Kaz writes "While not operating on the same scale as the two major CPU designers, VIA has been gaining traction in the world of UMPCs and thin clients with its Eden and C7 lines of processors. While past architectures have been considerably out-of-date in terms of modern features, the new Isaiah architecture looks to be very competitive with what AMD and Intel have lined up for future ultra-mobile products. It features an out-of-order, superscalar execution core, 64-bit support, virtualization, and even SSE3 — all on a 94M-transistor, 65nm process die. The initial offering will be single-core only, though VIA says that multi-core ability is already designed in. Is Isaiah going to replace your Core 2 system for gaming? No, but it might give Intel's Silverthorne a run for the money."
The next big step in integration is integrated memory. Cache memories are consuming most of the die in your typical high-performance CPU, these days. If you can find a CMOS-compatible, high-density (e.g. - SRAM's six transistors per cell is toooo big) memory technology, then we're going to be at the point where we can simply replace the cache memory with on-board memory. If said on-chip memory technology is nonvolatile, then we're talking panacea cakes, batman.
Naturally, this will first occur in low-performance devices where huge amounts of memory are not necessary. Then, it will work its way into the PC and up from there.
This is why Intel is divesting itself of discrete memory technologies - they don't want to be holding the bag when they're obsoleted by on-chip memory.
SPU manufacturers had better be ready for this because discrete CPUs will be going the way of the horse and buggy if anyone can ever do such a thing.
For those who don't know, this is a troll. The CPU is way faster than RAM. Replacing the cache (which is large physically compared to RAM) with normal DRAM would be a disaster for performance. Go look at the original Celeron, then remember that this chip is even faster than that.
This is like saying cars will soon move back to steam, starting with small cars, because steam engines don't need large refineries to refine the oil. Technically correct on one point, but ignores lots of reality that would complete
I re-read the post you replied to several times, but couldn't find the place where it advocated replacing the cache memory with DRAM. Instead it was about new memory technology yet to be found. Here's the relevant quote, with emphasis by me: "If you can find a CMOS-compatible, high-density (e.g. - SRAM's six transistors per cell is toooo big) memory technology, then we're going to be at the point where we can simply replace the cache memory with on-board memory. If said on-chip memory technology is nonvolati
The reason why they use cache ram is for its stupidly fast speed.
The speed increases with physical size. You simply cant fit too much cache ram on to a cpu's die. A alternative is to use slower ram but that slows down the entire computer.
Plus it would be stupid to have to replace your CPU to upgrade your ram.
The CPU is way faster than RAM.Replacing the cache (which is large physically compared to RAM) with normal DRAM would be a disaster for performance.
That doesn't necessarily matter if the DRAM were freed of external pin packaging constraints. For example, imagine if the CPU had an SRAM L1 cache, no L2 cache and on-chip DRAM main memory. With DRAM, you can internally access an entire row at one time. Using row-wide access, you could fill entire virtual memory pages into the L1 cache in a single RAM cycle.
Getting the most out of such a setup might require changes to the way the memory and cache have been managed for the last 20 years, but the total potential bandwith available from on-chip DRAM could be staggering.
RAM is tricky, some users need very little, others need a lot (even with the same processor requirements). Plus, there are soooo many transistors that it's cost inefficient to use the top-end manufacturing for bulk jobs like RAM. GPU's on the other hand are fairly constant in requirements. Once it can handle HDTV, it'll be good for a lot of low and medium end use - more than 90% of users, IMHO.
It's inevitable... when's the last time you bought a Floating Point Processor? Every PC needed to do FP, so it go
Cache memories are consuming most of the die in your typical high-performance CPU, these days.
On single-threaded CPU's, perhaps. But look at the Sun UltraSPARC T1 [wikipedia.org] and T2. They are multithreaded - each core rotates between up to four threads on each clock cycle. When a cache miss occurs, it simply pulls the affected thread from rotation and continues with the remaining threads while fetching the data in the background. This means cache misses have a much smaller impact on performance than they do on single-
You, and whoever last moderated the grand parent's post, aren't getting what he's saying.
What he means is: forget on-chip cache -- on-chip main memory. IOW, instead of having main memory on the motherboard, it would be embedded into your processor, running, presumable, at the same speed as the CPU.
If you follow the trends happening in CPUs, including this one, faster CPUs aren't the big issue. The real issue is the bus. The bus is slow. The more you put on the other side of it, the better. A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo.
