[SA]Guess what taped out at AMD?
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stupid SA, i hate that website.
Originally Posted by farmdve  What does "taped out" exactly mean? |
stupid SA, i hate that website.
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If this is true, we might get shipped platforms in time for Christmas. I wonder if they kept current performance and boosted battery life or if they kept current battery life and improved performance.
AMD was supposedly able to make <5watt (peak) processors at 40nm. If some of their chips keep similar specs, they may even be able to challenge ARM in the cell market.
AMD was supposedly able to make <5watt (peak) processors at 40nm. If some of their chips keep similar specs, they may even be able to challenge ARM in the cell market.
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I concur. Although this is a very efficient chip, it offers leaps and bounds over the performance you'll find in any ARM chip, hence the higher energy envelope.
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If this chip can use little power (in the 10-30mW range) when idling, it can compete. In fact, it can be more than competitive if it achieves this because it will be faster when doing something (better for user experience) and then go to an idle, power-saving mode more quickly. For example, the dual and quad-core a9 processors (and upcoming a15's) use much more power than an a8. They are considered to use less power than an a8 ONLY in situations where they can complete a task quickly and return to idle.
It is not likely that a Zacate would ever hit 5W peak power usage on a phone or tablet. That would require multitasking huge tasks (by phone standards) in the background while fully utilizing the GPU and video decoder. The only other task which would come close is gaming, a field where performance penalties would be similar to a dual/quad core ARM using a big GPU (there's no getting around the GPU power usage problem when crunching numbers).
All that said, a Zacate would drag all the x86 CISC and legacy problems into the phone and tablet space which is something I don't like very well. I do like the fact that it would be a bit harder to lock down x86 based devices though. Also, AMD's pushing for OpenCL which could be a big plus for power consumption by making better use of the GPU and saving even more power.
That's 1W without a good GPU. Add one of the upcoming Tegra, adrenos, or infineon GPU's and the peak power numbers go up quickly.
If this chip can use little power (in the 10-30mW range) when idling, it can compete. In fact, it can be more than competitive if it achieves this because it will be faster when doing something (better for user experience) and then go to an idle, power-saving mode more quickly. For example, the dual and quad-core a9 processors (and upcoming a15's) use much more power than an a8. They are considered to use less power than an a8 ONLY in situations where they can complete a task quickly and return to idle.
It is not likely that a Zacate would ever hit 5W peak power usage on a phone or tablet. That would require multitasking huge tasks (by phone standards) in the background while fully utilizing the GPU and video decoder. The only other task which would come close is gaming, a field where performance penalties would be similar to a dual/quad core ARM using a big GPU (there's no getting around the GPU power usage problem when crunching numbers).
All that said, a Zacate would drag all the x86 CISC and legacy problems into the phone and tablet space which is something I don't like very well. I do like the fact that it would be a bit harder to lock down x86 based devices though. Also, AMD's pushing for OpenCL which could be a big plus for power consumption by making better use of the GPU and saving even more power.
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