Category: Hardware
March 26th, 2008
55W PC power supply powering the dual-core computer
Most computer builders in the world think I’m nuts for endorsing the use of 330 watt power supplies for a high-end performance computer. Conventional “wisdom” says that anything under 500 watts is inadequate for an enthusiast PC. “My power supply is bigger than your power supply” seems to be a typical mindset for many people but I’ve always had just the opposite desire to say that “my supply is smaller than yours and it works great”. So when I started building mainstream dual-core computers with 220 watt 80 Plus power supplies, people were shocked that I would even consider such a small power supply. But since I was able to build a 50W peak power dual-core computer, why not use an even smaller power supply in the sub-100 watt range?
Pictured above is the open frame fanless AC input open frame 55 watt FSP055-50LM power supply from Sparkle Power Inc with an MSRP of $39. Typically when power supplies are this small, people often use DC input power supplies with an external AC brick. Not so with this model as it’s an all in one with the standard AC power connector you get on a normal ATX PC power supply. It’s so small that it doesn’t even bother with a fan or metal casing; you have to a system-level fan yourself and provide the bracing and shielding in your computer chassis. The really nice thing about this solution is that the entire power supply including the AC conversion part is not much bigger than a DC power supply but you don’t need an external brick.
Using this 55W power supply, I took a dual-core Intel E2140 along with the bundled ECS945-GM motherboard I bought for $90 and built a computer with it using default clock speed and voltages. Unfortunately since it was missing a 4-pin power connector for the motherboard, I had to hot-wire a 4-pin CPU power connector from an older power supply to this unit to make it work. That means 2 12-volt yellow cables and 2 black ground cables had to be soldered in to place and taped up. Since these cables are safe for 10 amps each which translates to 120 watts per cable, I’m not even close to overloading the cables.
Once the computer came up, the power consumption at the plug peak out at 70W which means the output power is around 52W at 75% efficiency which is 3W under the peak output of the power supply. That is cutting it a bit close but it shows the extreme worst-case of what this PSU can handle.
In reality, the 55W PSU isn’t practical for a mainstream dual-core computer although it would be more than powerful enough for an Intel D201GLY with Celeron 115, D201GLY2 motherboard with Celeron 120, or the Via low-power ITX platforms. The upcoming Intel Centrino Atom platform with the Atom-Diamondville CPU peaks at around 4W TDP so they’re even easier to power.
The bottom line is that this is a nice little power supply for small embedded solutions but you’ll want to stick with the bigger 80 Plus closed-frame models like the Sparkle SPI220LE 220W or the SPI270LE 270W if you’re building a mainstream PC. Note that the SPI models are 1U power supplies so you’ll either need a very custom case or one that uses 1.75″ thin power supplies.
March 20th, 2008
HDMI survival guide for home theater
There’s a lot of money to be made in the HDMI cabling and switch aftermarket and unfortunately that means a lot of consumers are getting tricked in to paying outrageous prices. I’ve spent quite a bit of time helping my friends set up their home theaters recently and I thought I’d share that knowledge with my readers. If you’re tired of paying high hundreds of dollars for HDMI switches and HDMI cables, read on.
What is HDMI?
HDMI is a high speed digital interface for the transmission of high quality digital audio and digital video. So if you plug your DVD player, your PlayStation 3, your satellite or cable TV box, or even your computer up to a modern HDTV with a single HDMI cable, then the sound and picture will all work. The HDMI plug only has a single small connector so it’s nice and simple. Before HDMI, you had to hook up three separate connectors for just the video and two additional RCA plugs for stereo sound. Instead of the two RCA plugs, you could also use an S/PDIF optical cable for the sound but it still adds a lot of cable complexity and clutter compared to a single HDMI cable.
Why are there different HDMI types?
There are 4 basic versions of HDMI. You have 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 and you can get a quick summary of the capability of each version here. The easy answer is the higher the number, the better. If you’re shopping now, try to stick with the HDMI 1.3 devices if you can.
Do I need monster HDMI cables?
No, HDMI monster cables are simply a monster rip-off. If a cable is HDMI certified, it will by definition offer you a perfect digital signal. Despite the fact that the electrical signals traversing an HDMI cable degrade as a cable gets longer, it will still offer perfect digital transmission so long as the signal loss or distortion is within a certain tolerance. Analog cables might benefit from extra thickness and insulation because there’s not much you can do to fix analog signal loss or distortion other than to amplify and maybe filter the signal a little to mitigate the bad side effects. But when it comes to digital technology, the signal is either all there or it isn’t. There is zero measurable difference in the digital signal quality between the $6 HDMI cable and the $60 monster HDMI cable.
Where do I buy cheap HDMI cables?
There are lots of online vendors that can be found via a quick Google search of “HDMI 1.3 cable”. These cables suppliers have always been reliable in my experience and they’re many times cheaper than the local retailer. Here’s a few examples I compiled.