Agreed. Hopefully we'll see more of technologies like Z-RAM [wikipedia.org], which sounds like it has great promise. You get the speed of SRAM, but with only one transistor per bit, and greater density than DRAM. That should lower the power consumption significantly for current cache sizes, or allow much larger caches.
"What he means is: forget on-chip cache -- on-chip main memory. IOW, instead of having main memory on the motherboard, it would be embedded into your processor, running, presumable, at the same speed as the CPU."
Memory on the die has been done in micro controlers for years. It isn't going to happen on PCs for a long time.
"A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo."
What is sufficient memory? 4 GB or Maybe 512 MB? There is a reason that they use Static ram for cache. It needs to be fast. So lets say that you get 512 MB on the die are you not going to allow the user to add more memory? Or how about this. You put 512 MB on the die and then let them add memory on the buss if they need more. And then you could have it swap memory from the slower buss memory in to the fast on die memory to speed everything up... Yea and we could call it a cache!
Until you can put the full address space on the die it will not work for anything but microcontrollers.
It's probably a bit of a moot point how much is enough. I'm sure OS vendors (and probably Linux and the BSDs first) could set aside as much of the on-board RAM as necessary/desired for critical parts of the OS. Perhaps we could even have a tool to say "run this executable in on-board memory, if possible." I don't claim to know a whole lot about processor tech, but I know that it wouldn't be hard to add this sort of optimization.
"I don't claim to know a whole lot about processor tech, but I know that it wouldn't be hard to add this sort of optimization." It is hard and it has been done. That is exactly what the cache does. The tasks that need the memory the most stay in the cache longest.
"1) This would be a new memory technology." Okay well get back to me when you finish with that little detail. "2) What's sufficient? Well, that depends on the application. Just as you have chips geared at different applications today, you'd have chips geared at even more different applications. In case you haven't noticed, we're moving away from the general purpose computing device anyhow and increasingly into more specialized devices to meet specialized needs."
If you follow the trends happening in CPUs, including this one, faster CPUs aren't the big issue. The real issue is the bus. The bus is slow. The more you put on the other side of it, the better. A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo.
NOT true! Yes, on-die cache is way faster than main memory, but for most applications, you're hitting the cache most of the time. I can't find any articles right now with numbers, but I know from looking at tests on the effect of cache size on performance that at some point you hit rapidly diminishing returns for cache size increases.
It's pretty analogous to main memory vs disk latency. If you don't have enough main memory, your system bogs down swapping to disk, but if you have enough memory that tha
"The current C7 processor is a sub 20 watt product.."
Then if I read right they go on to say Isaiah will be similar. Sorry, but that's not even in the same league as Silverthorn. Silverthorn will be more like a sub 5 watt product. If this is right, they'll be competing against Core 2 processors and performance won't even be close.
VIA's Pico-ITX full systems (not just the chip) have already by clocked at 14w idle, 16w max in pre-release reviews from 6 months ago. The previous generation C7s can easily be throttled back to stay at 5w on the proc as needed. I'm not sure if such functionality is available on the new Pico systems though.
Intel is "shooting for" a 5w processor (no clarification if this is max load, or idle) in 2010.
VIA's Pico-ITX is already available at 1ghz, and the previous generation C7's are available up to 2ghz.
Intel's Silverthorne processor is also aiming for the Pentium M era performance (900mhz - 2.3ghz).
Yes, the initial Silverthorne release is slated for Q1-Q2 2008, but the performance goals you mentioned aren't slated until 2010. So what I'm saying here, is that you can already buy everything that Intel is "shooting for" 2 years before they plan on reaching those goals. With all likelihood, the 2008 release of the Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak. Which will put it right in competitive range of the C7 and new Pico-ITX.
As someone who has worked on Silverthorne for the past couple of years, you will be very pleasantly surprised as to how fast and how low power it will be. If you are expecting 1GHz and 20Watts, you are in for a huge surprise. You are in for an even larger surprise to see the idle power. There were many Silverthorne based mobile internet devices showcased at CES, and those developers can testify to the power and performance that they are seeing with actual silicon. Cheers!
You're full of it. Silverthorne is due for Q1-Q2 2008, 1-2 watts, and Pentium 3 performance circa 2004 (which still puts it well ahead of what Via is doing anywhere within 10x that much wattage).
My first clue you were full of crap was this: "Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak". I'm not sure if you pay attention, but Intel has Core 2 Solo chips running at 1.06/1.2Ghz that peak at 5.5 watts. Silverthorne is a 45nm chip running on a simplified core-2-esque march, and you're making this ridiculous claim that it will "suck down" 20w at peak.
