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• MIDs and UMPCs were also a big hit this year at Computex 2008. Many manufacturers were showing off ultra-portable devices. Of notable launches this year were MSI’s Wind, Gigabyte’s M-528 and Asus’ EeePC 901/1000H. All the craze about subnotebooks is that they are all easy to handle, very light, and support all your daily routines without breaking the bank. Many of the new subnotebooks offer operating times of over 7 hours and are getting even more powerful with support from Intel’s Atom processor. Most of these devices come well below the $1000 mark, which is a very affordable price target. Considering what they offer, it’s no surprise that many users are opting to go for UMPCs rather than full-blown notebooks or desktop replacements. While most of the new UMPCs use Intel’s powerful Atom processor, VIA announced that it would give Intel a run for a money with the launch of Nano, VIA’s claim to fame against Intel’s Atom. The Nano processor, VIA claims, gives even more operating time than Atom based systems, and even better performance. It’s been a long time since VIA honestly released a processor with so much excitement, and we’re eagerly waiting to see subnotebooks based on this jewel. More competition in this space - and any space for that matter - is win-win for the consumer. Competition in the UMPC space is heated and it’ll only get more intense as 2009 rolls in. Acer’s Aspire One is a particular UMPC that caught our attention for the inclusion of 3G wireless technology. No other UMPC currently includes it, and it takes top places in our hearts because of it. Having 3G connectivity enables users to truly go wireless, and it really gives the feeling of ultimate freedom with high-speed Internet access almost anywhere you go.

• Atom, Athlon, or Nano? Energy-Savers Compared

  Once AMD and Intel realized that pure clock speed isn’t the only way to improve performance, they started focusing on multi-core processors. They’ve been refining this concept by improving efficiency. The level of per-watt performance is what matters the most today, which is one of the main reasons for Intel’s success with its Core 2 processor family. But there are more than enough applications that do not require a lot of performance, and this is where AMD, Intel and VIA aim their low-power platforms. We compared an Athlon 64 2000+, Atom 230, Nano L2100 with the goal of figuring out which solutions serve up enough speed. Low-Power Applications While typical PC applications perform best mated to a full-featured processor—which today is a fast dual-core device—there are numerous applications that only need limited processing capabilities. Networking systems such as routers and firewalls operate well with limited CPU power as long as the number of users and features like QoS (quality of service) or encrypted VPN connections are low. Thin clients in enterprise environments are another example. If users don’t have to handle massive applications then they won’t need powerful systems. Systems that control industrial devices in assembly lines, check-out registers, and kiosks work well with these low-power processors in many cases. Finally, an increasing number of low-cost PCs and nettop desktops (as opposed to net books) are powered by low-cost and low-power processors. Where Low Power Becomes A Drawback It is important to draw a clear line and separate low-power systems from high-efficiency systems, as these are two different things. A low-power system consumes as little power as possible to conserve energy, to reduce the need for cooling, or to reduce operating cost by saving energy for systems and air conditioning as well as by using simpler architectures. However, such a low-power system may not necessarily be efficient as well, just like a high-efficiency system does not have to be a low-power machine. Your choice depends on your requirements. If the workload is predictable and controllable at all times, then it is safe and reasonable to purchase low-power solutions to keep costs down. This is the market segment that AMD, Intel, and VIA target with the products we review in this article. But if the workload could change and may even increase, a higher-power system that not only delivers more performance, but also offers greater efficiency (measured in performance per watt) is typically the better choice. Low-Power Processor Vendors VIA is the only processor firm that has catered to the low-power market for many years. However, we want to make it clear that our focus is on the traditional computing market and there are many other suppliers that cater to specific niche applications. While VIA lacks the size and clout to compete directly against AMD and Intel in all the markets on which the two chip giants focus, VIA has a significant presence in the low-power market segment. VIA started with the C3 and C7 processors. The Nano family is pin-compatible with the C7 and provides much increased performance within the existing VIA power envelopes, mostly on VIA’s Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX platforms. Intel has discovered the same market with its Atom family, which has been available as a single-core devices, while dual-core versions of the architecture are beginning to show up. Atom has a new pin-out, and it also utilizes Intel’s well-known front-side bus and mature chipsets. The Atom dual core will be the first low-power dual-core processor and it is the smallest low-power product available today thanks to Intel’s 45-nm manufacturing. The selection of a low-power product is more difficult with AMD—the Geode LX is a low-power device, but its performance is not sufficient for PC applications. Geode NX is based on the Athlon XP, which requires an outdated platform. However, we received a low-power Athlon 64 2000+ processor for Socket AM2 some months ago, and this processor is rated at a TDP of only 8 W. Although this is not a commercial product (yet), it does a good job of showing what a low-power version of the device would offer for mainstream PC applications.

• The last low-power product in this roundup is the one with the longest history: VIA’s Nano. It is the successor to VIA’s C7 and C3 processor families, which were the first to introduce low-power computing for the mainstream market at an acceptable price. Fast and Feature-Rich Nano is different from the two other processors. It comes with twice the L2 cache—1 MB rather than 512 KB—and it offers two additional features that are still unique in the low-power segment: a random number generator and on-die AES encryption and decryption acceleration, which makes it suitable for networking and high security applications. It also offers all the mandatory extensions, such as SSE to SSSE3, and NX bit to protect against buffer overflows. It runs at a snappy 1.8 GHz maximum clock speed, which results in the best performance of this roundup. As long as Intel’s Atom cannot take advantage of its Hyper-Threading feature, VIA’s Nano comes out on top. This should be the case for many thin client applications, although Atom will be stronger the more you move into the traditional desktop space. Reduced Power Rather Than Low Power If you compare the 8 W TDP of our AMD Athlon 64 2000+ sample and the 4 W TDP of Intel’s Atom 230 to the VIA Nano, then you’ll immediately find a huge gap: Nano L2100 is rated at a TDP of 25 W. This specification puts it in the reduced-power instead of low-power category, as it falls into the power envelope of a mobile processor without delivering the same performance. However, VIA leads when it comes to implementing versatile platforms. It is interesting to see that the VIA EPIA-SN’s idle power when paired to the Nano L2100 is exactly the same as on the ECS board with Atom and the Gigabyte board with the Athlon 64+—all reach a minimum power requirement of 28 W at the plug using our high efficiency power supply. VIA, however, jumps to a peak power of 50 W, while the other solutions stay at 36 W and 39 W maximum. Performance and Performance per Watt As a consequence, the power requirement for an entire SYSmark 2004 run as well as the performance-per-watt score are not as good as the good performance we saw across many of our benchmarks. Intel’s Atom dominates SYSmark thanks to its Hyper Threading feature, but other benchmarks such as WinZIP, which requires high single-thread performance; the PCMark05 CPU score, Lame and iTunes audio transcoding performance and Cinebench are clearly dominated by VIA’s Nano L2100.