- 3 foot HDMI 1.3a cable $5
- 15 foot HDMI 1.3a CL2 rated cable $24
- 25 foot HDMI 1.3a CL2 rated cable $42
- 30 foot HDMI 1.3a cable $64 (bought for friend’s project)
- 60 meter (197 feet) HDMI 1.3a CAT5e extender kit $199
<Next page - Can I split or switch multiple input/output HDMI sources?>
March 19th, 2008
The cheapest way to do VoIP is still analog
What happens when you want to just want a bunch of phones in your business, hotel, or organization and you don’t need a bunch of fancy and complicated features on the phone? It’s simple, just get a bunch of cheap analog phones. But how do you build a phone system to support a bunch of analog phones? It’s simple, just get a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) with a few FXS interfaces to plug in the phones. Just to rehash what an FXO and FXS phone port is and what the differences are, here’s a text representation how these devices are connected:
- Phone (FXO) - (FXS) Channel bank (FXO) - (FXS) Telco
- Phone (FXO) - (FXS) Telco
But this is where the tricky part comes in since your typical IP PBX which is essentially a computer doesn’t have any FXS interfaces so that’s where channel banks come in. A channel bank traditionally converts a T1 PRI interface in to 24 separate channels for 24 phone lines. The problem with traditional channel bank is not that they’re all that expensive, but the fact that they require a T1 PRI interface on the PBX for every 24 phone lines which are very expensive and cumbersome.
To get around this problem of having to use expensive T1 cards that are tied to a single server, Xorcom shuns T1 cards and uses good old USB 2.0 for its interface to the PC. Pictured below are some Astribank products with FXO or FXS ports along with the option for PRI ports. You just plug in your TBX to one of the Astribanks via one of the abundant USB 2.0 ports and you’re done. Simply plug it in to a USB 2.0 switch and two cheap open-source PBX appliances and you can instantly flip between the two servers in case one of them goes down for whatever reason. Any problems with one PBX server and you simply need to flip the USB switch and the other PBX is instantly lit up with all of its FXO and FXS ports. Trying to swap a PCI card with a T1 interface is far more difficult.
Pictured above is the front view of three Xorcom Astribank models ranging from 8 to 32 ports with any mixture of FXO and FXS ports. Pictured below is the back of the units showing the power and USB port in the back. The larger models also have 50 pin breakout ports so you can use your existing breakout box if you chose to do it that way.
The next two photos show all-in-one appliances designed to run Asterisk or Asterisk distributions from popular vendors like Trixbox or some other Asterisk derivative.
March 14th, 2008
AMD Shanghai won't get HyperTransport 3
HyperTransport 3 which was once slated for AMD’s Barcelona server processors seem to be delayed again on Shanghai until some time in 2009 when it finally arrives for the “Montreal” quad- and octal-core CPUs. According to page 21 of Mario Rivas’ slides, the roadmap clearly indicates AMD’s first 45nm processor Shanghai won’t get the newer inter-processor interconnect and it will instead use the older HyperTransport 1 interconnects.
AMD’s desktop variant of the Barcelona processor called “Phenom” already has HyperTransport 3 when you use motherboards with AMD’s 770 and 790 chipset and the AM2+ socket. But ironically, the multi-socket servers which really need the higher interconnect transport speeds won’t get HypertTranport 3 for another two generations of server processors.
March 11th, 2008
Building the 200 inch 1080p HDTV
Yesterday I helped my friend build his 200 inch 1080p HDTV for his entertainment room and it was a beast of a task. But when it was all said and done, I think he was quite happy. Pictured above and below is me standing in front of the display. [See gallery for larger images.]
In the photo above, you can see how I’m dwarfed by the characters on the screen by the life-like images from the movie “300″ (HD DVD format).
Using the $2700 street price Panasonic PT-AE2000U 1920×1080 projector, we worked hard to mount it on to the ceiling. Pictured above is the projector with the mount installed on the bottom. [Update 3/14/2008 - Note that the special paint used for the reflective wall and the undercoating used cost around 300 Euros. I would imagine that the prices in the US are a little cheaper though. I should also point out that the universal projector mount costs around $150.]
Pictured above is our handy work in mounting the thing. It wasn’t easy but we got it done. Drilling through that solid concrete material destroyed 2 drill bits and it wasn’t easy until we got higher quality drill bits and a powerful drill.
This is the front of the projector hanging upside down from the ceiling. You can use software control to flip the image upside down so it’s right side up.
On top of the projector (or below in this case) are two optical lens shift dials that allow you to optically shift left/right 40% and up/down 100% without any keystoning effects or resorting to ugly digital keystone adjustments.
Here’s the back of the unit with just the power cord and HDMI 1.3 cable plugged in. We purchased a good 30 foot long HDMI 1.3 cable off a Google search for $50 and it works quite wonderfully. Remember, digital is digital is digital so long as it works. Too many people spend $150 on even shorter cables and it’s a big scam.
March 10th, 2008
Early photos of AMD Shanghai CPU
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| Credit: Fuad Abazovic, Fudzilla |
Photos of CPU-Z highlighting AMD’s 45nm Shanghai quad-core processor appeared on Fudzilla last week. It confirms that AMD’s latest processor will have a total of 2 megabytes L2 cache (512 KB per core), and 6 megabytes of shared L3 cache.
