Single-Chip x86 Chipsets Around the Corner?

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

[Calmiche]

Yah, but current ARM processors max out at about 700-900 mhz.

If they can really pull off a good, stable, low powered chipset in the 1.5 ghz range.. I would be very interested.

I am still waiting for a revival of the handheld computers. UMPC isn't going anywhere, Palm is getting out of most hardware.

HP is FINALLY getting back into the handheld market, but it's WAY late for it's projections and dosen't seem to be doing any advertising at all for it's new line.

Re:Great idea

[spirit of reason]

I am still waiting for a revival of the handheld computers

You mean something like the Pandora [openpandora.org]?

Also, more information here [bluwiki.org].

While it's technically meant more for a gamer market like the GP2X, the arm + linux + wifi + usb host + decent resolution screen might make it a more general purpose machine.

Re:Who's in charge of code names?

[gendusoa]

Via's code names are almost always biblical:

* Luke
* Esther
* Nehemiah

and I'm sure the others I can't remember off the top of my head are biblical names too.

x86 programming

[neapolitan]

It's a shame that the x86 is such a complex instruction set; this means that the age of the handheld computer as an easy programming platform for hacking is over.

When I was programming for Apple //e, I had a good majority of the opcodes for the 6502 chip memorized, laying out assembly by hand. I later learned 68k assembly, and again, it is very "understandable" to a person just sitting down in front of the computer looking at an assembly printout. In the early 90's, pretty much x86 dominated and I stopped doing pretty much all assembly programming.

In 1996 I was delighted when the palm pilot came out, using a 68328 (68k instruction set). It was like a renaissance, again programming in assembly and hacking other things for fun. Now, once again, it appears this will be dead!

As a question to the slashdot community, is it possible to program "naked" x86 assembler? I have never really put in the time to learn it, but it just seems exceedingly complex and tedious to program for this chip without use of a higher level crutch (C compiler...) I am sad that once again everything I know is becoming outdated... :)

Re:I hope not.

[Sillygates]

It's already obsolete(in terms of size), and this is not news :(
pico itx is already on the maket, the mainboard is about the same size (1.5ghz [like that means anything], upto 1gb ram):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico-ITX [wikipedia.org]

and the transmeta crusoe processor (which implemented x86 in software) has been out for almost a decade now. The sony picturebook has a credit card sized motherboard along the left side of it's case:
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&um=1&q=sony+picturebook&btnG=Search+Images [google.com]

Didnt Cyrix try this a decade ago?

[DJRikki]

With the MediaGX (I think) range? Integrate everything you can think of into the die including sounds and graphics.

Re:Sounds like a bad idea to me

[truesaer]

x86 is actually quite efficient and flexible. Variable length instruction sets have a lot of benefits, especially in embedded applications where memory is at a premium. You'll get a lot more data into your cache and memory with x86 code as opposed to a fixed length instruction set. Most of the disadvantages (complex decoders, etc) are borne by the chip designer. And for embedded there's no reason they need to support legacy stuff.

This common belief that x86 is the devil is simply absurd. It sounds good but it doesn't really match with reality. As long as the chip designers are willing to make them, they're a great choice for software and system developers.

Re:Great idea

[afidel]

When you're comparing a superscaler, out of order, multipiplined x86 chip vs an ARM? Yeah I think the 2x faster chip will win, in fact even at the same mhz the x86 part would most likely be faster. Now the question is, is it capable of more MIPS/WATT, which is what matters almost as much as absolute performance in the embedded space. There the answer is possibly but unlikely.

Re:Great idea

[hitmark]

read up on cortex A8 and A9...