Intel Atom: Did Pandora Choose The Wrong Cpu?

[timofonic]

Hello.

There is the ongoing Intel Atom platform that is manufactured in 45nm and has only 0.6W of power consumption. The is also the future Pinview that will feature a GPU too.

It's Pandora and the future of alternative architectures like ARM and PowerPC in danger with this? Does this mean the total supremacy of the X86 architecture will be sooner than expected?

What do you think? What do Pandora developers and designers think?


Regards.

 

[MWeston]

The Atom is low power, yes, but the bridge chip that has video, audio, USB, etc... sucks back watts of power still. Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but the current bridge chip is based on 130um technology. Later on it will get better of course, but who knows when. Do you want to wait another year for Pandora? Do you want to lose all the compatibility built up from years of ARM software development? I don't.

 

[sindbad]

The intel atom is produced solely to keep up with the still present demand for windows. Any other OS you'd want care about a device can handle multiple architectures (of which most are much more efficiently designed). That demand will hopefully soon drop as more people realise they don't actually need it for most things anyway and developers realise that cross-platform software is easy to make.

I think the main reasons intel cpus don't belong on the pandora are cost and size. Like most intel products they have ridiculous prices. SoC (system-on-a-chip) includes much more than only a cpu and at a much lower cost for the entire board [ and lower power draw. forgot to mention it].

My pile of cents anyway.

 

[Blah]

The x86, by being built upon 30+ years of old processors, has a whole lot of redundancy and baggage and bloat . To make a fully compatible x86 processor wastes a whole lot of design effort. X86 will eventually die and MS will either die (by putting all of their resources into that sinking ship that is Vista) or move on with the rest of the industry.

The industry needs to start anew with a "fresh" architecture. ARM isn't perfect but it is good and it could very well still be the architecture of the future. Also I think GPUs will go the way of the all-hardware modem/sound card/network card as general purpose CPUs and software become more and more 3D capable.

Then again, we are reaching the limits of silicon. Its starting to look like current technology won't be able to keep up with Moore's law. What will the future bring? DNA processors? Quantum computing? We'll know 20 years from now.

 

[Chip]

Lets not start this argument again.

 

[icurafu]

the omap3530 is a lot more appropriate for this kind of device. You'll probably find that the intel board, while consuming more than 4 watt, will perform Mhz to Mhz slower on all applications that are not optimised for x86. Remember that the cortex is a super scaler. You wont get that on the nano, or even the next revivsion released in 2 years.

I think the cortex path is the best one to take for this kinda device.

If you looking to play old window games, then a 1.6Ghz watt guzzelling nanno with winxp and a gig of ram might allow you to play Quake3 or the original CoD, and will cot you twice as much for Eee PC controls. (or worse, N810)

 

[christo930]

The x86, by being built upon 30+ years of old processors, has a whole lot of redundancy and baggage and bloat . To make a fully compatible x86 processor wastes a whole lot of design effort. X86 will eventually die and MS will either die (by putting all of their resources into that sinking ship that is Vista) or move on with the rest of the industry.

The industry needs to start anew with a "fresh" architecture. ARM isn't perfect but it is good and it could very well still be the architecture of the future. Also I think GPUs will go the way of the all-hardware modem/sound card/network card as general purpose CPUs and software become more and more 3D capable.

Then again, we are reaching the limits of silicon. Its starting to look like current technology won't be able to keep up with Moore's law. What will the future bring? DNA processors? Quantum computing? We'll know 20 years from now.

I would definitely agree with network/modem (unless you are talking about servers), but sound and video are better off with their own chips. The need for better and better video and sound will go on for quite a long time as to where the cheap modem/network cards didn't need to keep up and could ride off the cpu with cheap dsp's.

Chris

 

[Prophet]

I think we should all just wait for the Pandora to be finished and released before complaining and looking for things that "could've been better."

(Well, aside from DaveC giving a preliminary set of case/controls the once over before it goes into full production - I'm all for that)

Some people are just way too critical, and spend too much time thinking about what might've been instead of what IS. The current Pandora spec is damn nice, and totally stomps on any gaming handheld device before it. The devs will have a field day squeezing surprises out of it and making use of its huge feature set.

 

[Dunny]

I think we should all just wait for the Pandora to be finished and released before complaining and looking for things that "could've been better."

(Well, aside from DaveC giving a preliminary set of case/controls the once over before it goes into full production - I'm all for that)

I'm all for that. I might have had my disagreements with DaveC in the past, but he does know controllers and the "suitability of a display for emulation purposes".

Someone give the guy a pre-production model, kthx.

D.

 

[nubie]

The problem isn't with the CPU itself, it is with the support chip (It may be 130nm, or 90nm), and the cost, it is very very expensive.

No, there was no wrong choice with the current processor (the Atom is a long way from devices the size of a Pandora, 2-3 years out, minimum according to intel)

If you wanted an Atom you might as well pick up an Eeepc class device, it really needs something that big to hold the batteries to power it and dissipate the heat.

 

[Blah]

...

I would definitely agree with network/modem (unless you are talking about servers), but sound and video are better off with their own chips. The need for better and better video and sound will go on for quite a long time as to where the cheap modem/network cards didn't need to keep up and could ride off the cpu with cheap dsp's.

