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AMD's New Low-Power CPUs
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Feb 17, 2005 01:39 PM
from the you-fools-you're-helping-people dept.
from the you-fools-you're-helping-people dept.
illumina+us writes "AMD has released a new family of CPUs targeted at the portable computing market. The new CPUs, collectively named Alchemy, consume less than 1Watt of power. The CPUs have already been named the CPU of choice for Tivo's new Tivo-To-Go technology and are powerful enugh to run DivX, WMV9, and MPEG. The AU1550 consumes just 0.5 Watts at 400 MHz and the AU1100 consumes 0.25 at the same clock speed. These processors consume so little energy they don't even need a heatsink."
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imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, at least the power bill wouldn't kill you.
Re:imagine... (Score:5, Interesting)
Low power chips are therefore much cheaper to operate, and can be packed more densely as they require less cooling. The future of computing lies in massively distributed low power solutions, it simply makes much more sense than the alternatives.
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Re:imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
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low power chips often better tradeoff (Score:5, Insightful)
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PDA's (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:PDA's (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:PDA's (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not, but the fact that AMD is creeping into a market that Intel currently dominates, and AMD has already declared dominance in the gaming and server microprocessor market in 2004 [slashdot.org], so this could cause serious problems for Intel if the AMD chips turn out to perform better with less power than Intel's current offerings. Sure the processors are running at slower mhz speeds but as we all know a a slower mhz AMD processor can perform at the same level as a much faster mhz Intel processor [tomshardware.com]
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Re:PDA's (Score:5, Interesting)
They Alchemy family is not that new actually. AFAIR they have been around for at least 2 or 3 years now, and have barely gotten some attention from the embedded developer world.
AMD has made inroads in the embedded processor bussiness before, with their Elan and embedded-K6 processors. Those have been moderately popular by those seeking x86 compatibility, since the Elan is a mocked-up 486 with chipset functionality and some periferals in one chip: Expensive, extremely power-hungry, slow and very modest on-chip periferals, but x86 compatible. They are mostly forgotten now.
The Alchemy on the other hand is based on a 32-bit MIPS core (remeber SGI? Guess where their chip developers went?). That makes the Alchemy more powerful, less power-hungry, cheaper and able to include some more amount of periferals on-chip, but they are not x86 compatible.
That leaves them pretty much out in the cold, because there are IMHO far more attractive alternatives of non-x86 embedded processors, like those based on the ARM family of cores, built by Samsung, Atmel, Philips, TI, Cirrus-Logic, Intel and many more, as well as the PowerPC based embedded processors from Motorola and IBM. Specially the Power-QUICC I and II families from Motorola cover an impressive price and performance range, offer modest to very high processing power, and unprecedented flexibility due to their second integrated RISC based communications processor and programmable bus controller.
Those are the two most popular embedded processor platforms around these days. If you need power-efficiency, there's no better than ARM. If you need high computing performance or high-bandwith data processing, go for PowerPC. AMD's Alchemy is somewhere in the middle, but until now they only cover a narrow range of applications.
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Re:PDA's (Score:5, Interesting)
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Obviously not for Canadians (Score:5, Funny)
And when there's no electricity, we burn them for heat.
Re:Obviously not for Canadians (Score:4, Interesting)
Then I got an Athlon-650 computer in there and a 19" CRT monitor, and from then on, it was the warmest room in the house, even in the winter.
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Re:Obviously not for Canadians (Score:5, Funny)
P.
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Not x86 processors (Score:5, Informative)
upgrade from your SGI workstation to a tablet today!
Re:Not x86 processors (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
AMD mucking around in other fields (Score:5, Interesting)
AMD is a much more interesting company that we geeks often realize. Too often we think, AMD=Athlon/Opteron, but I find their gadgety endeavors really interesting.
Apple's Airport (and maybe extreme/express, dunno) has a tiny AMD processor [seanadams.com], and as the parent points out, now their playing with MIPS archs. A friend of mine worked at the fab in Dresden and said that a third of their operations had to do with flash.
Call me a fanboy, but I sure do like the AMD kool aid. They make neato products and deserve mucho respect.
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Re:AMD mucking around in other fields (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't it be more appropriate this time to call you a nofanboy?
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Re:FLASH (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FLASH (Score:3, Informative)
AMD Without the flash? [statesman.com]
One catch (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One catch (Score:4, Informative)
Besides, they're aiming for the PDA market, which doesn't have x86 compatibilty as it stands anyhow.
I wonder if this technology will be adapted to the PC market in any way, shape or form. With such low power consumption, they are a fanless CPU, and a fanless power supply would probably be feasible I imagine. True silent computing sounds good to me... or is that doesn't sound...?
In any case, it is very cool tech, literally, and figuratively speaking.
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Re:One catch (Score:5, Informative)
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FLOPS per Watt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps these are the chips Supercomputer manufactures should be building machines with. Sounds to be low in cost to build AND low in cost to run.
Re:FLOPS per Watt? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:FLOPS per Watt? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no evidence there that the MIPS32 core they used implements the (optional) floating point instructions. Of course you have to sign up for details so I can't say for sure...