Yes, you might be right about pure performance, but I think you might be missing a big advantage with the Via. With the hype and fear of lawsuits caused from data breaches security is becoming an ever increasing concern, especially from a business standpoint. If this Via continues the tradition of its predecessors with its fast on-board cryptography this chip might be very appealing for business laptops and other small devices where data security is of high concern.
Silverthorne is a new architecture, not a Core 2 processor. Rumour has it that it's a strictly in-order, two-issue device. Ironically that would put it much closer in implementation to the C7 chip that Isaiah supercedes.
id be curious to see, market wise, if your competition is so bad you can demand a higher price (versus having no competition) for your product because your only competition is so dismal that its clear youre the only person/company who has a clue.
Via charges for its i-Dot which is a mini-ATX system 65 quid. Similar system in a mini-ITX format is 120+. Reasons aplenty: demand for ultrasmall systems for use in point of sale and home kit is consistently high and in the mini-ITX arena Via is king. There is no contest. Intel simply does not manage to fit into the TDP requirements of most enclosures. While there are mainboards around, nobody buys them.
While past architectures have been considerably out-of-date in terms of modern features
They may not be bleeding edge, but their Eden processors used to compare very favorably to Intel's low-power chips, and have unique features like Padlock accelerated encryption (which is supported at least partially by the Linux kernel to accelerate cryptographic stuff.) Padlock made it possible to have a very low power VPN server..
The only real problem I've had with the VIA processors has been availability, pricing, and cheesy 3rd party motherboards. Mini itx dot com for example wants to bend you over backwards for some pretty old systems; the latest stuff you practically need to take out a mortgage from. You can't really buy the boards from but a handful of places. VIA also seems to be ignoring the networking market (if they sold a low-power board with 3 gigabit ports, they'd put Soekris out of its misery once and for all- overnight.)
Same thing with AMD's low-power Geode (which is plug-compatible with certain athlons.) You can't buy them anywhere except bundled with really shitty motherboards.
Take a look at the newer VIA VB7001G board. It may be the C7-D processor, but from logicsupply dot com it is $123. Not a hugely cheap board, but quite nicely priced for a mini-ITX board. The only drawback is that some of the cases cost almost more than the M/B itself! Also the gOS boards are quite nice, though at micro-ATX are harder to fit in to a low power solution... I have two of these, one running my router with a dual Netflex-3 card (yeah I know, older 10/100, but I don't need any faster) and it ru
Also the gOS boards are quite nice, though at micro-ATX are harder to fit in to a low power solution.
One of the things I appreciate about my daughter's gPC is that the power management stuff mostly works. That's a lot better than the typical experience I've had with Linux power management, where basically nothing works.
While the performance is pretty slow (Maybe 800 mhz PIII range), it's low power and low heat, which was what I desired. Email doesn't require much processing power, so why waste the electricity on a high performance machine?
If they make a higher performance chip that get within the range of a Core 2, I'd consider buying one to replace my higher performance server in a few years. I hate paying for more electricity, and then paying to get rid of the waste heat. I'd even consider it for a workstation PC if the performance is good enough. Quiet fans are desirable to me, super-duper performance matters fairly little.
I have an Efika: 128MB of RAM, 400MHz e300 processor, 100Mb Ethernet, 2x USB 1.1, IRDA, RS-232, 3.3v PCI slot, and 44-pin IDE; 1080mW draw for the whole board.
For a while I was on a mission to build a really power efficient PC. Unfortunately when I got my AC power meter, I learned a number of disappointing things:
Power specifications are incredibly hard to find. One good resource is actually Dell's specification sheets.
Most of the inefficiency is in the power supply. In the past PSUs were made incredibly cheaply and even good brands were selling 70% or less efficient PSUs. When a system consumes 100 watts at the plug, that means 30 watts are wasted at the PSU. This has become a lot better with 80+ ratings, but you still have the issue where efficiency tends to drop as power consumption drops.
The next big culprit is the video card. The best card I ever found was an ATI Radeon 7000 AGP. They still make them and the power consumption is somewhere in the low single digit watts. Other good options are probably Intel's onboard graphics chips. I think the latest intel integrated x3100 has a max draw of 9 watts (found it somewhere on dell's spec sheets).
