[Arm-netbook] Low-power Vortex processors

[lkcl luke]

2012/1/31 Henrik Nordström <henrik at henriknordstrom.net>:
> mån 2012-01-30 klockan 20:51 -0600 skrev Bari Ari:
>
>> http://www.vortex86sx.com/?page_id=286
>
> Some interesting oddness is that it has 2MB SPI flash for BIOS embedded
> in the SoC. And up to 9 UART? No 3D acceleration at all. PCIe, and an
> ISA bus?
>
> Other than that all the interfaces one expect from a SoC.
>
>  VGA/DVO TTL 18/24 bit
>  TV out/in
>  HDMI
>  PCIe x2
>  UARTs (many)
>  100Mbps Ethernet
>  USB2.0 x4
>  PATA & SATA
>  SPI
>  ADC
>  HD Audio
>  I2C
>  SD
>  LPT
>  etc..
>
> Seems to have some similarities to the A10 in that many of the pins (88
> pins of ?) have programmable function, allowing the available I/O
> mechanisms to be tuned to the application. But the A10 is far more
> flexible.
>
> No idea on performance. But I would not expect it to be a power horse.

 no it's not.  it's the CPU that ended up in the norhtec gecko
edubook, and it's actually from RDC (IAD100** series).

 essentially though it's stuck between a rock and a hard place: in
order to keep the cost down, the geometry it's using is too high to be
low-power, and they're constrained by the x86 instruction set so
cannot add beefy SIMD extensions in order to provide decent 3D
performance.  which, if they did add, would push the power consumption
wayyy outside.

 so... yeah, oops.  the unfortunate thing is that RDC, if they
understand the problem, might end up licensing a proprietary 3D GPU
core. oops.

 l.