that title later.
Your 2 and 3 are missing a large part of the puzzle. Steam works well because items hit decently low priced bundle packages very quickly. Orangebox is a great example. The only Wii equivalent (WiiWare and VirtualConsole) items run between $5 and $15, a far cry from the $50-$60 you'll see on the shelves.
Are you sure? Have you compared a 33Mhz ARM to a 33Mhz x86 chip? Is the performance that different?
Clock frequency is a horrible comparison statistic. Note that AMD chips for years have had similar performance with increased clock cycle lengths. It's not so much about MHz, it's about what you actually get done during that cycle.
There is no way to do an apples-to-apples comparison here, because I don't think anyone makes x86 chips that are as slow as ARM chips. The instruction set doesn't have that much bearing on performance.
I don't want to be rude, but you're obviously just an arm-chair commentator on the subject. While it's true, the fastest ARM based processor doesn't run any faster than 1 GHz (Cortex based ARMs, or the ARM being used in Qualcomm's SnapDragon platform) you can make direct comparisons against Intel's Atom processors, which do run at those frequencies. The power comparison is bad for Intel, very bad. Especially when you consider how much power the ancillary hardware required for Atom uses. I'm not saying that MIPS/W is a great benchmark either, but it makes a lot of sense in small devices.
Instruction set makes a huge difference on performance. Otherwise, we'd still be using CISC instruction sets. Heck, even Intel converts CISC x86 instructions to RISC versions under the hood. This has a huge impact on power. ARM has conditional execution of just about every instruction, reducing the need for branching. This has two main benefits: less required additional hardware (branch predictors, speculative execution) to deal with a potential pipeline stall (and Intel's pipelines are very long) which saves considerable power.
But power use goes up according to the square of the voltage, and voltage increases when clock speed increases -- so it is all about the megahertz.
You're forgetting something that comes with that power equation that you're using. You're assuming that both processor have similar effective resistance. It's a poor assumption to make, and only works when you're taking the same processor and increasing the clock frequency.
In any case, what I'm trying to impress upon you is that instruction set matters (and x86 has been both a blessing and a curse to Intel over the years), and that clock speed isn't a good measure of performance or power consumption.
(Yes, this is a [citation needed] moment, I apologize.)
There's also quite a bit of money that's going to be lost by the companies that already paid for the spectrum that was to be vacated.
If it's so apparent to California, why isn't it so apparent to everyone else? This is a serious question that's actually looking for a serious answer.
You're forgetting something: he represents California. They're into the "nanny-state" there. Just how many labels are forced on all kinds of products because something about that product is "known to the State of California"?
OTOH, future cellular devices might incorporate enough improvements into power efficiency (e.g., e-ink displays), such that you could significantly extend battery life and perhaps even power a very basic subset of the phone when the battery runs out.
IMO, future cellular devices will probably use something based on IMOD display technology. It has all the power benefits of e-ink, but considerably faster switching. They're also already available, albeit at pretty small sizes. There's also color versions of these IMOD displays avaliable, but they also suffer from the current size problems.
The Wikipedia article is somewhat short on the details, so the Qualcomm PR page is here. Like I said, it's really a PR page trying to promote their solution, but the whitepapers do have some interesting information on how it all works.
You're thinking of a different case.
The RIAA voluntarily dismissed this case, and it's in that motion that they are seeking to impose "discovery sanctions" on Mr. Beckerman and Ms. Lindor.
True. The point I had intended to drive at (and failed) was that a CDMA signal (using spread spectrum) is virtually indistinguishable from background radiation unless you know exactly what you're looking for. Hence the problem is avoided.
GSM forces all the transmit power into a narrower spectrum, so the signal is very visible. I missed on the fact that it's the spiking on and off in that same slot that really causes the problem.
3G (WCDMA or UMTS, pick your moniker) isn't a TDMA RF scheme like GSM/GPRS/EDGE so the problem doesn't happen.
The main reason is that WCDMA (as the name implies) is just wideband CDMA (5 MHz vs ~1.25 MHz). Now, CDMA based systems don't cause this problem because the transmit power is spread out over that entire frequency range, rather than the 200 KHz (or so) that GSM systems use per channel.
They're waiting for you, in the test chamber.
It's the kiss of death...
You're too busy eating what your favorite party is feeding you. Have you bothered to look at the financial statements of any of these corporations? Of course not. /p increase". Net profit margin stayed right around 8-9%.
Exxon has an 8-10% net profit margin (don't look at operating margin, that's before taxes). The rest (Shell, Chevron) run in the 7-8% range. That's fairly standard, if not a little low. There's a reason these companies make billions in profit. it's not because they're over charging, it's because they have huge revenues (approaching 400 billion for Exxon). Take a quick look at old financials for Exxon during this "300% price
I don't see people bitching about Intel, which has a net margin around double that of the big oil companies. People just complain because it's oil, which makes it a politically convenient target, nothing more.
How the hell is this modded up so high? A five for a flame? Chemisor has a valid (if somewhat paranoid) point. This IS the wet dream of a totalitarian regime. Such a system could be abused in this way and it's something that should and must be considered. It's not a strawman every time someone may disagree with you.
Mod parent up. CDMA is considerably better technology than GSM, for other reasons that just the TDMA carrier that GSM uses. CDMA is also considerably newer, so there's no stone age involved.
GSM is an evolutionary dead end. What the European companies had to do was to swallow their pride and adopt an evolution of the CDMA model. They call this UMTS, but it's really just Wideband CDMA. They took CDMA, quadrupled the band size (to 5 MHz from 1.2288 MHz) and reversed a bunch of the bit definitions in the air interface (power control being the best example here) to avoid CDMA patents. The only part of GSM that was carried over was SIMs, which was a good choice. The lack of a SIM like device is my only gripe with CDMA.
Anyone else notice that the motion also seeks to sanction the defendant and her lawyer for "discovery abuse"? The RIAA's lawyers actually have the gall to accuse someone else of "discovery abuse"? If there's worse case of the pot calling the kettle black, please let me know.
How was this modded insightful?
Can we all start making unfounded claims and get modded up?
Let's be serious. If you're going to make claims like this, even a modicum of evidence would be nice.
It's always easier to blame someone else. The real problem is that security is the last thing on most people's minds.