09-30-2003, 01:00 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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AMD Updates Alchemy PDA Prototype
AMD is still working at getting a crack in the PDA market, despite lukewarm reception of their Alchemy processor. They've updated their PDA prototype to, among other things, do full-motion video with no artifacts.
"Based on AMD's 400-MHz Alchemy 1100 processor, an early prototype of the PDA reference design was demonstrated in August by the company at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. Since then, AMD has advanced the prototype's design with the addition of full-screen video capabilities and has completed work on the device's battery charger, said Phil Pompa, vice president of marketing for AMD's Personal Connectivity Solutions group, in an interview on the sidelines of the Computex exhibition in Taipei last week. 'It's certainly at the point where we can go hand to this to an OEM,' Pompa said, adding that AMD is currently working on improvements to the design's power management capabilities."
What I find interesting is that of all the Linux PDAs coming on the market, only the Sharp units seem to have generated considerable interest. It'll be interesting to see how this market evolves in comparison to more-established handheld OSes, like Windows CE.
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09-30-2003, 01:23 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,466
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Mobile Linux OS on a MIPS processor? Two useless technologies rolled up into one. :roll:
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09-30-2003, 01:49 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 47
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The reference design is able to run Windows CE in any case. Makes me just wonder if Microsoft's decision to drop MIPS was a bit too early one... AMD's offering could be pretty powerful CPU.
Alchemy does have some niceties, like that nice integer division instruction which helps sometimes quite a bit (data compression, texture mapping, etc.). AMD also mentions fast memory.
Might be interesting to see this thing running PPC2000 to compare.
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09-30-2003, 01:53 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jun 2003
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Foo Fighter
Mobile Linux OS on a MIPS processor? Two useless technologies rolled up into one. :roll:
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What makes MIPS CPUs or mobile linux useless. Please do tell!
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09-30-2003, 01:59 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,466
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MIPS is dead. ARM is quickly becoming the standard. Linux on mobile devices has gone nowhere. Sharp has had very little success with its Zaurus line. Linux has a bright future ahead of it in servers, and perhaps the desktop, but mobile devices? Not going to happen anytime soon.
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09-30-2003, 02:03 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 1,398
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:roll:
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09-30-2003, 02:08 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Foo Fighter
MIPS is dead. ARM is quickly becoming the standard. Linux on mobile devices has gone nowhere. Sharp has had very little success with its Zaurus line. Linux has a bright future ahead of it in servers, and perhaps the desktop, but mobile devices? Not going to happen anytime soon.
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As a consumer platform, perhaps. However, ARM does have its limits too (no floating-point, among other things). While ARM has its advantages, we can't assume it will have permanent dominance in the consumer handheld industry.
--janak
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09-30-2003, 02:21 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,466
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
While ARM has its advantages, we can't assume it will have permanent dominance
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Never said it would have permanent dominance. But MIPS is not contender. I'd still like to see a COMPLETELY new mobile processor designed from the ground up for Mobile devices. We are getting closer to that with "System on a chip" technologies (integrated CPU, GPU + wireless).
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09-30-2003, 02:41 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 47
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Foo Fighter
MIPS is dead. ARM is quickly becoming the standard. Linux on mobile devices has gone nowhere. Sharp has had very little success with its Zaurus line. Linux has a bright future ahead of it in servers, and perhaps the desktop, but mobile devices? Not going to happen anytime soon.
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MIPS is dead? Good joke. Tons of devices from printers to games consoles have MIPS CPU inside. Think PS2. Think about your printer. Think about your digital camera. MIPS is a very sound microarchitecture and there's nothing dead in it. Some implementations might be bad, but the architecture itself is good. MIPS could make a comeback in the form of AMD Alchemy. Alchemy sounds like it could have potential to wipe floors performance-wise with ANY current or near future ARM-based processor, including Intel's X-Scale. There's absolutely no reason to dismiss MIPS yet.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss MIPS or Linux, regardless of the current market situation. Linux as a kernel is definitely way more advanced than Windows CE is and has also been demonstrated to run on embedded devices, why would PDAs be any different if someone puts enough bucks in the development?
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09-30-2003, 02:48 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 47
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Foo Fighter
Never said it would have permanent dominance. But MIPS is not contender. I'd still like to see a COMPLETELY new mobile processor designed from the ground up for Mobile devices. We are getting closer to that with "System on a chip" technologies (integrated CPU, GPU + wireless).
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Ah you mean like Samsung's ARM, X-Scale or Alchemy?  I'd like to see GPUs integrated, but doesn't look like it's going to happen yet, maybe in 1-2 years. There's nothing in MIPS or ARM architecture that prevents you from integrating GPU and wireless in them. For example Intel's PXA-26x series is pretty integrated already.
If you want to see a completely new microarchitecture, I doubt it will happen.
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