On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:53:38 +0000, Bob Masta wrote:
[...]
> The EE TImes article I cited in my prior post says Atom is targeted
> for mobile applications, to compete with ARM. It would seem pretty
> strange for a chip designed for this market to sup****t 64-bit code.
It's pretty strange for such a chip to use the x86 ISA, *unless*
compatibility is a key goal.
> The article notes that the chip will scale to 1.8 GHz, which is "far
> faster than the current ARM offerings",
More accurately, the clock speed is far faster. That may or may not
translate into better performance.
> and that it sup****ts
> Hyperthreading, but in responding to the media claim that "Atom
> will be great for PCs" it suggests that is only true for low-end PCs,
> low-end laptops, and ultramobile PCs where "you don't need gigahertz
> of performance". It's claim to fame is just power reduction (compared
> to mainstream x86 chips... ARM is still lower).
I think this chip family will become interesting when it goes multi-core.
Some thoughts:
1) Intel is very interested in high performance.
2) Their previous strategy was very high clock speeds (Pentium 4), but
this strategy failed because of power consumption issues.
3) Their current strategy is multiple cores with more moderate clock
speeds.
4) Their current microarchitecture (Core) is more power-efficient than P4,
but die sizes are still large. Both power consumption and die sizes limit
the number of cores that could reasonably be deployed.
5) They've now developed a new microarchitecture, which has a) tiny die
sizes, and b) tiny power consumption.
6) Since the power consumption is roughly 1/14th of a mobile Core 2 Duo,
they could probably put 14 of these in the same package as that processor,
without major heat problems...
Any thoughts?
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Bob Masta
|
