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Portables Hardware

Power-Light Power Chips 186

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the things-that-are-hot-and-cool dept.
DD writes to tell us ZDNet is running a story about a new Santa Clara, CA based startup that is boasting a new line of low-power, Power chips, the same architecture found in current day Macs and IBM servers. From the article: "The company's first so-called PWRficient chip will feature two processing cores, run at 2GHz and consume on average about 5 watts, thanks to an emphasis on integration and circuit design. At a maximum, it will consume 25 watts, far less than the single-core Power chips that can hit 90 watts found on the market today."
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Power-Light Power Chips More

Power-Light Power Chips

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  • Embedded market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thanatopsis ( 29786 ) <despain.brian@g m a i l .com> on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:05PM (#13866244) Homepage
    According to the article they are going to focus on the embedded market. I guess they mean the embedded market that need 2 GHZ embedded chips.

    • Re:Embedded market (Score:5, Insightful)

      by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:14PM (#13866303)
      From the article:

      "The PWRficient actually won't come out for two years, so it's hard to predict exactly how it will stack up against the competition."

      In two years a 2 GHZ dual core will probably be a good option for a high-end embedded CPU.

    • Re:Embedded market (Score:2, Insightful)

      by merreborn ( 853723 )
      According to the article they are going to focus on the embedded market. I guess they mean the embedded market that need 2 GHZ embedded chips.

      Yeah, who could ever use 2 GHZ processing power? It's not like Tivo's video encoding/decoding takes up any processing time. And lord knows I could never use that much processing power on any sort of mobile computing device, like a Palm Pilot, or Treo.

      I mean, who wants to be able to process large amounts of data, fast?

      • Re:Embedded market (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:30PM (#13866435) Journal
        It's not like Tivo's video encoding/decoding takes up any processing time.

        No, it's not if they've got any sense. At least, not general purpose CPU time. Dedicated video compressor / decompressor chips get much more performance per watt, and usually more performance per $ as well when compared to general purpose hardware. The iPod video can play H.264 clips that a moderately fast G4 struggles with - and not because the iPod has a faster CPU.

        • Jeesh guys - I guess I should have named said markets such as signal processing. I feel like a pinata.

        • Re:Embedded market (Score:3, Informative)

          by Doctor Memory ( 6336 )
          Of course, it's a little harder to upgrade a hardware codec, so you're locked into supporting whatever yesterday's killer format was, instead of what people want today. What you really want is some general-purpose hardware you can reconfigure without too much pain. Say a speedy processor to pump data to a DSP chip or two....

          • Re:Embedded market (Score:3, Informative)

            by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
            Many of these ASICs are in fact FPGAs. In volume, a decent sized FPGA can be bought for under $2. The contents of the chip is stored in a 2Mb flash chip, and can be re-flashed if new codecs are required. Some FPGA manufacturers even give you the design for a simple PowerPC core, so you can run a general purpose OS on part of the chip and feed data to the hardware CODECs.
        • True, but only if you're in the kind of application domain where there are cheap off-the-shelf hardware-based options.

          If you're a relatively small company making embedded products that aren't designed for the consumer market, chances are designing and fabricating all of that custom hardware is going to be much, much, much, much more expensive than simply slapping in a fast CPU and doing most the work in software. MAYBE an FPGA or two might be useful for some of the tasks that are easier to implement in har
      • Flight control electronics use PPC chips. The amount of data to track flight variables increases with every generation of aircraft.

    • Re:Embedded market (Score:5, Informative)

      by afidel ( 530433 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:16PM (#13866324)
      Uses
      Print rasterizers: I have printers with imaging engines capable of 30+ppm but I rarely achieve it in the real world because the printers are hobled by a measly ~500Mhz rasterizer.
      Networking equipment:If you want to do any kind of complex routing or switching in a truely flexible manner without ASICS you are going to need as fast of a processor as possible.
      Complex analyisis of data in an appliance:Antispam appliances are often limited in the algorithms they use because the cost in processing time for some of the better ones are too expensive to apply to the volume of messages they are supposed to handle.
      etc.

