[Arm-netbook] xilinx zynq-7000 800mhz ARM Dual-Core Cortex A9

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Gordan Bobic <gordan at bobich.net> wrote:

> Are you seriously suggesting the solution is FPGA instead of a ASIC for a
> low power application such as this??

 it's 28nm, so yes.  that means it runs at 1/4 the power consumption
of a 65nm GPU, the best of which i've been able to find is one from
SiS, which was 8 watts and that was with a rather shoddy and old
[appx] 20-layer fab CMOS process that leaked current like a sieve.

 since that 2006 date when that SiS GPU was done, fab processes have
now gone to [appx] 32 layers and have solved the leaking current
problem.

 so as long as you don't expect 2,000 million triangles per second and
10 billion pixels per second at 4000x4000 resolution and 400 fps but
could tolerate say 20 million triangles instead and 50 million pixels
which would give 1920x1080 at 50fps then yes, with some very rough
finger-in-air guessing i'd say it was achievable.

 remember - you can get the hard work done by the *28 nanometre* FPGA
and then offload it to a *28 nanometre* Dual-Core Cortex A9 @ 800mhz,
which is going to be running, even flat-out, at an absolute maximum of
about 0.5 watts!

[see http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a9.php
"specifications" tab, bear in mind those figures are 40nm for 800mhz =
0.5 watts, so divide by 2 for the drop from 28nm to 40nm, but then
double it again for Dual-Core, end result: 0.5 watts].

l.