Intel Atom Benchmarks vs Celeron M
May 20, 2008
PC Watch has obtained the desktop version of the MSI Wind PC.
They ran some benchmarks against it, including against the Intel Celeron M-powered 900MHz Asus Eee PC 900 as well as the 7-inch 630MHz Asus Eee PC.
Now while this may not seem like that valid of a comparison - for the most part it’s going to be pretty close, as the desktop specs are very similar to the eventual Wind PC ultraportable/ sub-notebook (It is a Diamondville-based system instead of a mobile Silverthorne).
In the overall PCMark05 Build 1.2.0 benchmarks, the Atom beat the 900MHz Celeron by around 30%, but in the CPU benchmarks, the Celeron M was around 20% better. Memory benchmarks saw the Atom do around 30% better.
I found it interesting, but battery life is what’s going to be most important to most of us - it was clear from the pictures of the desktop Wind PC that cooling requirements are much lower than we are used to and (and they’ll be even lower on the mobile version). If the Atom can offer a substantial difference in battery life over the Celeron M, then there might be quite a few Eee PC owners willing to sell their Celeron-based systems to upgrade to the Atom-based systems.
Read: PC.Watch.Impress.co.jp (Translated)
Read (Japanese): PC.Watch.Impress.co.jp
Thanks to Vince for the link.
Intel Diamondville - No Dual-Core
February 26, 2008
According to CNET, Intel’s Diamondville mobile processors, due out later this year, will not be dual-core designs.:
Intel’s upcoming low-cost Diamondville notebook processor will break from Intel’s multicore strategy of the last few years and be primarily a single-core processor.
In this respect Diamondville is not that different from Celeron, a long-standing design (introduced in 1998) that has been exclusively single-core until very recently. The reason for the single-core strategy is simple: With Diamondville, Intel has a “fanatical focus” on low power and low cost, according to Dean McCarron, founder and principal of Mercury Research. A single core means fewer transistors and lower power consumption.
Diamondville is not Celeron, however. “It’s a clean sheet of paper design,” McCarron said. It is a tiny 45-nanometer processor that employs a simpler design (called an “in-order pipeline”) than standard Intel processors, as spelled out in an ISSCC presentation earlier this month.
The Diamondville mobile CPUs will be used in devices like the Asus Eee PC and other “netbooks” (as Intel refers to them) and performance should be on par with Intel’s previous Pentium M offerings. Diamondville is derived from Intel’s Silverthorne platform.
Leaked: HP Compaq 2133
February 19, 2008
About six hours after I posted my speculations about an HP UMPC, my inbox gets flooded with almost a dozen emails pointing the way to the Engadget story that came out today.
Yep, it’s a doozy, it would appear that the HP UMPC is not only alive, but much closer than we think. Based on documents Engadget obtained (and they look legit), it looks like it will be called the HP Compaq 2133.
It was speculated that it would compete with the Asus Eee PC on price, but I’m not sure how they can, based on the leaked specs.
Specifications:
- 8.9″ WXGA 1366×766 with a scratch-resistant coating
- Wireless LAN (a given)
- Near full-size QWERTY keyboard
- ExpressCard/54 slot (this is is interesting)
- Optional Solid State Drive (SSD) (makes a lot of sense)
- Around 2.5 pounds
- Microsoft Windows Vista or some form of Linux
If they can get this down to well under $1000, there’s no reason why it won’t sell extremely well. Putting aside HP’s branding helping, it’s a very good compromise between portability, size, and weight.
To be honest, I don’t lump it in with the Asus Eee PC, but rather the Fujitsu P1620. While the P1620 is a Tablet PC convertible, this is still about the same form factor, albeit a lot lighter.
Intel Montevina = Centrino 2
February 18, 2008
Digitimes and others are reporting that Intel is moving away from location-based naming (such as Carmel, Sonoma, Napa and Santa Rosa) and moving back to an easier-to-remember name. This means that Intel Montevina will now be simply known as “Intel Centrino 2″. It should be much easier to recognize and understand this as an improvement over the previous generation (people wouldn’t necessarily know Napa from Santa Rosa, but they would know that Centrino 2 is newer than Centrino).