      While I am aware that there are large swaths of the embedded market where nothing more complex than a microcontroller is needed I am also cognizant of the fact that there are many areas where a more powerfull embedded processor which is still energy efficient is still very usefull.

    • Re:Embedded market (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:17PM (#13866337) Homepage Journal
      Actually, YES, the embedded market that needs 2GHz chips - folks like me doing signal processing for communications, among other things. Do you have any idea how many operations per second it takes to do an echo canceler for a phone, or to do GSM or CDMA decoding in software (if you want a system that can adapt to new protocols - a software defined radio or SDR - you need to use a more general purpose part than the dedicated ICs for this), or to do the latest 802.11 protocols, or to do video decompression, or ....

      Yes, Virginia, there is a market for 2GHz processors in the embedded space.
      • The chip comes with two 10Gbit ethernet controllers and four 1Gbit ethernet controller on die. I would imagine that just routing packets between these could use a fair amount of a dual-core 2GHz PowerPCs available processing power.
      • Actually, YES, the embedded market that needs 2GHz chips - folks like me doing signal processing for communications, among other things.

        I'm sorry, WHY are you doing DSP on a general purpose CPU again? Methinks that's the precise reason why DSP vector processors were invented...

        Just in case you're being cheeky, comparing a 2GHz DSP to a 2GHz general purpose CPU is a bit disingenous, don't you think? I mean, DSPs can have their clocks ramped up to ungodly levels because they tend to need less sophitication in

        • Lots of people do DSP on general purpose CPUs. One reason is that some large DSP systems need the features in a full RTOS that only runs on a real CPU. Another is portability: the transition from desktop prototype to real system is often easier when the taret CPU is non a true DSP. Another reason has to do with memory and I/O. General purpose CPUs can have gobs of memory and have an easier interface to things like PCI and other standard busses. DSPs often have limited memory and require custom bridges

          • Sounds a) expensive and b) slow. If you just need pluggable codecs, it seems to me that DSPs would be cheaper and faster. One might be tempted to combine the CPU and DSP in something like a cell phone, but it strikes me that simple screen updates, button handling, and other standard chores would impinge on the proceesing ability of the CPU, requiring that the CPU be much larger and more expensive. That can be particularly problematic for cell phones because they have to run on such razor thin profit margins
        • IIRC, the Power instruction set has some DSP-like instructions (e.g., MAC, multiply and accumulate). And, of course, they could have licensed the AltiVec APU.
          • SIMD instructions [wikipedia.org] have a lot in common with DSPs. In fact, they really are an attempt to add DSP features to a General Purpose processor with the intent of running multimedia through the main CPU. This has been particularly useful for things like software video players, but CPUs of today still have a hard time competing with dedicated hardware like an MPEG2 hardware codec.

          • (F)MAC (Score:2)

            by joib ( 70841 )
            Actually, many "normal" architectures have FP MAC units instead of MUL and ADD (at least IA64, PA-RISC, x86 being the major one without it). Many algorithms used in FP calculations can be efficiently implemented in terms of FMAC operations (matrix algebra, FFT etc.). Also, it is more accurate since it avoids the double rounding associated with a separate ADD and MUL, and thus also many "intrinsic" operations such as division and sqrt can be more efficiently implemented.
        • Why do DSP on a general purpose CPU?

          Usually, to reduce part count. AltiVec on a PowerPC performs better than a dedicated DSP in a lot of operations, for the cost involved, and you get to do all kinds of other stuff with the unit besides specialised FMAC or encryption or so on (which AltiVec has, and does just fine).

          If these chips have the AltiVec/VMX unit, are 64bit like they say, and low-power like they say, then they will find uses just like Freescale are pitching 1.5-2GHz single and dual core chips (7448

        • Re:Embedded market (Score:5, Informative)

          by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @04:27PM (#13866844) Homepage Journal
          Because the difference between a DSP and a normal CPU is very small now-a-days.

          It used to be that only DSPs had multiply and accumulate instructions - now many CPUs do (the Power being among them).