Another huge culprit is the motherboard. Motherboards these days come with everything. For something like a server you don't need the fancy soundcard. The fancy secondary raid chip is also probably useless. They simply don't make plain vanilla motherboards anymore. Also the chipsets (especially nVidia's chipsets) are horrible with power consumption. There are nearly no specifications available for motherboard chipset power consumption but from my experience it can be anywhere from 10 to 30 watts total.
Laptop parts are the best. If you can build your entire server out of laptop parts, that would be ideal. Laptop parts usually have the right configurations for clocking down the CPU, not having a power hungry motherboard, and having efficient parts along with it (wireless, hard drives). For example a 2.5" laptop hard drive even while spinning will consume around 2 to 3 watts. A normal 3.5" hard drive on the other hand can suck 7 watts while spinning. I still haven't come close to beating my dell pentium M laptop in terms of power even with a Via Eden 600mhz system with nothing but a hard drive attached. The laptop would idle at 26 watts (screen off) while the Via would idle at 40watts.
Todays CPUs (intel core, a64 single cores) are incredibly efficient. For example I was able to build a 45watt idle AMD64 single core system. The trick is you have to pick the other parts carefully. The board I have (Asus Via board, they no longer make it) allowed me to clock down the CPU to 1000mhz and lower the voltage.
For really small server tasks, you may want to consider purchasing a wireless router and turning it into a server by using custom firmware like DD-WRT. Some wireless routers come with usb ports which will allow you to easily attach some flash memory for storage. Routers are also naturally headless so you don't have extra useless overhead from sound and video. To top it all off they come with 3 interfaces! One for the wan, another for the lan, and a wireless interface. What more could you ask for!
While it's not a VIA chipset, I built a media center system yesterday using the following: Mobo: ASUS M2A-VM HDMI CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ AM2 Case: Antec NSK1380 It's about the same form factor as the Shuttle, it's low power with a certified 80Plus PSU, and it has the advantages of being upgradeable: you can replace the motherboard if you need to, and it takes a standard AM2 CPU, which is a lot easier to lay your hands on. Only one caveat: you don't have a lot of space to work with, so if you want to replace
I used VIA (and Cyrix) back in the days of Socket 7 and they worked reliably and well for me. I have not used VIA in any new configurations, primarily because I've been rooting for AMD and a long-time supporter of their CPUs. All that aside, I want to see VIA succeed and succeed admirably. Why? Because competition for Intel (and yes, AMD too) will only benefit the consumer in the long run. If the VIA processors force AMD and Intel to rethink their designs and then _innovate_ to keep up with (or keep ahead of) VIA then the consumers win, win, and win.
What could we get out of this? Loads, of course. One thing I'm not worried about is speed of the chips. Yes, faster CPUs are generally a good thing but I'd like to see more efficient chips coming out in all areas from the chip makers. I'd like to see less heat, less power usage under load, less standby power usage, reduced need for fans/cooling, and more along the lines of efficiency. More efficient chips, especially power usage, equates to less money I spend on utility bills or batteries or whatever. More money in my pockets, more efficient chips, more competition among the chip makers - big and small - all equals "the goodness".
At work, we used the mini-itx with fanless case for branch office VPN solutions using linux + openswan (which in turn connected back to checkpoint clusters as well as other branch office openswan gateways). At home, I have a VIA chipset m/b with an Athlon 3000+ processer which has been running great for me for a few years.
It's funny, but I could never get my EPIA EN-15000G to run Linux reliably. Memtest86 ran for literally days without an error. Linux would lockup hard with or without X running. NetBSD runs rock-solid, but I sure miss being able to run VMWare...
I bought a bunch of these [logicsupply.com] for use at home. They seemed to work fairly well at first, and offered some fun when people would ask how I installed stuff onto something that that small and with no CD. On the down side, you can't stack them on top of each other because the amount of heat being radiated. Then there's the crappy Rhine NIC (or crappy NIC in combination with sundry other crappy components): moderate NFS usage would result in my logs filling up with kernel messages about lost packets, and one unit
The curious thing is that the Isaiah is heading towards OoO, whereas Intel's going to build the first in-order chip since the Pentium in Silverthorn.
C7 already has a good track-record for small form factor, low power, and providing acceptable performance at that category. IMO with the OoO they're heading more towards the laptop market, and I think they could've done something at least less conventional with the design.
Imagine that they modified the C7-M in-order execution core to a 4-way, fine grain interleaved multithreading, and have 2 cores. The existing C7-M has a short pipe, so pipeflushes aren't as penalizing. At the clockspeed that they're starting at (2GHz), each thread would have acceptable performance for your typical workload. And as OSes are becoming more thread happy (OSX is definitely one of them), such design would be at least something different than ordinary. It would be like having a cut down Sun Niagara in your laptop.
