Saturday, September 19th 2009
DFI Mashes Two Systems into One, Rolls out Hybrid Motherboard
The term 'Hybrid' these days probably relates most to hybrid cars. DFI has taken the concept of two machines - a high-power one, and an energy-efficient one, to a whole new level with its Hybrid P45-ION-T2A2 socket LGA 775 motherboard. This motherboard literally packs two motherboards sharing a PCB: one P45+ICH10R based socket LGA-775 system, and another portion holding an Intel Atom processor powered by NVIDIA ION chipset. Each has its own memory and storage subsystems, and share the machine's IO (input devices and display) in a somewhat KVM-style. So even as the major system is busy playing games, transcoding media, or running other power-hungry tasks, the minor system is quietly running the downloads, playing music, etc. When the major system is not needed, the minor system provides enough juice for media consumption and internet browsing, and general productivity at a really low energy footprint. A pretty neat concept. DFI's engineers describe it further in this YouTube video.
Source:
TweakTown
82 Comments on DFI Mashes Two Systems into One, Rolls out Hybrid Motherboard
All joking aside, this is a very interesting concept. Perfect for moderate gaming while downloading um 'files'(google dark_knight.mkv people).
No way, this could cost 500 euros and I'd still get it for just what it can do been looking this kind of board now for past at least 2 years.
I have to disagree with your take on this. This is for people who would build a main computer, and then buy an Atom system to use for surfing and downloading. This is targeted at people that already planned to buy 2 computers. You're points are pretty much moot.
The biggest downside of this is price and the fact that the main system is still S775.
1./ If it wasnt clear to anywone, (see early posts), this is TWO independent systems in one box
2./ There are no system management gains. Maintenance on one side needs to be replicated on the other
3./ Software licensing seems to be a "grey zone". We need an official statement on this. This is clearly "two systems"... not just "one mainboard" and hence 2 software licenses required for both sides... so no gain here
4./ It is far cheaper to build two independent systems, as shown by links in my other posts
5./ Two physical systems gives much more flexibility. For upgrading. And for positioning them physically. Want to move your PC? Then BOTH will be powered down. Want to take your PC with you... then your Atom system moves too. This is an issue if you want to have a 24/7 webserver/NAS parked safely at home. But it is a benefit if you WANT to bring your little system with you.
6./ The ONLY gain is the space consolidation. Nothing more. Well, Did you know that a microATX system and a separate miniITX takes less space than a full ATX system.
They should bring back those asrock motherboards with the slot to add another socket processor. Hell having a i7 setup than slot card with a 775 processor would be nice.
I'd sure like one of these - i'd put the gaming system into S3 sleep and use the ION system for chat/IM/web browsing/media playback.
While lemonade seems to think its a bad thing to have twice as much 'maintenance' i find that an odd train of thought - its two systems. of course you have to do things twice. its also capable of running two seperate OS's (as has been said) meaning you can run whatever you want, XP on the ION and 7 on the other, for example.
Its pretty clear that if you dont have a use for two PC's to begin with, you shouldnt even consider buying this.
There is only one reason to be interested in this system, and that is space consolidation. There are no other benefits. Every OTHER feature can be had/built at a lower cost and with greater flexibility.
What Intel needs to think about... to really solve this power issue... is a chipset feature to "deep down sleep" 3 of the 4 cores via software. That way power savings can be achieved by knocking out (or waking up) cores via software switch.
Want to game... all cores.
Want to idle... turn off 3 of 4 cores.
**edit**
Note that this is a slightly different approach (and much more aggressive in terms of power saving) that Speedstep approach which just adjusted the multiplier of all cores by a small amount, e.g. 6x to 9x and back again. This is different from Intel current philosophy of "speed up, get it done, idle". Perhaps Intel is right... but the idle power of the OTHER system components, like memory and GPU are the problem. The Atom part has ION GPU, the Intel part has a watt sucking PCIe16 device. Similary, 4 sticks high speed memory, vs. 1 or 2 sticks slower low power SO-DIMM.
What a shame Intel doesnt do a 4 core socket P. :(
We will have to wait for a LV i5.
its not so much low power, as their goal with this system was to find a way to lower the power consumption of gaming systems - i get annoyed by the fact my PC is utterly overkill for 90% of the tasks i do, but they still havent got good idling characteristics down (i5/i7 and the ATI 5 series cards seem to be a big improvement over my generation of hardware for this)
my main problems with this board is i would use the atom cpu for data storage and server dutys and the 775 chip for a main pc.
the main problem with this motherboard is that there is a lack of bandwidth between the 2 computers gigabit is just not enough! a pci-e link would be ideal with 250mb bi directional bandwidth you could setup raid on the atom and use iscsi to connect to it from the 775 machine then you would have a raid array running on an (almost) fully independent storage system that would be imunne to crashes or corruption on the main computer.
they should have put a modern socket and chipset instead of the 775 p45 combination. i5 would be the best combination for this as it only needs 2 chips cpu and southbridge.
775 was probably easiest for them to test this on, as it would have been under design for a year or so - hard to make fancy prototypes with something that doesnt exist when you start designing.
Also, i5 is a CPU type, not a socket/motherboard. You obviously meant socket 1156/P55, but i thought it best to clear that up.
can we please stay on topic :)
TV manufacturers do this. Washing machine and fridge/freezer units all have efficiency ratings. But PCs dont. A rating system might help get the ball rolling.
A TPU idle power rating system standard? Bring it on.
Then again the D5400XS is notorious for wasting power.
If I could offload to onboard GFX good enough to run a 1080 screen except for 3-D and a low power CPU until I need to fire off the V8 muscle that would be ideal.
MFRs are heading in the right direction with "hybrids" and the DFI offering is pretty edgey.