          It used to be that only DSPs had the register count to do an FFT without having to spill to memory during the butterflys - the Power also has enough registers to avoid having to spill to memory in the innermost butterflys.

          It used to be that only DSPs had the fast barrel shifters for single-cycle shifts of more than one bit position - now most CPUs have them.

          I can go on and on - but simply put, the only real difference between a DSP and a modern CPU is that very few DSPs are clocked at 2GHz, while many CPUs are.

          The really fast DSPs are the ones like the TI C6X family - which get their "speed" from being very long instruction word processors, much like the Itanium. They don't have a very high clock speed - the fastest C6x is running about 1GHz. They are benchmark queens - the will do a 4096 point FFT blindingly fast. Oh, you wanted to do something ELSE with the data after you did the FFT? Sorry, but now you are going to lose most of that speed as the code falls out of cache, and as you run out of vectorizable code and stall most of the cores. Besides, you can get just as much speed-up using the vector instructions of a modern CPU (Altivec/SSE etc.) as you do from the C6X processor.

          They also suck when you are doing protocol as opposed to signal processing - DSPs *hate* jump instructions, and don't EVEN think of asking them to do a context switch - they are like a drag racer, they go fast until you ask them to TURN.

          In short, the days of the DSP as the king of signal processing are past - you can do more with a general purpose processor and an FPGA than you can with DSPs for the same amount of board real-estate, bill of materials cost, and power consumption.

          Sorry, but since this is actually what I do for a living, I know from first-hand experience that DSPs really aren't all they are cracked up to be with respect to regular processors now-a-days.

          • Re:Embedded market (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Bastian ( 66383 )
            It actually reminds me of two SiliconGraphics Indigo2s (the teal ones) that we had at work. One had the the 2D graphics accelerator, and the other had the low-end 3D accelerator.

            While the one with the 3D acceleration was super-fast for wireframe work, rendering any 3D graphics with a fill was noticeably faster on the computer with the 2D card. The problem was that there was no 2D acceleration on the 3D card. Any speedup you gained on the 3D coordinate transforms was more than lost when the time came to d
    • Embedded does not necessarily mean "low-power" (although it's a benefit).

      I'm currently working on an embedded board with 8 GB of RAM and dual Xeons, with 4 gigE ports, as well as another one that has dual 970FX chips and 4GB of memory with 4 gigE ports.
    • One day, we'll be automatically generating 3D textured models by just waving our mobiles around the objects. Already in Japan, they're OCR'ing text off printed pages with their mobiles.

      There are plenty of things to do with computation in mobiles...
    • This reminds me about a story of an engineer, a toaster, a king and a computer 'scientist'.

      Once upon a time, in a kingdom not far from here, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"

      One advisor, an engineer , answered first. "It is a toaster," he said. The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?" The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller,

  • Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Namronorman ( 901664 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:07PM (#13866265)
    This is simply amazing, and if they're even remotely as powerful compared to their future competitors and their initial cost is not so bad, you could easilly factor in the energy savings for spending more on hardware versus spending more on electricty.

    • Re:Amazing (Score:5, Informative)

      by Thanatopsis ( 29786 ) <despain.brian@g m a i l .com> on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:09PM (#13866274) Homepage
      It is amazing expecially when you consider that many current Intel chips suck down 150 watts at 2.8 GHZ. This isn't like Transmeta either. The team at PA Semi are some pretty heavy hitters in the chip design world.
    • This is simply amazing

      What is simply amazing? At this point we some handwaving about "emphasis on integration and circuit design." Projections from venture capital PowerPoint presentations tend not to pan out in production units. This looks like Transmeta II, except they are aiming lower.

    • What's so amazing about vapor? The chips don't exist. From the article:
      The PWRficient actually won't come out for two years, so it's hard to predict exactly how it will stack up against the competition.
      Wait until they deliver the goods before you believe the hype.
    • I don't know about "simply amazing"... a cure for cancer would be simply amazing. This is more along the lines of "pretty cool." ;)

  • Apple (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) <zachary.pruckowski@gmail.com> on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:11PM (#13866289)
    So are they going to be regretting moving away from that? I mean, that would have an appeal in a low to middle end laptop that can run for 12 hours or something. I'd certainly pay for it. I'm impressed with my iBook battery as it is, but it is just shy of being able to cover all my needs in a day. Or at least, usually have to think about charging it. An 8 hour laptop would be great for people on the move, like students, or amateur filmmakers.