The current design would make it work decently well for low end laptop and desktops, but I can't help but think that the core now has a bunch of stuff that they can't exactly turn off - I haven't heard of a CPU that could switch off its OoO and retire queue, and the die size has increased significantly compared to the C7.
These VIA CPUs and their motherboards would do a lot more good if their nVidia drivers were completely open. Quite a lot of the overall processing power is in the nVidia chip on the mobo. But when the drivers for Linux (and probably Windows, too) don't fully expose all the video features, the CPU has to do a lot more work preprocessing, at much lower efficiency than the nVidia chip can.
These VIA CPUs and their motherboards would do a lot more good if their nVidia drivers were completely open.
What nVidia? All of the Mini-ITX motherboards with VIA processors that I know of, have VIA chipset and graphics as well. Including boards made by other companies like Jetway. Anyway, there are no complete open drivers for these chips either (which is unfortunate -- see my other post on C7 performance).
Whoops, not nVidia, S3. There are open OpenChrome [openchrome.org] drivers, but they can't get at the best features like full OpenGL and alpha-blending HW.
You're right. But the poster has as point. The Unichrome support is really bad on Linux. There are about 3 different drivers to try, all with differing results:
- The OpenChrome drivers, open source, some hw-accel support - Unichrome drivers, open source but taking a purist approach that lacks features - Via's own drivers, limited binaries for only certain distros, nightmare compile process, but most features supported
Unfortunately for me, I bought a VIA-epia ex1000 mini-ITX. It has some nice TV out connectors (component out!), so needs a driver that knows how to get this going. Having wasted a lot of time trying to build the drivers for FC7, I gave up and ended up using the Via binaries with FC5. The problem then is that other bits of hardware aren't detected under FC5, leaving me to patch PCI tables and rebuild the kernel to get the right southbridge driver (made a big difference to system performance - much smoother) and the SMBUS working.
Personally I think the problem is with Via. They claim to support open source, but throwing out the odd binary driver and giving mangled sources with not too easy to follow build instructions isn't much more than lip service. If they were serious, they could setup a yum repository for Fedora and make rpm's and debs for each major release of the distros they choose to support. Putting all the download packages on one page of their site would also help, as would openly releasing all their datasheets.
I hope they learn to do better, because I feel their products are held back by the poor Linux support:(
I was wrong about nVidia - the VIA video chips are S3. But still, the GPU can be more powerful than the CPU. Though programming GPU for all the tasks of a CPU is hard, it can be done, which is why there's interest in General Purpose Graphics Processing Units [gpgpu.org] (GPGPU).
Actually, the new Via architecture shares a lot more in common with the Core 2 -- Its out-of-order, spends a lot of die space on speculation, has a fairly wide execution pipe, has something similar to the Intel's uOp-fusion and much more cache than the old C7. Its also prepped to go dual-core, but the company says that'll probably only happen once they go to 45nm. This has basically nothing in common with Silverthorn, which goes back to in-order, narrow execution pipe and smaller caches in the interest of saving die-space and power envelope. Of course, Via's chip is still focused on low-power, so it doesn't scale past 2ghz (at least at 65nm, they say) but its probably comparable to Core 2 on a clock-for-clock, core-for-core basis, give or take 20% or so.
The Summary kind of has it backwards, Via's new chip competes more closely with Core 2, while Intel's Silverthorn competes more closely with Via's C7 chips.
but as the article said, this time it's more powerful. The C7 is not particularly strong because of its in-order execution core, and the new CPU appears to fix this.
For the record, my 2 GHz C7 machine can play a 720p h.264 video smoothly, but only without sound:) This is using MPlayer, no hardware acceleration except Xvideo.
Follow The Trend (Score:5, Interesting)
Naturally, this will first occur in low-performance devices where huge amounts of memory are not necessary. Then, it will work its way into the PC and up from there.
This is why Intel is divesting itself of discrete memory technologies - they don't want to be holding the bag when they're obsoleted by on-chip memory.
SPU manufacturers had better be ready for this because discrete CPUs will be going the way of the horse and buggy if anyone can ever do such a thing.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
For those who don't know, this is a troll. The CPU is way faster than RAM. Replacing the cache (which is large physically compared to RAM) with normal DRAM would be a disaster for performance. Go look at the original Celeron, then remember that this chip is even faster than that.
