Single-Chip x86 Chipsets Around the Corner? 170
An anonymous reader writes "Kontron, a giant among industrial single-board computer vendors, yesterday revealed a credit-card sized board apparently based on a single-chip x86 chipset that clocks to 1.5GHz and supports a gig of RAM. It targets portable devices — not x86's usual forte. Kontron isn't saying whether the board uses a Via or an Intel chip(set) — both vendors reportedly have single-chip chipsets in the works, part of their respective missions to drive 'x86 everywhere.'"
Re:Great idea (Score:4, Informative)
It's VIA (Score:5, Informative)
Previous VIA CPU codenames:
Samuel
Esther
Nehemiah
Ezra
Note also that VIA combined a C3 CPU and a northbridge into a single package - it was codenamed "Luke".
Re:Power consumption please? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's VIA (Score:3, Informative)
Here are the two quotes FTFA:
1. "It is based on an unnamed "highly integrated chipset" from an unnamed silicon vendor."
2. "Via has long planned to bring out a single-chip part in its CoreFusion line. Codenamed "John," the processor will integrate CPU, northbridge, and southbridge into a single x86-compatible SoC (system-on-chip)."
AFAIK, Via & Kontron have nothing to do with each other.
TFA is not stating that Kontron is using Via's chipset.
TFA later goes on to say that Via may eventually be a competitor to Kontron.
More info for x86 in embedded dev. at arstechnica (Score:5, Informative)
Return of the Son of Pentium in 2008? Intel's new ultramobile processors [arstechnica.com]
Intel's low-cost "Diamondville" CPU to power OLPC/Eee PC mobile category [arstechnica.com]
And a very interesting article why processor makers want to extend their architecture to other realms: Beyond the BlackBerry crowd: life in a post-32nm world [arstechnica.com]
How about a better summary first? (Score:4, Informative)
You're right that even low-powered x86 chips like the C7 and the Geode line are generally no match for ARM and XScale. MIPS I'm not as familiar with for power usage purposes. It'd be nice if that question was answered, but I'm afraid it'd be summarized incorrectly too.
2005 article on anx86 SoC [windowsfordevices.com]
another 2005 article about a different x86 SoC [linuxelectrons.com]
2004 product page for an already obsolete x86 SoC [st.com]
Linux Devices list of x86 SoC solutions, some dated to 2000 [linuxdevices.com]
2000 Register article about the year since Cyrix released an x86 SoC [theregister.co.uk]
Chipslist page showing availability of AMD processor with 80188 features plus DMA, watchdog timer, serial ports, and I/O pins in 1995 [chiplist.com]
article on the National Semiconductor Geode (the owners of that line before AMD bought it) thin client system-on-chip [encyclopedia.com]
And the best proof of all: an archive of a 1996 story on the AMD Elan,which featured a 386, ISA bus, serial UART, memory controller, power management, and PLL hardware ON ONE CHIP [findarticles.com]
Re:Sounds like a bad idea to me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why no x86 microcontrollers? (Score:2, Informative)
Similar parallel offerings from Intel were the 80196 line.
Re:Sounds like a bad idea to me (Score:3, Informative)
My earlier post may have sounded more caustic than I intended it, but I meant what I wrote literally.
A "x86 chipset" just describes the supporting chips (usually memory, bus, and I/O) that let the CPU-which-happens-to-speak-x86 do its thing in a way familiar to programmers and users of non-embedded PC hardware. Although the PC world has a somewhat standardized set of these, by no means do all x86-speaking CPUs require similar enough supporting hardware as to justify the overly broad generalization.
Simple example - The earliest x86 chips manually controlled DRAM refresh. Then that moved out into the chip-set (a large collection of single-purpose chips each doing their own thing - including a memory controller as one of them). Then a handful of those merged into a single-chip solution that handled all the critical non-CPU functionality (but had basically nothing we would think of as actual features by itself). Then as more and more I/O tasks also merged into that one chip, it eventually split into the Northbridge (bus and memory) and Southbridge (I/O). And now, we have CPUs with integrated memory controllers once again (though they have dedicated hardware for it rather than needing to tie up actual processing cycles for the job). Which of those would you call "the" x86 chipset?
Perhaps you could more accurately say that this provides for a single-chip PC architecture, since most of what the chipset does has little to no relevance to what language the CPU speaks.