    • Ever heard of AMD's Geode chips?

      • The problem of excessive CPU draw has been taken care of by staying away from the "desknotes". The current limitation of battery life is not CPU draw, but LCD draw.

        Cutting CPU current draw by half will not net a doubling of the current battery charge life.
        • That is LCD backlight draw. Roll on long life LEPs - or give me 5 cheap and easily swappable screens. They got the right wavelengths to replace LCD, they just haven't got the lifetime. But the extra waste of disposable screens can be easily offset by the greener production process - and the money made could help produce longer lived screens sooner. Gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme.
    • I'd only start regretting once PWRficient chips started shipping and in quantity. Course, I know that Mactels systems aren't shipping yet either, but it's too early to make a judgment either way.
    • I don't think that thew CPU is the main current draw in laptops. It used to be the LCD display (+ backlight) ate the huge majority of juice, but the new GPUs are proficient power eaters as well.

      With the direction OS X is heading, the GPUs are going to be seeing more use than processors in the future.

      I.E. I still think Apple is headed the right direction with OS X on Intel. Intel has the best chance for developing a chipset (including graphics) that provides the horsepower Apple needs along with the the

    • This isn't going to be a laptop class chip, when it comes out it will be better suited to herald the comeback of the Newton.

    • Re:Apple (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Egregius ( 842820 )
      They won't regret moving away. This startup is aimed at embedded chips, not desktops. Furthermore, Apple hasn't completely *abandonned* Power just yet. And it's not like Apple can base it's productline on a small start up with no real guarantees it can meet Apple's demands.

    • Re:Apple (Score:5, Insightful)

      by yamla ( 136560 ) <chris@@@hypocrite...org> on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:51PM (#13866578)
      Hardly. These chips aren't due out for two or three YEARS. Let's assume for the sake of argument that they ship IN BULK in two and a half years, an obviously optimistic estimate. Should Apple be satisfied with dual-core 2 Ghz laptops in the spring of 2008? I certainly hope not. While the power usage is sweet, we are looking at less than a 20% increase in speed (assuming you can safely compare clock speeds which, as we know from Intel and AMD, is not a good assumption) for a single core over that time. Even with dual core, that's pretty pathetic.

      Now, if these chips were shipping in bulk TODAY and were able to be ramped up to 3 or 4 Ghz over the next six to twelve months, then maybe Apple might start regretting moving away from the G4 and G5 CPUs. That is, it'd be a toss-up at that point. As it is, this is far too little too late for Apple's laptops.

      Of course, this rests on the assumption that Apple cares about processing power.

      • Re:Apple (Score:3, Funny)

        by Jozer99 ( 693146 )
        2008? By then, we will have 1.8 GHz powerbooks! The world we live in today!
      • PA Semiconductor Release [pasemi.com]

        THE PWRficient PROCESSOR ROLLOUT

        The first PWRficient chip, the PA6T-1682M, which dissipates between just 5-13 watts, depending upon the application, is a dual-core implementation running at 2GHz with two DDR2 memory controllers, 2MB of L2 cache, and a flexible I/O subsystem that supports eight PCI Express controllers, two 10 Gigabit Ethernet XAUI controllers, and four Gigabit Ethernet SGMII controllers sharing 24 serdes lanes. It will sample in the third calendar quarter of 2006, wi
        • Well, late 2007 is two years away, and I was talking about the dual-core models. The question of the day, though, is when the company would be able to ship these IN BULK. Do you really think they'll be shipping the dual-core models by the end of 2007 in sufficient quantities for all of Apple's laptops?

  • I feel a great disturbance in the Force (Score:5, Funny)

    by katana ( 122232 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:11PM (#13866290) Homepage
    As if millions of Apple customers suddenly cried out, and were silenced.