This is like saying cars will soon move back to steam, starting with small cars, because steam engines don't need large refineries to refine the oil. Technically correct on one point, but ignores lots of reality that would complete
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"If you can find a CMOS-compatible, high-density (e.g. - SRAM's six transistors per cell is toooo big) memory technology, then we're going to be at the point where we can simply replace the cache memory with on-board memory. If said on-chip memory technology is nonvolati
Re: (Score:2)
The speed increases with physical size. You simply cant fit too much cache ram on to a cpu's die.
A alternative is to use slower ram but that slows down the entire computer.
Plus it would be stupid to have to replace your CPU to upgrade your ram.
Re:Follow The Trend (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't necessarily matter if the DRAM were freed of external pin packaging constraints. For example, imagine if the CPU had an SRAM L1 cache, no L2 cache and on-chip DRAM main memory. With DRAM, you can internally access an entire row at one time. Using row-wide access, you could fill entire virtual memory pages into the L1 cache in a single RAM cycle.
Getting the most out of such a setup might require changes to the way the memory and cache have been managed for the last 20 years, but the total potential bandwith available from on-chip DRAM could be staggering.
Parent
IMHO, GPU's disappear first. (Score:2)
GPU's on the other hand are fairly constant in requirements. Once it can handle HDTV, it'll be good for a lot of low and medium end use - more than 90% of users, IMHO.
It's inevitable... when's the last time you bought a Floating Point Processor? Every PC needed to do FP, so it go
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
On single-threaded CPU's, perhaps. But look at the Sun UltraSPARC T1 [wikipedia.org] and T2. They are multithreaded - each core rotates between up to four threads on each clock cycle. When a cache miss occurs, it simply pulls the affected thread from rotation and continues with the remaining threads while fetching the data in the background. This means cache misses have a much smaller impact on performance than they do on single-
Re:Troll. Was Re:Follow The Trend (Score:4, Interesting)
What he means is: forget on-chip cache -- on-chip main memory. IOW, instead of having main memory on the motherboard, it would be embedded into your processor, running, presumable, at the same speed as the CPU.
If you follow the trends happening in CPUs, including this one, faster CPUs aren't the big issue. The real issue is the bus. The bus is slow. The more you put on the other side of it, the better. A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo.
Parent
Re:Troll. Was Re:Follow The Trend (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Troll. Was Re:Follow The Trend (Score:5, Informative)
Memory on the die has been done in micro controlers for years. It isn't going to happen on PCs for a long time.
"A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo."
What is sufficient memory? 4 GB or Maybe 512 MB? There is a reason that they use Static ram for cache. It needs to be fast. So lets say that you get 512 MB on the die are you not going to allow the user to add more memory? Or how about this. You put 512 MB on the die and then let them add memory on the buss if they need more. And then you could have it swap memory from the slower buss memory in to the fast on die memory to speed everything up... Yea and we could call it a cache!
Until you can put the full address space on the die it will not work for anything but microcontrollers.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It is hard and it has been done. That is exactly what the cache does.
The tasks that need the memory the most stay in the cache longest.
Re: (Score:2)
Okay well get back to me when you finish with that little detail.
"2) What's sufficient? Well, that depends on the application. Just as you have chips geared at different applications today, you'd have chips geared at even more different applications. In case you haven't noticed, we're moving away from the general purpose computing device anyhow and increasingly into more specialized devices to meet specialized needs."
Not really. PC, Laptops, and even smart phones a
Re: (Score:2)
If you follow the trends happening in CPUs, including this one, faster CPUs aren't the big issue. The real issue is the bus. The bus is slow. The more you put on the other side of it, the better. A CPU like this new VIA CPU might be slow, but if you had sufficient memory integrated right on the CPU die, it would blow the pants off your latest 4+GHz Core 2 Duo.
NOT true! Yes, on-die cache is way faster than main memory, but for most applications, you're hitting the cache most of the time. I can't find any articles right now with numbers, but I know from looking at tests on the effect of cache size on performance that at some point you hit rapidly diminishing returns for cache size increases.
It's pretty analogous to main memory vs disk latency. If you don't have enough main memory, your system bogs down swapping to disk, but if you have enough memory that tha
Sorry, brother. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then if I read right they go on to say Isaiah will be similar. Sorry, but that's not even in the same league as Silverthorn. Silverthorn will be more like a sub 5 watt product. If this is right, they'll be competing against Core 2 processors and performance won't even be close.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Support VIA C7 @ 1.5 GHz D (TDP 25 W). VIA C7 @ 1.5 GHz (TDP 12 W). VIA C7 @ 1.3 GHz (TDP
So the C7 can be a 5W part too. Which is not too bad for a 1GHz CPU.
