Silverthrone on Superpi

[reviewhunter]

Source : http://www.computerbase.de/news/har...8/maerz/erster_benchmark_intels_silverthorne/
(in German)

Only slightly faster than a Pentium-3,
but it seems to be highly power efficient.

 

[Polaris573]

It has hyperthreading as well. While it is close to a PIII in this benchmark it might outperform it in others since I assume it will have a newer version of SSE and other instruction sets. Still a PIII is still acceptable for internet and word processing. Considering the processor is smaller than a penny it should be great for the mobile market.

 

[erocker]

I wish I had a PIII over 1ghz! I just retired the 450mhz PIII that I used for the internet at work and it was very capable, worked for ten years solid.

 

[trog100]

i wonder how it compares to the via low power offering.. errr cyrix.. he he

trog

 

[reviewhunter]

i wonder how it compares to the via low power offering.. errr cyrix.. he he

trog

yea, you've got a point there.

 

[trog100]

yea, you've got a point there.

an interesting one as well.. we are going full circle.. intels new low power reincarnation of the P3 will end up competing with vias new low power reincarnation of the cyrix.. he he he

trog

 

[lemonadesoda]

A P-3 tualatin is a great CPU! dont knock it. It's far better than a P4 until you get to Northwood 2.4 and above. And a lot cooler. REMEMBER, the netburst architecture of the P4 was dropped. The precursor to the Core 2 was the Banias and Dothan. They were essentially P3 cores.

A P-3 might not have the fastest FPU... but, really, if the atom can achieve Tualatin performance, then it is fine.

We have just upgraded some older "700" P3 systems in the office to 1.13 and 1.26 "-S" Tualatins just by chip swap. No need to do any reinstalls. They feel like new machines. Remember they are for Office, email, and internet use. And they fit the bill perfectly. The Atom "silverthorne" has the same target. Productivity/communication. Not designed for gaming or number crunching.

 

[cdawall]

it should be great for integrated setups and HTPC if you could get 4 of them on a board like the good old P3 severs

 

[candle_86]

an interesting one as well.. we are going full circle.. intels new low power reincarnation of the P3 will end up competing with vias new low power reincarnation of the cyrix.. he he he

trog

and the way it looks the Phenom has more in common with the K6 in terms of sucess than the K7

 

[candle_86]

A P-3 tualatin is a great CPU! dont knock it. It's far better than a P4 until you get to Northwood 2.4 and above. And a lot cooler. REMEMBER, the netburst architecture of the P4 was dropped. The precursor to the Core 2 was the Banias and Dothan. They were essentially P3 cores.

A P-3 might not have the fastest FPU... but, really, if the atom can achieve Tualatin performance, then it is fine.

We have just upgraded some older "700" P3 systems in the office to 1.13 and 1.26 "-S" Tualatins just by chip swap. No need to do any reinstalls. They feel like new machines. Remember they are for Office, email, and internet use. And they fit the bill perfectly. The Atom "silverthorne" has the same target. Productivity/communication. Not designed for gaming or number crunching.

FPU was fine, the reason it lost to the K7 was the P6 core had 2 FPU's and the K7 had 3FPUs

 

[hat]

WTF, beat by 900MHz PIII-based Celeron? And it's supposed to be Core arch?

Intel... Leap Behind.

 

[Polaris573]

WTF, beat by 900MHz PIII-based Celeron? And it's supposed to be Core arch?

Intel... Leap Behind.

If you can't see the potential for a processor this small that is as powerful as a PIII then...... well...

 

[hat]

heh... It got raped by a NETBURST CELERON (quick googling reveals Dothan = netburst) at almost HALF this processor's core speed.

Who gives a flying fook if it only takes 5 watts or whatever when it performs terribly?

It just REALLY bothers me that a processor that is running at almost DOUBLE the speed of a CELERON-based processor from OLDER tech got pwned by the OLDER tech processor. Forget 5w, give me my power-guzzling 15-24w eek Merom please.

As for AS POWERFUL as a PIII, well, compared to the Merom, which the 1.8GHz model maxes our around 24w according to some quick googling, is well worth the performance. In fact, it is technically around the same level or maybe even slightly better than this processor in terms of performanceower.

Sorry if I seem to be trolling but this is what is going on in my mind, I am not trying to piss anyone off.

 

[Polaris573]

Let me put it this way. Can you put a dothan in a cell phone? Last time I checked, none of the other processors in that list including the dothan, were penny sized.

This isn't a desktop/laptop processor mean to compete with a pentium-m. It's for terminals, handheld devices, industrial devices, etc.

 

[hat]

I thought this was supposed to be a laptop chip... -->me <-- me

 

[lemonadesoda]

No, its for PDA etc. Imagine, MS can now DUMP Windows CE and just use "Windows Vista Lite" on a PDA with full compatibility of software, and not need to develop "fake compatible" applications for the restricted platform.

All that "value" in Palm and Windows CE devices, and all those developers and millions of dollars of SDK time and incompatible software and extra licences, and add-ons etc., etc. ALL NUKED. Just load up your regular applications and connect through regular network/internet using your new Atom PDA.

It's truly an amazing breakthrough. Hats off. LOL

 

[lemonadesoda]

Oh, looks like intel might actually stick a lot of atoms together. Maybe they will call it Intel DNA. LOL

Basically, like IBMs Cell processor is a "master" and 6,7 or 8 slaves depending on yield, the Intel approach could be to take a, e.g. Core 2 QUAD, and stick sixteen Atoms around it. Now I understand why they call it "atom". Also, for a DESKTOP, a core 2 quad with 16 atoms would be insanely powerful. For servers running multiple virtual servers, then perhaps two or four Quad Xeons would be better. I guess it depends no exactly what the server will spend most of its time "doing". From a price/performance perspective, a Quad and 16 atoms would be much better than 2 Quads for typical desktop applications.

The picture above shows (with artistic license),

1./ Dual Core

2./ Octo Core (or 2 quad xeons like in Intels new skulltrail workstation platform)

3./ Tri Core with 12 atoms

4./ Dual Core with 64 atoms

With these type of CPUs, you can FORGET ABOUT dedicated PPU hardware like ageia. Do it all on-die.

>> This is going to introduce a whole new language for performance and thread management. I dont think Windows is ready yet to farm out tasks to such differently powered units. Windows can just about cope with multiple cores or multiple CPUs BUT ONLY if they are at the same speed. If you mix speeds, example dual CPU workstation with one CPUs faster than the other, then the thread scheduler isnt clever enough to farm threads across the different cores in the most efficient way. This can only be done manually by locking a certain task to one specific core, which isnt great either. Once you have lots of "processing units" of different powers/abilities, the scheduling gets pretty complicated OR there is a lot of redundancy. I guess if these atoms are cheap, just add more. LOL.

WOW, a dual core with 64 atoms would really render!

 

[reviewhunter]

interesting...

 

[zatblast]

wonder how it would perform with 2 on 1 laptop board though... yes i understand not meant for laptops but uh i know how hot my turion x2 64 2.2ghz laptop runs right where the proc is... so if i could get a 2 small processors and maybe mount one top left and one top right of the motherboard..... and maybe have them passive cooled XD anyways... i like these now..

 

[lemonadesoda]

My thought is that for laptops... intel would go with adding atoms to a dual (or maybe even single) core. Thats how to get more performance at a low price and low power. Quite honestly, a dual core is overkill "most" of the time on a laptop. Sure its better, and much more responsive than single core. But where to go next year? A quad? No thats too power hungry. Just add a few atoms.

 

[kwchang007]

I can see this kind of a cpu being thrown into next gen gaming hand-helds, gps, amps, tvs, blu-ray players, pdas, and such. Also into laptops that are smaller than the macbook air (like not thiner, cause that's already almost as thin as possible but like 8" screens), and smart phones like the iphone-except not apple based.

 

[cdawall]

if it was two chips the mobo could shut the one off when not in use to save power...