  • finally (Score:5, Funny)

    by kevin.fowler ( 915964 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:11PM (#13866291) Homepage
    What a relief. Implement this en masse and a dormitory full of idling computers running aim won't use as much energy as a small country anymore.

  • I'm just wondering: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mctk ( 840035 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:11PM (#13866292) Homepage
    How much power do processors use relative to the rest of the computer? It seems that hard drives and fans would use the majority of power (not to mention monitors and speakers if present).
    • A hard drive only uses about 10W, and a typical PC only has one. IIRC, fans use about 1/3 as much power as the components they're cooling. So processors are still using a large fraction of a computer's power.

    • Re:I'm just wondering: (Score:5, Informative)

      by masklinn ( 823351 ) <<ten.nnilksam> <ta> <gro.todhsals>> on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:27PM (#13866413)
      It seems that hard drives [...] would use the majority of power

      The average 3"5 (desktop) hard drive (aka 7200RPM SATA/ATA133) runs around 7W idle and about 10W in seeking, high-perfs being a bit higher (12W seeking for 72Gb 10000RPM Raptor drive)

      Notebook 2"5 5400RPM drives run around 1W idle (0.8W for a Samsung M40 MP0402H) and around 3W seeking.

      It seems that [...] fans would use the majority of power

      The fans I can check right now all fall between 0.15 and 0.30A, 12V.

      This means that running them at max tension (12V) you're looking at 1.8W to 3.6W. Undervolt them at 7V and you fall between 1 and 2W.

      And these are specs for 80mm to 120mm fans

      So no, hard drives and fan often ain't the worst offenders as far as power consumption goes.

  • This vs ARM Cortex A8? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sam Haine '95 ( 918696 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:14PM (#13866308)
    I wonder how this will compare to the ARM Cortex A8 [arm.com] in 2007?
  • Come on, please let this be true!

  • Vaporously Delicious (Score:5, Funny)

    by brogdon ( 65526 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:14PM (#13866310) Homepage
    "The company's first so-called PWRficient chip will feature two processing cores, run at 2GHz and consume on average about 5 watts, thanks to an emphasis on integration and circuit design. At a maximum, it will consume 25 watts, far less than the single-core Power chips that can hit 90 watts found on the market today."

    Also, thanks to our patented Vapor-based architecture, we've been able to build our level-2 RAM cache out of a giant cloud of gaseous water! And we've licensed our chips to be in the Phantom Game Console! And they'll even run Duke Nukem Forever! As we speak the SCO group is printing out some infringing Linux code with them to use as evidence in an actual trial!

    • Re:Vaporously Delicious (Score:5, Informative)

      by Thanatopsis ( 29786 ) <despain.brian@g m a i l .com> on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:22PM (#13866382) Homepage
      Well except the guys at PA Semi have actually designed and shipped chips.
      Here's some Bios
      Dan Dobberpuhl, President and CEO

      Dan Dobberpuhl, President and CEODan Dobberpuhl, who cofounded P.A. Semi in July 2003, has been credited with developing fundamental breakthroughs in the evolution of high-speed and low-power microprocessors. Prior to founding P.A. Semi, Dobberpuhl was vice president and general manager of the Broadband Processor division of Broadcom Corporation. He came to Broadcom via an acquisition of his previous company, SiByte Inc., founded in 1998, which Broadcom acquired in 2000. Before that, Dobberpuhl worked for Digital Equipment Corporation for more than 20 years, where was credited with some of the most fundamental breakthroughs in microprocessor technology. In 1998, EE Times named Dobberpuhl as one of the "40 forces to shape the future of the Semiconductor Industry." In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious IEEE Solid State Circuits Award for "Pioneering design of high-speed and low-power microprocessors."

      Dobberpuhl holds 15 patents and has many publications related to integrated circuits and CPUs, including coauthorship of the seminal textbook Design and Analysis of VLSI Circuits, published by Addison-Wesley in 1985. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois.

