First Desktop Computer To Use Intel's XScale

Ian Chamberlain writes "Drobe, the leading RISC OS portal, has reported the release of Iyonix, the first desktop computer to use Intel's XScale processor. The XScale is now famous for its increasingly widespread use in PDA devices, used because of its low power consumption and high performance processing. The Iyonix runs a new 32bit version of RISC OS, the operating system orginally developed by Acorn, but now owned by Pace." The same site links to a pair of reviews (one translated from heise.de) of this machine. RISC OS is also what powers the solar PC mentioned a few months ago.

Why?

[jericho4.0]

IYONIX pc (128MB) 80GB HDD; 128MB DDR RAM; CDRW £1299

Ouch. OS in flash ROM is cool, but what are people going to be buying these for? Are there legacy apps in RISC OS that people need to run faster?

I want one, anyway.

Logo theft

[XgD]

Pace seem to have tried to copy the /. logo with their cheap .// logo.

Get the DMCA on them!!

I don't get it...

[venomkid]

...if this is supposed to be an alternative OS to Windows, MacOS and Linux. I mean, if it's 1299 UK pounds (about $2000), I can get a MAD Win/Lin/Mac PC for that.

It's a 600Mhz Processor (blah blah Mhz Myth blah blah) so how powerful is that compared to AMD or Intel chips? Benchmarks anyone?

No AGP slot?

Can someone please, other than for RISC OS development, explain to me why I would buy one of these?

Re:Interesting, but...

[FauxPasIII]

>> You know the first question 'the public' will have is... "...but does it run Windows?"

I was going to respond by pointing out that, with 2 PCI-X slots and on-board gigabit ethernet, it's clear that this machine is built to be a server... then I noticed the integrated sound and Geforce2MX400 video. What a poor, mixed up little machine this is.

ARM and RiscOS machines

[-douggy]

I've got an Acorn Achimedes with an ARM 3 (8mhz)and 4MB ram in it along with 500 MBharddrive. If this were a PC is might just run linux.

It runs a FULL GUI with anti aliased fonts. Multitasking and a better DTP program than i have on my 2 ghz PC. I easily drag stuff from my scientific notation package to a WP.

If only modern stuff ran this well.

Iwillbe looking seriously at these things

Re:why??

[TeknoHog]

Because they can. This is Slashdot and we're geeks, you know.

Seriously, it's something like a proof of concept. If it catches on, laptops might follow.

$1891?

[ArchieBunker]

Hmmm almost $2k for this box. I'd suspect you could never make up cost/power saving ratio but hey I do like to have different architectures available.

Re:Why?

[fistynuts]

Unfortunately it's a very small market!
I can't believe people are still using Acorn machines. I loved my A3010, but then I saw a PC with a 3D accelerator and I never looked back..
ROM/flashROM operating systems were the business though. A working OS in about 10 seconds - I wish I could do that with XP.

solar

[zogger]

--hey, check out the other slashdot story today about the "littlepc". It's 12 volt dc! Just the ticket for your solar cabin. You could probably even modify any old case, the littlepc fits in one of the larger drive bays. You could cut it open and make it so the lcd screen and keyboard fit inside for traveling. Granted, not a laptop, but still,a possible nifty project. We run on solar and watch our watts as well, the deal with laptops is the stupid adapters waste watts converting the juice, tons of waste heat off those things. Hmm, for that matter you might be able to adapt a small UPS battery inside your project case as well, so you'd have a built in "emergency power".

If I was going to do it, I'd use an old busted mac 6400 tower case, for the killer built into the case sound system. I had one, just amazingly good sound from the internal speakers.

Of course if you really want to run this other OS, oh well...carry on

Re:why??

[Ed Avis]

The reason to use an XScale is that large parts of the OS and applications are written in ARM assembler, and the XScale is currently the fastest ARM-compatible processor (AFAIK).

(No, really, the applications as well. Impression Publisher is a DTP package written in assembler, and ArtWorks from the same company a vector drawing package (later rewritten in C++ as Corel Xara). The original version of Sibelius was in assembler - apparently including a Postscript printer driver!)

So when they say 'a very fast desktop machine' there is some truth to the statement, even though an XScale processor isn't that hot in raw computing power compared to current i386 or PowerPC chips. (The Archimedes in 1987 was the fastest microcomputer in the world - for those people who still used the term microcomputer - but although the ARM series is the best-selling processor type it's now mostly embedded and hasn't kept pace with desktop chips.)

Re:Interesting, but...

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I was going to respond by pointing out that, with 2 PCI-X slots and on-board gigabit ethernet, it's clear that this machine is built to be a server

PCI-X is new, but are you aware that most Macs have come with built-in Gigabit Ethernet for some time now? The Power Macs and PowerBooks all come with 1000BASE-T. The iBooks and iMacs, I believe, still come with puny 100BASE-T, but you get what you pay for. ;-)

The day is coming, sooner rather than later, when all computers that currently have built-in 100BASE-T will have built-in gigabit instead.

Re:why??

[Hairy Dude]

The real point is that Intel don't guarantee future supplies of old-style 26-bit StrongARM processors, since their only market would be in RISC OS machines, which wouldn't be profitable. And XScale is not binary compatible with them.

So, hardware developers have been toiling to design 32-bit XScale-based RISC OS-compatible systems, while RISCOS Ltd. created a 32-bit version of the OS and software authors are using their tools to port their programs to XScale. The Microdigital Omega [microdigital.co.uk] has a dual processor design, incorporating a 26-bit StrongARM and a slot for an XScale.

The Iyonix is the first pure XScale machine.