Chris


Look up AC'97, it's basically just a couple DACs. Guess what your onboard sound card uses. Almost nothing anymore does sound synthesis in hardware. Synthesis is to sound as rendering is to 3D graphics. I have no doubt that DSP hardware will always be needed for the video buffer->monitor conversion, just as DSP hardware is used for the audio buffer->output conversion. But its trivial to include this (relatively) simple DSP hardware in the CPU die itself, so its a moot point.

Anything you can do with professional digital sound hardware can be feasibly done just as well in software, and modern computers have the CPU power to handle it. Its just a matter of time before the same can be said about graphics hardware.

 

[shmuck]

I would _love_ to see an x86 based Pandora 2, even with the trade-offs, but ignoring the present because you're too busy looking ahead never gets anything done.

 

[Sphinxter]

The arm is one of it's best features, I would not buy it with an intel processor.

 

[Prometheus]

The arm is one of it's best features, I would not buy it with an intel processor.

+1

Shoehorning x86 processors into everything just because they're perceived as powerful isn't clever. Using processors that are designed for the specific task at hand is clever, and will get the job done better.

 

[ldesnogu]

The Atom is low power, yes, but the bridge chip that has video, audio, USB, etc... sucks back watts of power still. Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but the current bridge chip is based on 130um technology.

Make that 130 nm

To clear things up, re-read Intel comparison to OMAP2420 about brower speed. They claim 4-6x speed advantage between an Atom @1.6 GHz and OMAP2420 @400 MHz. Don't you see the problem in that comparison?
Basically all benchmarks Intel presented during last IDF were not convincing, and anyway as MWeston noted, it still eats too much power. The next generation in two years *might* be better, but at that time Cortex-A9 should be here too.

I would _love_ to see an x86 based Pandora 2, even with the trade-offs, but ignoring the present because you're too busy looking ahead never gets anything done.

Except for compatibility what would that bring you? Are you aware that the Atom being an in-order design, running binary stuff will bring you low performance? To get more performance you will need recompilation, hence source code, and in that case you can do it for an ARM platform.

 

[rokdcasbah]

Although people are seeing things like the EEE and thinking, wow, x86 is the future for small devices, I'd be very surprised if x86 pushed ARM & MIPS out of markets that they currently excel at, rather than the other way around.

Obviously x86 isn't going to go away overnight, but like the mainframes, I think we will start to see it relegated to more of a niche role.

x86 for small devices isn't that great....it's a very old platform underneath all the polish, and I don't know all the details but I think things like hardware interrupts are complicated enough to require a full OS, which makes SOC systems tougher on x86. I could be way off there though.

edit: Laurent's post sums it up nicely...one of the main benefits of a linux system, and FOSS, is that you are only limited to architectures for which compilers exist. At which point you may as well use the one that suits the task best. For small spaces, low power & less heat...right now ARM is king.

 

[timofonic]

Nice the community showed more than enough arguments. Then I have more solid thinking about Pandora and buying it

What about adding stuff about this into the Pandora's FAQ? I think this is the common reply about Pandora by certain people, along with stuff like PSP is as powerful and such (people saying that the PSP CPU is more powerful than the Pandora one too). Saying that Pandora's CPU is more powerful than the one of ASUS EEe PC or Intel Atom can be interesting.

I think the best marketing campaign could be showing the technical advantages of Pandora and why OMAP3530 and the Cortex-A8 on it is more powerful than people thinks. I did see a few blog posts about Pandora and most of them had lots of missinformation and wrong assumptions, but the comments on them were surpassing average ignorance.

 

[ldesnogu]

I think this is the common reply about Pandora by certain people, along with stuff like PSP is as powerful and such (people saying that the PSP CPU is more powerful than the Pandora one too). Saying that Pandora's CPU is more powerful than the one of ASUS EEe PC or Intel Atom can be interesting.

I think the best marketing campaign could be showing the technical advantages of Pandora and why OMAP3530 and the Cortex-A8 on it is more powerful than people thinks. I did see a few blog posts about Pandora and most of them had lots of missinformation and wrong assumptions, but the comments on them were surpassing average ignorance.

Do you have a Pandora and an Atom to put them side by side and do an honest comparison from a benchmark point of view?

I never said the Cortex-A8 in OMAP3530 was more powerful than the Atom. I just pointed out Intel had one of the most stupid marketing bullshit I ever read, and I have read some

What they did wrong:
- comparing OMAP2420 @400 MHz against Atom @1.6 GHz
- extrapolating Cortex-A8 EEMBC scores (this proves they didn't have access to Cortex-A8 HW).
From my point of view that's enough to trash the whole presentation they did.

If I ever put my hands on an Atom *and* a Pandora then I will give numbers, not before.

But others are free to do what they want of course

 

[anexanhume]

Many other people have said this one way or another, but I'll make it very plain:

x86 is the dinosaur of currently used architectures. It was invented before things like "low power" or "mobility computing" were ever conceived. The ARM architecture is made for these things first and foremost. That's why using an ARM core just makes sense.

 

[shmuck]

Except for compatibility what would that bring you?

Except? Why would anyone buy a Pandora anyway? Except for all the things it can do, it's just a hunk of plastic.

I'm aware that the x86 architecture is old and not well suited to mobile devices. I know that there are better, more efficient alternatives and that software designed for these will run just as well/speedily. I'm much more interested in software that is not designed for this device, specifically.

The community here is great, I'm expecting lots of great things, but it's a big wide world out there and we can choose to join in and share and benefit, or we can choose to shut ourselves off in the name of efficiency.

This is all pretty speculative, but in my mind an ideal computing environment is not one that is so heavily segmented.