      Nah - he knows nothing about processor design - but random dude at slashdot know more.

      Rest of the team's bios [pasemi.com]

      BSD
      • A great interview with Dan Dobberpuhl and David Ditzel [acmqueue.org] (Transmeta's CTO) back in 2003 where he basically pre-announced this startup.

        Dobberpuhl has a nice record of creating awesome chips and selling them for a lot (IIRC he sold his last chip company to Broadcom for $2billion) - and has pretty much re-assembled many of the better parts of the StrongARM team for this one - so I bet it does well.

        I predict IBM'll buy them for their answer to StrongARM.

      • Just a joke, dude. What is this guy, your cousin or something? :)

  • But will it have AltiVec? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lax-goalie ( 730970 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:16PM (#13866323)
    The big question is will it have a vector processor? If so, it could end up in an Apple design, if for no other reason, to keep the pressure on Intel. If not, this is simply another PowerPC embedded CPU...

  • What a business plan!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by IGoChopYourDollars ( 924633 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:17PM (#13866329)
    1) design a low-power-consumption high-performance PowerPC chip that would be ideal for Apple to use
    2) keep the development so secret that spouses are kept in the dark
    3) launch the product after Apple has already abandoned PowerPC
    4) ???
    5) PROFIT!
    • They were a very, very small consumer in the PPC world. For every Mac that shipped, many many many embedded devices using PPC shipped in turn.

      Why do you think Apple has such a hard time finding PPC manufacturers willing to keep up with their demands? There just isn't all that big of a profit to be had by supplying Apple compared to the embedded space.

    • Here, let me help you: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by leoxx ( 992 )
      1) design a low-power-consumption high-performance PowerPC chip that would be ideal for Apple to use
      2) keep the development so secret that spouses are kept in the dark
      3) launch the product after Apple has already abandoned PowerPC
      4) Ignore Apple because they are irrelevant. Instead, sell stuff to the many [microsoft.com] companies [sony.com] who [nintendo.com] consume [mc.com] more [amcc.com] PPC [tundra.com] chips [dna-cs.com] than Apple ever could now or in the forseeable future.
      5) PROFIT!
  • ...since this is an embedded processor, it likely won't have things like vector processing units (Altivec) or possibly even out of order execution (as I recall the XBox 360 dropped). Take that along with the fact that it's a couple years away, and it really doesn't affect Apple at all.
  • I've been using a laptop in some fashion for the past 5 years. Honestly to me power and peformance are significantly more important than battery life. While I may stand alone or even stand with a small crowd of like minded people, I believe that current battery life is sufficient. Honestly I can't imagine sitting anywhere for more then 2 hours (roughly my Inspiron 9300's battery life) and if I did find myself in that situation I'd just power down, pop in my spare battery and go about my business for another

  • 25w is way too high! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mattnuzum ( 839319 )

    I just designed a complete computer that uses less than 3 watts [imageshack.us]! (more details [206.131.241.58])

    Admittedly, it probably does far less than a power based computer. It runs at 1 MIPS, has only 64 bytes of RAM [microchip.com] and spends most of its time sleeping, but on the plus side, it costs less than $10 to build and while sleeping uses about .05 watts of power.

    Imagine a beowolf cluster of these babies!

    • Re:25w is way too high! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @04:03PM (#13866681) Homepage Journal
      The chip that you use should only consume a few nanowatts of power, so there's room for refinement.

      I've used those 8 pin PICs, they are pretty nice. I ran straight from battery power, a linear regulator is too wasteful. It was for a hazardous material area where running power was undesirable and the battery cell had to last a year. I powered sensors directly from the output of one pin, so I can turn the sensors on only when taking a reading. Obviously, it's only useful for low current devices, but other than maybe the speaker, I see no high current devices preventing the technique from being used on several of the inputs.

  • POWER != PowerPC (Score:3, Informative)

    by frankie ( 91710 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:34PM (#13866456) Journal
    These are (theoretically, since they don't exist yet) based on the POWER architecture used by IBM big iron servers, which is related but incompatible to the PowerPC chips in Macs. Different pinouts and almost certainly no Altivec.

