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

[Gordan Bobic]

On 08/20/2011 05:21 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> 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.

Interesting - it might just be worth looking into as a 1st gen solution, 
then.

If it takes off and starts turning up all over the place, it might be 
enough to persuade a chip manufacturer in the future to actually 
implement to GPU on "bare metal" so to speak. It would instantaneously 
become the GPU best supported by OSS, which would be very useful indeed.

It might even have other benefits, such as shooting down OpenGL-ES in 
favour of having full fat OpenGL (thus meaning no need to rewrite all 
OpenGL apps for OpenGL-ES or implementing shims to implement the missing 
functionality in software like what Mesa are trying to do).

I'm not going to hold my breath for it, though. :)

Gordan