In addition, Digitimes announced some news that ultraportable fans would find very interesting:
Intel will then launch seven 45nm SFF (small form factor) notebook CPUs, similar to those used in Apple’s MacBook Air and soon other ultra-portable notebooks, in the third quarter of this year.
February 10th Odds and Ends
February 10, 2008
A roundup of interesting articles from the past week.
Wired Magazine: Like Apple, Intel Wants to Put the Internet in Your Pocket - Discussion of Intel’s Silverthorne and Intel’s efforts at pushing beyond that, to where we can have a near-desktop like internet experience in a mobile device we can practically carry in our pockets.
CNET Blogs: “Which is sturdier, a MacBook Air or an HP business laptop?” A quick first-look at the MacBook air at how it stacks up against an HP notebook and how sturdy it feels and how it’s handling heat.
Akihabara News: Evergreen’s Mini Trackball for Your Laptop - a very small trackball made for travelers and those desiring a very small device - weighs in at 77 grams/2.7 ounces.
Engadget: Dell XPS M1330 update BIOS hints at upcoming Blu-Ray/DVD combo drive - a new BIOS update for the M1330 mentions “Blu-Ray / DVD +/- RW Combo Drive”.
AppleInsider: Rumor: possible Apple event brewing for late February - Might or might not be somewhere around the 26th. Could it be time for Penryn-based MacBook Pros, etc.?
LifeHacker: Remove Stains from a MacBook with Toothpaste - apparently toothpaste can clean up white MacBooks
jkOnTheRun: HP wants to sell you a Tablet PC - HP has produced a cool little video detailing the advantages of convertible/Tablet PC laptops.
GottaBeMobile: How Cool Is The HP TC1100 Tablet PC? mentions that the TC1100 makes an appearance in the above video showing off the 2710p convertible.
Engadget: Dell further clarifies how and where it’s dropping AMD The Engadget crew spoke with Dell about whether or not Dell was dropping AMD CPUs from their lineup. There was an image that went up on a Dell site indicating that AMD CPUs were not going to be sold anymore (or rather Dell products with said CPUs). Dell’s response: Not sure how/why the image appeared, AMD-based consumer computers will be in stores only except for certain desktops and the Inspiron 1501 notebook. Business-oriented lines (including the Latitude) that have AMD CPUs will still be sold online, and so on. Read the full article for all the details. Kind of an interesting/murky situation if you ask me.
Finally,
CNET Blogs: Windows Vista SP1 - Benchmarks - Robert Vamosi has put Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) through it’s paces, including Adobe Photoshop CS3, file copying, iTunes encoding, and DVD battery life tests.
As you know, Vista SP1 has been released to manufacturing and some users are already getting their hands on it.
That wraps it up for this week in review.
More on Intel’s Silverthorne
February 6, 2008
Arstechnica has published an in-depth article covering Intel’s Silverthorne processor, due out later this year. This thing is small (25mm) as you can see in the picture below, and clearly geared towards the ultramobile PC market. Silverthorne could easily end up in something like the Asus Eee PC or Fujitsu’s U810. Suprisingly, they managed to fit 512K L2 Cache onto it, and in addition to being multi-threaded, it’s 64-bit. Some of the Silverthorne offerings will have Intel’s Virtualization Technology (VT) (because we all need to be running VMs on our small laptops or UMPCs!)
This is going to be a huge launch - As the article at Arstechnica points out: When Silverthorne debuts later this year, Intel will offer multiple SKUs at TDP points that range from 0.5W to 2W and speeds that range from 1GHz to 2GHz. The different SKUs will also support the same platform-level technologies as the mainstream desktop parts; in other words, just as is the case with Intel’s desktop and mobile lines, some Silverthorne products will support all of Intel’s remote management and virtualization extensions, while others will have a more stripped-down feature set.