Since the video capabilities are handled by an accessory processing unit, and since they were trying to cut power consumption, I'd be surprised if there was an FPU in the general purpose core.
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Re:FLOPS per Watt? (Score:4, Informative)
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How fast are they really? (Score:4, Interesting)
From the Product Briefs linked to in the article: (Score:5, Informative)
# MPEG2 main profile/main level (720x480, 10Mbps, 30fps)
# MPEG4 advanced simple profile/level 5 (720x480, 8Mbps, 30fps)
# WMV9 main profile/medium level (720x480, 2Mbps, 30fps)
Doesn't look too bad to me. This was for the Au1200 btw.
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how long.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:how long.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:how long.... (Score:5, Informative)
Super low power consumption and ultra high speed are inherently at odds with each other. It's like the memory/speed tradeoff that programmers have to deal with. (Crusoe is up around 1GHz, but they're already at twice the wattage of these chips.)
Remember, all CPUs had this kind of power consumption back in the day. You never saw heatsinks on CPUs until the mid 1990s. And processors in 8-bit home computers used milliwatts of power.
Parent
for the record: (Score:5, Informative)
Mini-ITX replacement... (Score:4, Interesting)
These AMD systems would be perfect for many linux applications;
firewall, file servers, dumb-terminals, HTPC boxes, hell make a cluster out of 100 of them and they still waste less energy then a P4!
It would be cool to see how a cluster like that could handle mpeg4 encoding/decoding.
You also have CarPC's and many other options.
I want some, can ya tell?
Re:Mini-ITX replacement... (Score:3, Informative)
Also check out versiontracker.com for a lot of Open source software with pretty GUIs.
Good chips are not the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
transmeta (Score:4, Interesting)
Sharp has something similar (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.sharpsma.com/sma/products/mcu_soc/LH7A4 04_splash.htm [sharpsma.com]
Well done, AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
The implications of a low-power, low-heat solution with a lot power go beyond the home theater. The idea of "ubiquitous computing" (IMHO an awful blanket term that gets thrown around far too often) might become possible with a small but still powerful processor.
The one last innovation that caught my eye was the on-processor AES encryption/decryption. Anyone have any ideas of practical applications for this?
Re:Well done, AMD (Score:3, Interesting)
If AMD markets this thing right and performs as promised, they will make a killing out of it. There's a lot of money in the embeeded systems market.
Re:Well done, AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
Since most people don't really need a second computer dedicated to TV watching, this could be a great for a WIFI/Ethernet box that reads videos from the main computer in the house, or even from a firewire drive.
Small enough to put in the living room, and since it has no fan, is completely silent (provided it's diskless as well).
Having wasted my money on the 933Mhz Mini-ITX that could barely decode mpeg2, this sounds infinitely better.
overclockers (Score:3, Funny)
that'll teach AMD!
These are not new (Score:5, Informative)
I've had an Alchemy Au1100 devboard on my desk for over a year. The disk that came with the devboard is dated 1-27-2003.
There is already a very complete Linux port mostly done by Montavista.
no heat? (Score:3, Funny)
We use these (they are smokin!) (Score:5, Informative)
One thing to watch for: The onboard peripherals are geared more to PDAs (no real watchdog, limited-feature timers, etc). You would want to check your embedded application requirements. On the plus side, the JTAG TAP makes board support and debugging a snap.
The Transmeta Factor (Score:3, Interesting)
VIA (Score:3, Interesting)
Once I see how well the AMD products (including the motherboards for the chip, etc) work with linux I may consider a switch. At 400Mhz equivilent they could do nicely for servers and the video capabilities would make them decent enough for small media units. Wonder how well they would handle DVD, etc playback and TV out... as my M10000 does quite nicely for that with fairly low CPU consumption.
The OCer says... (Score:4, Funny)
AMD's Geode (Score:4, Interesting)
ex DECcies strike again (Score:5, Interesting)
This comes out of AMD's aquisition of Rich Witek's startup (named Alchemy). Rich Witek was one of the original guys working on the Alpha chip (among other projects). Alchemy originally targetted PDA's with their low power MIPS32 processors and on-chip peripheral support.
Interestingly, Dan Dobberpuhl, another Digital alumnus who was influential in the Alpha project, also founded his own company to make MIPS based processers, though for a slightly different target market. That company was SiByte, and was acquired by Broadcom in 2000 or 2001. He has since moved on to start PASemi, which seems to be in the same general business.
Digital may be gone, but it's engineers are still making waves!
Why Tivo would run this on the main CPU... (Score:5, Insightful)
NO HEATSINK.
If you can get a video board that works with only a passive heatsink, and then run this thing with a minimal heatsink, you lower your heat problems.
Lower them enough, and you can get a smaller fan to cool the entire unit, or even get away without a fan entirely (though given how long a TIVO has to stay turned on, it's likely you need some minimal level of guaranteed airflow to avoid overheating the unit the same way you used to be able to overheat an NES).
But the smaller, and fewer, fans you have to put into it, the quieter it is. And living-room appliances want to be as quiet as possible, to avoid interfering with the quiet moments inside of a game/movie/TV show.
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Re:What about *MORE* power? (Score:3, Funny)