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

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<luke.leighton at gmail.com> 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.

 i've just had a look at the xilinx site: the closest existing FPGA is
the arctix 7.  the 350T version has some niice statistics about
applications running at between 4 and 8 watts.  however, the 350T
version has 7x more gates than the 50T version, and it's the 50T
version that has the closest number of gates to the Zynq-7000.

 so, roughly 4-8 watts, divide roughly by 7, that's roughly 0.5 to 1
watts give-or-take, for the FPGA component of the Zynq-7000.  of
course, some of that is going to be I/O and according to the tech
sheets, they've done ultra-low-power versions of the gigabit
interfaces as well, loovely.

 so yes, i _am_ saying you could likely get a decent-ish GPU out of
the on-board FPGA, and still be in roughly the 2 watt range for the
whole IC.

 l.