I guess the ISAIAH will have such a version too. Sounds interesting, doesn't it?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Sorry, brother. (Score:5, Informative)
Intel is "shooting for" a 5w processor (no clarification if this is max load, or idle) in 2010.
VIA's Pico-ITX is already available at 1ghz, and the previous generation C7's are available up to 2ghz.
Intel's Silverthorne processor is also aiming for the Pentium M era performance (900mhz - 2.3ghz).
Yes, the initial Silverthorne release is slated for Q1-Q2 2008, but the performance goals you mentioned aren't slated until 2010. So what I'm saying here, is that you can already buy everything that Intel is "shooting for" 2 years before they plan on reaching those goals. With all likelihood, the 2008 release of the Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak. Which will put it right in competitive range of the C7 and new Pico-ITX.
-Rick
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, brother. (Score:5, Informative)
My first clue you were full of crap was this: "Silverthorne will be a 1ghz proc sucking down 20w at peak". I'm not sure if you pay attention, but Intel has Core 2 Solo chips running at 1.06/1.2Ghz that peak at 5.5 watts. Silverthorne is a 45nm chip running on a simplified core-2-esque march, and you're making this ridiculous claim that it will "suck down" 20w at peak.
Seriously, 2006 called, it wants its news back.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And after I RTFA it does have the on-b
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Via charges for its i-Dot which is a mini-ATX system 65 quid. Similar system in a mini-ITX format is 120+. Reasons aplenty: demand for ultrasmall systems for use in point of sale and home kit is consistently high and in the mini-ITX arena Via is king. There is no contest. Intel simply does not manage to fit into the TDP requirements of most enclosures. While there are mainboards around, nobody buys them.
Re: (Score:2)
"out of date"? (Score:3, Interesting)
While past architectures have been considerably out-of-date in terms of modern features
They may not be bleeding edge, but their Eden processors used to compare very favorably to Intel's low-power chips, and have unique features like Padlock accelerated encryption (which is supported at least partially by the Linux kernel to accelerate cryptographic stuff.) Padlock made it possible to have a very low power VPN server..
The only real problem I've had with the VIA processors has been availability, pricing, and cheesy 3rd party motherboards. Mini itx dot com for example wants to bend you over backwards for some pretty old systems; the latest stuff you practically need to take out a mortgage from. You can't really buy the boards from but a handful of places. VIA also seems to be ignoring the networking market (if they sold a low-power board with 3 gigabit ports, they'd put Soekris out of its misery once and for all- overnight.)
Same thing with AMD's low-power Geode (which is plug-compatible with certain athlons.) You can't buy them anywhere except bundled with really shitty motherboards.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Also the gOS boards are quite nice, though at micro-ATX are harder to fit in to a low power solution... I have two of these, one running my router with a dual Netflex-3 card (yeah I know, older 10/100, but I don't need any faster) and it ru
Re: (Score:2)
One of the things I appreciate about my daughter's gPC is that the power management stuff mostly works. That's a lot better than the typical experience I've had with Linux power management, where basically nothing works.
Memories (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.pcper.com/images/reviews/511/isaiah_arch.jpg [pcper.com]
I've got a C7 running a home email server. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they make a higher performance chip that get within the range of a Core 2, I'd consider buying one to replace my higher performance server in a few years. I hate paying for more electricity, and then paying to get rid of the waste heat. I'd even consider it for a workstation PC if the performance is good enough. Quiet fans are desirable to me, super-duper performance matters fairly little.
Re: (Score:2)
Detected 664.539 MHz processor.
Memory: 195328k
Though my EPIA is a 500Mhz fella and no fan too, I boot it from CF too so it's presence is hardly felt (until you switch the monitor on!).
Re: (Score:2)
I have an Efika: 128MB of RAM, 400MHz e300 processor, 100Mb Ethernet, 2x USB 1.1, IRDA, RS-232, 3.3v PCI slot, and 44-pin IDE; 1080mW draw for the whole board.
$100.
