$199 Netbooks Without Intel Inside
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. However, Freescale Semiconductor's upcoming i.MX515 processor, based on the ARM chip architecture, should defy that belief, offering 1GHz speeds for under $200.
The company plans to showcase the new silicon this week at CES, hoping to wow consumers with its low-power, gigahertz performance. Freescale, once a chipmaking arm of Motorola, doesn't consider its latest product as an attempt to compete with Intel. Rather, the company wants to remain on the lower-priced spectrum while offering admirable speed for consumers.
“We see a huge opportunity in the netbook market as consumers demand more cost-effective and higher performing solutions,” said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Networking and Multimedia Group. “Our solution for netbooks will enable OEMs to develop compelling products that feature cell phone-like battery life at extremely aggressive price points. We believe the combination of the i.MX515 processor and related enablement solutions will dramatically accelerate the evolution of this exciting new space.”
With the help of Pegatron (a wholly owned Asus subsidiary), the company already has a reference design netbook ready for display at CES. The device will not only sport the i.MX515 processor, but feature Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system, a new power management IC from Freescale, the SGTL5000 ultra low-power audio codec and Adobe Flash Lite software, Adobe’s Flash Player for mobile phones and devices. The demo unit also features an 8.9 inch display and a battery capable of sustaining eight hours of life between charges.
The company manufactured the i.MX515 processor using 65-nm process technology, provides up to 2100 Dhrystone MIPS and can scale in performance from 600MHz to 1GHz. The processor uses no cooling fans or heat sinks, relying on "advanced power management features" such as dedicated, hardware-based acceleration block. Freescale will also incorporate low-cost printed circuit boards and a memory interface supporting both DDR2 and mobile DDR1.
"The i.MX515 is one of the only processors to offer both OpenVG and OpenGL graphics cores, thereby enabling 2D and 3D graphics as well as Flash and SVG for enhanced user experiences," says the company. "Video created for the Adobe Player is one of the leading video formats on the Internet today. Working with Adobe, Freescale plans to enable the Adobe software to run on the processor’s dedicated OpenVG graphics block, thereby extending battery life and enabling netbook web browsing experiences as rich and responsive as those on traditional PCs."
The netbook's summary page also lists a few interesting features, including analog HD720p component TV output, a multi-format HD 720p video decoder and a D1 video encoder hardware engine. Freescale plans to begin mass production sometime in Q2 2009, with a commercial release slated for the 2009 holiday shopping season. With the $200 pricetag, this netbook is definitely worth a peek when it appears at the end of the year.
As for the PS3 reference the PS3 Cell is faster at floating point than most (if not all) CPUs.
You read to quickly, he said P3, as in Pentium 3. I had to re-read that as well before realizing what he said.
We all know how much disgust there is with the current power hungry chipset that intel bundles with the atom cpu. On the OMAP3, the total power consumption of their demo board was ~2w, which is as much power as the atom cpu uses alone.
Also the omap3 integrates a opengl GPU on the die.
The OMAP3 can also handle 720p decoding
If the freescale can do what the OMAP3 can already do but increase the MIPS then it will be a great product.
The only problem with using ARM based products for linux, is that ARM based products typically do not have high speed peripherial interfaces that we are all accustomed to with x86 platforms; PCI, PCMCIA, IDE, SATA, etc..
I am a really big fan of the synergies that ARM and linux bring to each other. Linux abandons the windows codebase, and ARM will never support the windows codebase anyways. Linux is less resource intensive and a high powered ARM can run linux decently. There are hardly any addons peripherials for ARM based computers so linux's lack of driver support should not me much of the sore thumb.
ARM has just made huge leaps with the introduction of its cortex core, this is the beginning. If Linux can get it's act together and be easy enough to use as windows, I have no doubt that ARM will take a huge chunk of market share away from Intel/AMD/Via.
Agreed, clock speeds mean nothing. Look at how crappy Atom is clock for clock, I bet Atom is on par with a 1.6ghz PIII, because a 1.2ghz Athlon64 stomps it into the ground for only a slight increase in power consumption ref: Toms Hardware.
lol -> P3 = PS3 too funny (as mentioned above, P3 != PS3)
It's surprising that they offer DDR2 memory; it would be more surprising if it supported 533Mhz of DDR2 memory.
65nm is pretty ok, though 45nm and perhaps 30nm design would have saved lots of batterylife.
I guess it could compete with the OLPC XO or something.., and seems like a nice deice for hackers to play around, and software designers....
The Atom actually has an in order structure, that is comparable to a 800Mhz Celeron in single threading,and 1100Mhz with hyperthreading enabled.
The hyperthreading, and support for 'faster' RAM speeds,allow the Atom to perform pretty well; especially on XP!
these ARM computers could be nice if multiple cores could be installed (like Intel's trying to do with their larrabee cards or something... (you know, the more processors installed onboard, the greater the computing power).
If this will be around 250 CAD $ (282.5 CAD $ with taxes), I might buy one.
I for sure won't mind a netbook based on a Linux OS (with a recovery CD /
USB key), might help me learn about the way Linux works and help me get
use to it, Linux IS the future. Who needs a sparkly GUI (Windows 7 / Vista),
when all you really need is performance?
NOTE to all
This chip can decode VC1/H.264, that is very nice
AFAIK also VIA Nano don't have hyperthreading. Some MIPS processor do (called multithreading).
533MHz is a "marketing clock" for DDR2 RAM, the real memory bus clock is 266MHz. This clock is achievable by memory controller used in ARM systems.
EEE Journal
where are they? where are the low power arm netbook device?. Not tablets, i want damn keyboard, no stupid touchscreen and sub 250$ price. unless I hear about a store (even online) supplying a solid arm netbook for that price, THAT WAS PROMISED AGAIN AND AGAIN. I DONT WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT.