Speeds and Feeds

It's been a big week for small systems.

On May 29, VIA formally announced (here) its "Nano" family of low-power x86 processors. These chips will be especially valuable in small laptops, UMPCs, and so-called mobile Internet devices (MIDs).

Then on June 2, NVIDIA announced (here) its Tegra 600 family, which is also being marketed for MIDs. But Tegra is a very different animal. It's based on an ARM11 processor core, which can run Windows Mobile or Linux but not Windows XP or Vista.

VIA's Nano processor. The chip itself, the silver rectangle in the center, is about 7.7mm x 8.3mm.

(Credit: Courtesy of VIA Technologies, Inc.)

VIA's Nano processors are based on a new microarchitecture that is a giant step beyond previous VIA products and not far behind that of competing parts from AMD and Intel. Unfortunately, in this business, third place isn't a good place to be. VIA's older processors sold in relatively small quantities for low prices. Fortunately, they were very small and thus economical to make and sell.

The new Nano family offers much higher performance, with clock speeds from 1.0 to 1.8 GHz... but it's difficult to know what these clock speeds mean by comparison with AMD's or Intel's, and VIA isn't telling us, at least not directly. In this white paper on the Nano family, VIA only compares the performance of the new chips to its older C7 series.

But VIA does publish some numbers, so I was able to make some comparisons.

Take, for example, the Nano L2100 at 1.8 GHz vs. AMD's 2005-vintage Turion 64 ML-34 at the same speed, as found in the famous Acer Ferrari 4000 (reviewed here by PC World). The single-core ML-34 was much faster despite the clock-speed parity:

Of course, the ML-34 consumes much more power than VIA's processor; the ML-34 has a 35W TDP (thermal design power) specification, whereas the L2100 has a 25W TDP. The L2100 idles at a mere 500mW, but the ML-34 probably consumes at least ten times as much when idle.

To be fair, I'm not sure these are entirely fair comparisons, since VIA didn't publish the details of their system configuration. Also, VIA's performance position probably looks better on simple productivity applications, but I prefer to look at multimedia performance since that's what we usually find ourselves waiting on. It's been a while since we had to worry about out-typing our word processor...

I'm looking forward to seeing some good performance and power figures for Intel's Atom; I think the VIA chips will turn out to be effectively faster but run a little hotter. When I get more data, I'll post a comparison.

But considering that the Nano is generally 60% to 200% faster than the C7 and much more power-efficient than competing products from AMD and Intel, the new product family will likely improve VIA's market position significantly over the next year.

NVIDIA's Tegra, a high-integration processor for handheld gizmos such as mobile Internet devices.

(Credit: Courtesy NVIDIA Corporation)

NVIDIA's Tegra, on the other hand, offers no compatibility with existing PC systems or software, and its performance isn't even in the same class. The Tegra 600 family's ARM11 processor core runs at a maximum speed of 800MHz and, because it's a much simpler design, it offers a fraction of the effective performance of VIA's Nano.

So how can it possibly compete with Nano in mobile Internet devices?

Well, one answer is that Tegra is meant to deliver a much more complete solution with much lower power consumption. Instead of being just a core on a chip, like the Nano family, the Tegra 600 and 650 consist of a CPU core, a GeForce GPU, special-purpose hardware for accelerating digital video decoding and camera functions, and a dual-display controller that supports HDMI, LCDs, CRTs, and NTSC/PAL video. All of that on a chip the size of a dime, as you can see in the photo.

But the real answer is that what NVIDIA means by "mobile Internet devices" is different than what Intel (which coined the phrase), AMD, and VIA mean by it.

What NVIDIA means is basically any device with a size somewhere between that of a smartphone and a laptop, which can be used to access the Internet. But this doesn't strike me as a very useful definition; it boils down to encompassing anything like a smartphone with a larger screen. It's one thing to claim the Tegra 600 family supports a "full Internet experience" as NVIDIA did in advance briefings last month, but with the wide variety of sophisticated Web 2.0 websites out there, it really takes a PC-compatible system to deliver that experience.

Now, there's no doubt that the Tegra 600 and 650 will enable fun and interesting gizmos for people who buy lots of gizmos. (And honestly, I'm exactly that kind of person.) But I believe most people are not going to be interested in them. Anything larger than a cellphone is too big to carry around all the time. Anything with a screen smaller than about 7" to 9" isn't big enough for comfortable web browsing and movie watching. Anything with a screen that large might as well be a full Windows-compatible system.

Now, over time, these segments will inevitably blur together. Moore's Law will let us squeeze more performance into handheld devices. Software technologies like Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight will allow more websites to work on simpler systems. Hardware like high-resolution LCDs and OLEDs and tiny projection displays will help solve size problems too.

But for now, I believe the Tegra 600 family is aimed at a market segment that isn't ready to develop, whereas VIA's Nano has a big market ready and waiting for it. The Nano won't sell as well as competing PC processors from AMD and Intel, but it should help raise awareness of VIA among PC buyers and encourage PC makers to keep pushing more functionality into smaller packages.

Last week, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization announced its new XO-2 laptop design, which will likely replace the XO-1 design I've written about before on this blog. There are images of the XO-2 on the OLPC wiki and a video clip from the announcement on Joanna Stern's blog for Laptop magazine.

The OLPC XO-2 laptop features two touch-screen LCDs with a hinge in between.

(Credit: One Laptop Per Child)

The new design uses two touch-screen LCDs flanking a central hinge. This approach allows the unit to be used as a book with facing pages (shown here), as a conventional laptop using a virtual keyboard on the lower display, or as a single system shared by two users.

This is just a conceptual design so far, and the images are computer-generated, but OLPC announced some goals for the redesign-- smaller overall size (about half that of the XO-1), lower weight, 1W power consumption, and a volume price of just $75 in 2010.

These will be difficult goals to achieve, principally because of the doubling of the display area. The XO-1's display is its most expensive component and probably also its heaviest, most fragile, and most power-hungry. As a result, I think the XO-2 design concept is a little too ambitious in a few specific ways.

First, the bezels around the outside of the displays are too narrow. Although modern PC laptops have aesthetically pleasing narrow bezels, this advantage comes at a significant price in the manufacture of the LCDs-- the driver chips have to be mounted on the back of the display glass and connected by flexible circuits. I don't think the XO-2 price target can be achieved without sacrificing the narrow bezel.

Also, LCD touch screens need to be more heavily built than non-touch screens. This is even more true when they're meant to be used by young children, who may use much more force than necessary and may not keep their fingers clean. The XO-2's "keyboard" screen had better be almost bulletproof... and that means more size and weight.

The thin, light, small-outline enclosure also impairs ruggedness. A system intended for use by young children in austere conditions needs to be more heavily built. For example, thin case halves mean thin hinges. Though thin hinges can be strong enough when made with heavy or expensive materials, that solution conflicts with the XO-2's weight and price targets.

The 1W power-consumption target will be especially difficult to hit. The XO-1's LCD consumes about that much power all by itself, and at least twice that with the backlight on. If the OLPC folks mean that the 1W figure is for outdoor e-book reading (CPU idle, backlight off, no network activity), they ought to say that. Giving that figure along with images of brightly backlit displays is misleading at best. (And the color in the simulated images is much better than that available from the XO-1's relatively washed-out display.)

Also, the OLPC people talk about Windows compatibility-- Windows XP, at least-- and it's unlikely there will be any Windows XP-compatible hardware platform capable of achieving a 1W average power consumption figure in 2010... never mind the 1/4W or less that would be available to the processor and chipset with two LCDs running (even without the backlight).

The XO-2 could be based on some cellphone-like chipset, but that would sacrifice Windows XP compatibility. And if there is an XP-capable low-power chipset on the market by 2010, it's likely that it will also be used in more traditional laptops and mobile Internet devices. Similarly, the technology behind the XO-1's LCD is likely to be more widely used in the next few years. In other words, the XO-2 isn't likely to gain any meaningful advantage in this respect over competing platforms.

To me, none of this bodes well for the OLPC initiative in spite of the publicity it has received from these announcements. The organization still seems committed to a strategy of over-promising and under-delivering... not exactly a path to success.

OLPC users meeting at Baycon

(Credit: Peter N. Glaskowsky)

Incidentally, over Memorial Day weekend, I met with several XO-1 users at Baycon, an annual science-fiction convention here in Silicon Valley. This was the largest collection of OLPC users I've ever seen in person. The crowd was a mix of individual users, OLPC developers, and people interested in getting an XO-1 of their own.

OLPC developer Ed Cherlin (shown here on the right in the blue and white-striped shirt) recapped the announcements from last week, described new XO-1 software under development, and answered questions. (I asked him why browser bookmarks disappear after a reboot-- he said this was by design, but that previously visited URLs can be found in the Journal. Sure enough, that works.)

The meeting was also a recap of the shortcomings I've seen in the XO-1. Several of the systems people brought to the meeting had dead batteries because of previous use that day, networking activity while the machines were apparently in standby, or because they hadn't shut down properly. Of the eight or so working machines present, no more than three or four were able to get networked together, probably because of incompatible software versions. Nobody was satisfied with the keyboards. Of course, these were all older users with hands larger than the children for whom these systems were designed, but if OLPC can't get adults interested, there'll never be enough software to meet these kids' needs.

Nevertheless, it was a fun and informative get-together, and it probably persuaded some of the non-owners in the group to get XO-1s of their own when the Give One, Get One program starts up again in August or September of this year.