-:sigma.SB
Re:I've got a C7 running a home email server. (Score:5, Informative)
For a while I was on a mission to build a really power efficient PC. Unfortunately when I got my AC power meter, I learned a number of disappointing things:
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Mobo: ASUS M2A-VM HDMI
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ AM2
Case: Antec NSK1380
It's about the same form factor as the Shuttle, it's low power with a certified 80Plus PSU, and it has the advantages of being upgradeable: you can replace the motherboard if you need to, and it takes a standard AM2 CPU, which is a lot easier to lay your hands on. Only one caveat: you don't have a lot of space to work with, so if you want to replace
Competition is good (Score:4, Interesting)
What could we get out of this? Loads, of course. One thing I'm not worried about is speed of the chips. Yes, faster CPUs are generally a good thing but I'd like to see more efficient chips coming out in all areas from the chip makers. I'd like to see less heat, less power usage under load, less standby power usage, reduced need for fans/cooling, and more along the lines of efficiency. More efficient chips, especially power usage, equates to less money I spend on utility bills or batteries or whatever. More money in my pockets, more efficient chips, more competition among the chip makers - big and small - all equals "the goodness".
My $.02 for the day...
all on a 94M-transistor (Score:3, Funny)
-mcgrew
No spam for YOU!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
VIA processors and motherboards (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.logicsupply.com/ [logicsupply.com]
At work, we used the mini-itx with fanless case for branch office VPN solutions using linux + openswan (which in turn connected back to checkpoint clusters as well as other branch office openswan gateways). At home, I have a VIA chipset m/b with an Athlon 3000+ processer which has been running great for me for a few years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Overengineered against the Silverthorn (Score:4, Interesting)
C7 already has a good track-record for small form factor, low power, and providing acceptable performance at that category. IMO with the OoO they're heading more towards the laptop market, and I think they could've done something at least less conventional with the design.
Imagine that they modified the C7-M in-order execution core to a 4-way, fine grain interleaved multithreading, and have 2 cores. The existing C7-M has a short pipe, so pipeflushes aren't as penalizing. At the clockspeed that they're starting at (2GHz), each thread would have acceptable performance for your typical workload. And as OSes are becoming more thread happy (OSX is definitely one of them), such design would be at least something different than ordinary. It would be like having a cut down Sun Niagara in your laptop.
The current design would make it work decently well for low end laptop and desktops, but I can't help but think that the core now has a bunch of stuff that they can't exactly turn off - I haven't heard of a CPU that could switch off its OoO and retire queue, and the die size has increased significantly compared to the C7.
Open Video Drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What nVidia? All of the Mini-ITX motherboards with VIA processors that I know of, have VIA chipset and graphics as well. Including boards made by other companies like Jetway. Anyway, there are no complete open drivers for these chips either (which is unfortunate -- see my other post on C7 performance).
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Open Video Drivers - ya, they suck (Score:4, Interesting)
- The OpenChrome drivers, open source, some hw-accel support
- Unichrome drivers, open source but taking a purist approach that lacks features
- Via's own drivers, limited binaries for only certain distros, nightmare compile process, but most features supported
Unfortunately for me, I bought a VIA-epia ex1000 mini-ITX. It has some nice TV out connectors (component out!), so needs a driver that knows how to get this going. Having wasted a lot of time trying to build the drivers for FC7, I gave up and ended up using the Via binaries with FC5. The problem then is that other bits of hardware aren't detected under FC5, leaving me to patch PCI tables and rebuild the kernel to get the right southbridge driver (made a big difference to system performance - much smoother) and the SMBUS working.
Looking at forums I'm definitely not alone. This guy ended up with XP: http://cg-note.blogspot.com/2007/09/via-epia-ex1000-installation-adventure.html [blogspot.com]
Personally I think the problem is with Via. They claim to support open source, but throwing out the odd binary driver and giving mangled sources with not too easy to follow build instructions isn't much more than lip service. If they were serious, they could setup a yum repository for Fedora and make rpm's and debs for each major release of the distros they choose to support. Putting all the download packages on one page of their site would also help, as would openly releasing all their datasheets.
I hope they learn to do better, because I feel their products are held back by the poor Linux support
Mike
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
More like Core 2 (Score:3, Insightful)
The Summary kind of has it backwards, Via's new chip competes more closely with Core 2, while Intel's Silverthorn competes more closely with Via's C7 chips.
Even the C7 has "even SSE3"... (Score:3, Informative)
but as the article said, this time it's more powerful. The C7 is not particularly strong because of its in-order execution core, and the new CPU appears to fix this.
For the record, my 2 GHz C7 machine can play a 720p h.264 video smoothly, but only without sound :) This is using MPlayer, no hardware acceleration except Xvideo.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)