Athlon Geodes enter the embedded market

Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 25 May 2004 01:07:44 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
<news.tally.bbbl67@spamgourmet.com> wrote:
>First bunch of Geodes with Athlon K7 cores in them. AMD also introduces a
>new rating system for them where they compare their performance and power
>against VIA Centaur processors. This is the first time that AMD is admitting
>to comparing its processors against another company's processors. Possibly
>setting up for a performance battle in settop boxes and handhelds.
>
>http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7590630230.html

Yup, chips look basically like they're just an "Ultra Low Voltage"
AthlonXP-M, to use Intel's name for them. Nice looking little chips,
9W TDP at 1.0GHz and it should smack VIA and Transmeta's chips all
around the room in terms of performance. The C3 and Crusoe/Efficeon
still have a slight edge in terms of power consumption, but we're only
talking about a couple of watts now (9W vs. 7W).

As for the performance numbers, they are all referenced against a VIA
C3 533MHz processor, ie a performance rating of "1000" offers roughly
twice the performance of the 533MHz C3. It does not necessarily mean
that a processor with a rating of 1000 will perform the same as a VIA
C3 with a rating of 1000 though.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 May 2004 01:07:44 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
> <news.tally.bbbl67@spamgourmet.com> wrote:
>> First bunch of Geodes with Athlon K7 cores in them. AMD also
>> introduces a new rating system for them where they compare their
>> performance and power against VIA Centaur processors. This is the
>> first time that AMD is admitting to comparing its processors against
>> another company's processors. Possibly setting up for a performance
>> battle in settop boxes and handhelds.
>>
>> http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7590630230.html
>
> Yup, chips look basically like they're just an "Ultra Low Voltage"
> AthlonXP-M, to use Intel's name for them. Nice looking little chips,
> 9W TDP at 1.0GHz and it should smack VIA and Transmeta's chips all
> around the room in terms of performance. The C3 and Crusoe/Efficeon
> still have a slight edge in terms of power consumption, but we're only
> talking about a couple of watts now (9W vs. 7W).

Actually, according to this article, the Geode NX is based on Athlon
classic, not Athlon XP or Duron. So that would mean no SSE capabilities, for
example.

http://www.extremetech.com/article [...] 384,00.asp

They've also moved away from the System On a Chip philosophy of Geode GX.
The NX seems to be just a traditional standalone embedded processor.

Yousuf Khan

Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Sander Vesik <sander@haldjas.folklore.ee> wrote:
> In comp.arch Yousuf Khan <news.tally.bbbl67@spamgourmet.com> wrote:
>> First bunch of Geodes with Athlon K7 cores in them. AMD also
>> introduces a new rating system for them where they compare their
>> performance and power against VIA Centaur processors. This is the
>> first time that AMD is admitting to comparing its processors against
>> another company's processors. Possibly
>
> Huh? This is not so at all. AMD has used comparison style ratings
> before, the latest (but not at all the only) of which are the Athlon
> XP numbers.

We're talking about embedded processors here, not desktop.

Yousuf Khan

Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 25 May 2004 18:07:36 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
<news.20.bbbl67@spamgourmet.com> wrote:
>Actually, according to this article, the Geode NX is based on Athlon
>classic, not Athlon XP or Duron. So that would mean no SSE capabilities, for
>example.

Note that they don't say it's based on the "Athlon classic", just that
it's based on the "Athlon core". It most definitely is actually just
an AthlonXP-M core, and it does support SSE as per AMD's own
documentation available here:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/co [...] @6w_pb.pdf


>They've also moved away from the System On a Chip philosophy of Geode GX.
>The NX seems to be just a traditional standalone embedded processor.

Yeah, I was a bit disappointed when I saw that. I think a highly
integrated chip would be rather interesting, though I think the K8
would be a better core to base it around. The K8 already has an
integrated memory controller and a good low power/low pin count I/O
connector to the outside world. Just throw a simple video controller
and audio processor onto the die and you'd be off to the races.

Of course, right now the K8 die is already over 100M transistors, so
it would have to go through a bit of a diet before this sort of thing
would be an option. Still, rip out all but 256K of cache and it might
be an option.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Archived from groups: comp.arch,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote :

>>yadayada
>>processors are cheap, but the boards I saw were 500-600$
>
> Huh? Which boards were these?

Geode GX DB533 Geode NX DB1500

> For the new Geode NX chips? There are
> no boards for these chips

and the one above is .. ?

> though there's no good reason for them to
> be expensive since they're electrically identical to AthlonXP boards,
> just switching from a socket to a solder pad (which should make the
> boards cheaper). The Geode GX chips don't really sell with
> motherboards, they're really only marketed towards OEMs that are
> looking to make set-top boxes and the like. Similar deal with the
> Transmeta chips, though they're mainly sold to laptop makers. VIA C3
> chips have dirt-cheap motherboards.
>
> So just where were you seeing $500-$600 boards?

quantity 10 000 :

Geode GX 466@0.9W - $26.50
Geode GX 500@1.0W - $29.10
Geode GX 533@1.1W - $32.75
Geode NX 1500@6W - $65.00
Geode NX 1750@14W - $55.00
Geode GX DB533 - $650.00
Geode NX DB1500 - $500.00

source : Digit-Life

Maybe they are a development boards, the prices would be ok then.

Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://pulse.pdi.net/~rush/qv30/
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>>Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote :
>>> Yup, chips look basically like they're just an "Ultra Low Voltage"
>>> AthlonXP-M, to use Intel's name for them. Nice looking little
>>> chips, 9W TDP at 1.0GHz and it should smack VIA and Transmeta's
>>> chips all around the room in terms of performance.

> The Geode GX chips don't really sell with
> motherboards, they're really only marketed towards OEMs that are
> looking to make set-top boxes and the like.

Any hope of someone selling a silent PC using one of these ?
1 GHz might be enough for reasonable performance and I suppose 9W is
low enough that convection cooling might be sufficient. Of course,
there is still the fan on the power supply, and noise from the hard
disk and DVD player, so "standard parts" and "silent" might not be
compatible.

--
http://www.mat.uc.pt/~rps/

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