Intel Introduces Atom Chips For New Devices 50
angry tapir writes "Not only has Intel recruited another company to produce Atom CPUs, as covered earlier on Slashdot, the chipmaker also unveiled four Atom chips that will go into devices such as entertainment systems for cars, videoconferencing devices, robots and interactive kiosks. The Z500-series Atom processors are integrated chips the size of a penny that draw little power and do not require fans to operate. The chips draw 2.5 watts of power or less and run at speeds of between 1.10GHz and 1.6GHz. The chips offer integrated 2D and 3D graphics and will be manufactured using Intel's existing 45-nanometer process."
Looks good (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember going to an Intel job fair back in late 2005. During the fair, Intel told people that we are no longer in a day and age where everyone wants the fastest processor possible; for most computing tasks, the processors we have are fast enough and people are more interested in something that is inexpensive and lightweight.
Indeed, the Intel atom is a good deal faster than the original Cray.
I feel Windows XP is Microsoft's last release where they made improvements to the operating system that significantly affected the end-user's experience; it was a version of Windows with real memory protection. People's opposition to Microsoft basically shoving Vista down people's throat (however, one can easily buy XP by doing an appropriate shopping.google.com search [google.com]) is well-justified. Vista doesn't really offer anything that XP doesn't have. [1]
I don't think the ARM processor is going to be real competition. Right now, a netbook can be had for as little as $200 (I have seen Dell have their low-end Linux Mini 9 on sale for $200 twice in the last month); the main expense with a netbook is the case, the screen, and the keyboard; the processor is not a significant expense. Nor is Windows XP, which Microsoft is making available for $40-$50 to netbook OEMs (and is forced to continually make available because of competition from Linux)
- Sam
[1] ClearType support for XP is a free download from Microsoft, along with the Vista fonts. Anyway, I don't like ClearType myself; I think Verdana is the perfect screen font and my eyes are trained to look at Verdana without anti-aliasing on the screeen.
Re:Intel Introduces Atom Chips For New Devices (Score:4, Interesting)
Still 10 billion shipments behind ARM.
And 3 orders of magnitude short of ARM's power consumption.
For Robots? (Score:1, Interesting)
Who in their right mind would develop robotics on x86?
There are a million different processors that would be much better suited for it.
Re:Intel Introduces Atom Chips For New Devices (Score:1, Interesting)
The CPU only using 2.5W is already quite nice, but Intel doesn't want Atom chips to be used in "nice" computers seemingly, and we're stuck using crappy old chipsets with 20W+ power consumption with them.
VIA Nano is nicer seemingly, just too bad you can't actually buy it anywhere.
Re:Looks good (Score:1, Interesting)
With any luck one of the major manufacturers will get over their fears and just ship a modern ARM Linux based netbook and settle this matter at last.
For this to be possible, I think we will need someone to figure out how to reduce the cost of a netbook to $100. Right now, it looks like the Intel Atom per-unit cost is $50; the lowest-price netbook is $200 so that gets the price down to $160, assuming someone can make the ARM chipset for $10. To further reduce the cost, we'll probably have to replace the 1024x600 screen with a 640x480 screen and make the unit something akin to a glorified calculator.
I think the average netbook user is simply unwilling to use Linux (I'll bet at least 1/2 of the low-end Linux netbooks are promptly reformatted with a pirated copy of Windows), so the system will have to be significantly cheaper for people to try something that's not Windows.
- Sam
Re:Looks good (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed - I would happily pay more for an ARM SoC based "netbook" than an Atom based one, simply because of the extra freedom the low idle power consumption would give me. I have both an Atom based netbook (Acer Aspire One) and an ARM based internet tablet (Nokia N810). The Acer with its stock ~23Wh battery can do a bit over 2 hours of "desktop" use and maybe 3 hours of idle time. Because of this every time I want to use it, I need to wait for it to boot up which takes a significant amount of time*.
Compare that to the N810, which can do 5-6 hours of use with its tiny ~6Wh battery and about 6-7 days of idle time. This means I dont ever need to bother turning it off or on, it is always ready to be used at any time. I can pick it up from the table, tap the screen and I can immediately begin browsing the web for example. When I'm done I just put it back, no need to turn anything off.
Now the N810 of course is overall much much slower than the Acer (400MHz TI OMAP processor vs the Acer's 1.6GHz Atom), but you could quadruple its power use and it would still wipe the floor with the Atom. Give it a battery as big as as the Acer and it would propably go on for weeks of random daily use without needing a charge.
* I can use suspend as well, but even waking up from it takes a while and when suspended it still seems to eat the battery at a good rate. Not to mention it cannot do any background tasks such as incoming email notification when suspended.
The rise of the cheap ARM linux netbook (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:For Robots? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
It's nice that Intel wants to help in this field also.
It seems mostly like Intel intends it to murder Geode. AMD announced the end of design for Geode products (we talked about it here) meaning that the top Geode performer is the LX 800. It's fanless at 500 MHz in environments up to 180 F. Geode LX 800 systems come in around 5 W TDP for processor+chipset, which includes integrated video, USB2, and ATA with UDMA. I have two (DT Research DT168 and WebDT 360) and am thinking about more (from PC Engines) but systems with these chips (theoretically) have the potential to deliver more processing power for the same price - based on what current Atom- and Geode-based systems cost.
Re:BeagleBoard v2.0? (Score:3, Interesting)
"It will be interesting to see how useful of a NAS I can make that into."
The downside of the Atom motherboard for NAS is only two SATA ports. Mine is working fine as a combined SDTV MythTV box and 24/7 web/file server, but I think that eventually I'm going to have to replace it with a low-power AMD motherboard and CPU so I can add more hard drives and RAID them.