    Perhaps if this company had existed a couple years ago, Lord Steve might have given them an audition before jumping to Intel. But even if they somehow got their current chips to mass production in industry-record time, they would still be years away from being able to ship a PowerPC version.
    • The old POWER instruction set is dead; no one uses it any more. These days Power Architecture is PowerPC. And this new processor does have AltiVec. Pinouts are irrelevant since they were never standardized in the first place.
    • They are reasonably binary compatible. That is the PPC instruction set is a subset of the PWR instruction set. Moreover with the default xl* compiler settings the same executable could be used on any of the of PWR and PPC chips. They are compatible in the sense that the intel chips themselves are compatible :

      i.e. the entire line of Socket A,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,370,423,462,478,603,604,754,775, 939,940,M pin incompatible chips that may or may not have "extra" commands (like MMX, 3DNow, altivec or even hardware f

  • Power Cycle (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:34PM (#13866460) Homepage Journal
    Didn't Apple dump the PowerPC line because its power demand projections in upcoming generations meant more heat (less efficiency) than the Intel x86 competition? Why not just use these chips? Will we actually see a cross-platform Mac strategy, with Apple playing Intel(/AMD) against PPC makers like this, with the same MacOS running on either? Will Apple actually pull off delivering a simple interface for installing software from source, with consistent builds/runs across both Mac platforms? Who knows what to believe anymore?

  • POWER, or PowerPC? (Score:3)

    by Onan ( 25162 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:36PM (#13866471)
    I have a pretty hard time taking seriously the claims of a company that appears to consider the POWER and PowerPC chips interchangeable. Yes, they are related, but they're pretty substanially different beasts--especially when it comes to power consumption. I seem to recall that current POWER units consume over a kilowatt each. Yes, really.

    • I think you are confusing the article with the company itself. They are pretty clear with what they are about. Try their about page [pasemi.com] or check out the company bios [pasemi.com]. The CEO has designed a chip or two in his time - namely the DEC Alpha processor.
    • I have a pretty hard time taking seriously the claims of a company that appears to consider the POWER and PowerPC chips interchangeable

      You mean like IBM? Since the POWER3 (I think, maybe the POWER4) they have used POWER and PowerPC more as marketing terms (POWER means expensive, PowerPC means cheap) than as an indication of instruction set. The current POWER4/5 chips use the PowerPC instruction set. AIX on these systems will trap the few POWER instructions that are not part of PowerPC and emulate them

  • 5 watts? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Egregius ( 842820 )
    This article [eweek.com] says it's 13 watts, with 25 watts at peak. A little early start on the number juggling eh?

  • PR from start-ups... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gruneun ( 261463 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:40PM (#13866504)
    will feature... will consume 25 watts

    versus

    far less than the single-core Power chips... on the market today

    You be the judge.

  • Did anyone else read that as poker chips? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jonfelder ( 669529 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @03:57PM (#13866628)
    I kept read that as poker chips, and couldn't figure out for the life of me what technology was in IBM servers that would be utilized in a poker chip.

  • Impressive? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jiushao ( 898575 ) on Monday October 24, 2005 @04:10PM (#13866735)
    So, we get dual-core 2.0 GHz and 25 watts in two years? Without any more information this is far from impressive. Intel will have Yonah out in volume early 2006, which is dual-core, expected to clock to well over 2 GHz and with fairly low maximum power requirements (the current rumor is that the 2 GHz version will be in the ballpark of 30 watts TDP). In another two years this POWER chip has better offer some pretty kicking IPC or it'll be fairly uninteresting.
    • the current rumor is that the 2 GHz version will be in the ballpark of 30 watts TDP

      So basically you're saying that this currently existing chip pales in comparison to your chip that doesn't exist yet and consumes more power.

  • Pair this with a 720x480 (24-bit) OLED display, with a 1 or 1.8" HD (whatever the size is), and you'd have a pretty killer base for a PSP2.
  • The company's first so-called PWRficient chip...

    "PWR" is thPWR nPWRw "e".

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