By contrast, AMD’s 65-nm Barcelona-class processors (Phenom and Opteron quad-core) only have 2 megabytes of shared L3 cache. The L2 and L3 caches will mostly be exclusive which means they will for the most part not share any content effectively making the cache size larger.
Shanghai’s core voltage of 1.15 V is equivalent to the low-voltage edition of AMD’s current 65nm quad-core processor Barcelona though it’s unclear if this particular Shanghai was operating at normal or low voltage. According to Fuad Abazovic of Fudzilla, Shanghai is expected to operate above the 3 GHz mark though the CPU-Z photo has the clock speed left out. We also need to put this in the context of Barcelona having a targeted clock speed of 2.8 GHz according to papers presented at ISSCC 2007 though actual production speeds have yet to exceed 2.3 GHz.
One other interesting note is that AMD’s Montreal 8-core processor due out after Shanghai will resort to MCM (Multi Chip Module). Montreal will be two Shanghai cores glued on to a single processor package. That means AMD will be adopting the same strategy Intel has been using on its 65nm and first-generation 45nm processors where you take two smaller cores and “glue” them on to a CPU package to have more cores per processor. Ironically, Intel will be going the opposite direction starting with Intel Nehalem. Not only will the initial Nehalem-EP 8 MB L3 cache quad-core processor be single-die, but even the much larger Nehalem-EX 8-core processor with 24 MB L3 cache will be single-die. So in 2009, watch for both companies to reverse their marketing literature touting or disparaging MCM “glue” technology.
March 7th, 2008
Asus' 8.9" Eee draws crowds at CeBIT
Here in CeBIT 2008, crowds descended on Hannover Germany to see the latest technologies. Germany is certainly a lovely country but there’s nothing lovable about the 5.60 Euro per gallon gas prices.
CeBIT is certainly one of the more unique conventions I’ve been to since everything is spread out over a square kilometer and it’s like going to 10 mini conventions. While you get some outdoor air between the halls, don’t expect any fresh air with all the smokers there. The temperature delta certainly makes proper attire a challenge because it’s too warm inside and freezing outside.
Asus had a massive presence in building 26 which is one of the more popular spots at CeBIT and they managed to draw crowds wanting to get a closer look at the new and improved 8.9″ Asus Eee PC. The new 8.9″ Asus Eee comes with more SSD flash storage, a bigger LCD screen with 1024×600 resolution, a better quality webcam. The same Pentium M 900 MHz CPU is the same as the original Eee. [See gallery for a close-up view.]
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The Windows XP model comes with 8 GBs of SSD flash memory when the Linux model comes with 12 GB of SSD flash memory. So far we only know that the price will be 399 Euros (which typically means it will be fewer in dollars for the US market), but we don’t know if there will be a price difference between the Linux and Windows XP model. It is possible that the price of the flash memory offsets the licensing costs of Windows XP.While holding the lightweight Eee with one hand, I tested the quality of the Mic and the Webcam and confirmed that the quality if fairly good. The Webcam is definitely much better quality than the old Eee. The Eee also comes with a wired 10/100 Ethernet port as well as 802.11g. The one down side to the Eee is that it doesn’t have a DVI output and instead has a DB-15 VGA port.
Here’s a comparison of the older 7″ Asus Eee versus the 8.9″ Eee. As you can see, the screen is much bigger and the color and contrast appears to be much better. The speakers had to be moved to the bottom of the laptop because the bigger screen pushed them off the lid. You can also see that the track pad is also larger.
I wouldn’t doubt if people buy the 12 GB Linux version and use NLite to install a trimmed down version of XP though having Linux on this device is extremely useful if you’re going to use it as a security auditing tool. The 8 GBs of SSD is more than enough to hold the OS and key applications and a $60 16 GB SDHC card is more than sufficient to hold plenty of movies and data. With the larger screen and nicer webcam and adequate microphone, it becomes a great Skype video conferencing solution. The bottom line is that the Asus Eee is very pleasing in the hands and it runs Windows XP very quickly if you keep bloatware/crapware off of it.
March 2nd, 2008
Intel christens Silverthorne as "Atom"
Intel has officially announced its new branding for the “Silverthorne” processor and the “Menlow” platform. The Silverthorne processor will be called the “Intel Atom”. The Menlow platform will be called “Intel Centrino Atom”. The Intel Atom processor will be used in the Intel Centrino Atom platform. The new Atom logos are shown below.
Intel released technical details of the new Silverthorne processor last month at ISSCC 2008. This latest announcement gives Silverthorne and Menlow their official branding and their official logos. Intel also released high resolution die shots at the right hand side of their press release. A cut down rotated version of the die shot is shown below.
Here’s a summary of the new “Atom” processor:
- Equivalent on single-threaded performance to original Pentium M “Banias” processor. Faster if SSE3 instructions are used in the application or if multiple threads are involved.
- 0.6W TDP (Thermal Design Power) to 2.5W TDP
- Up to 1.8 GHz and DailyTech says sources inside Intel are saying that the 500 MHz version goes down to 0.6W TDP.
- Idle power consumption can drop as low as 0.01W to 0.1W
- Deep power down C6 state
- Optimized register-file and cache 6T bits cells
- CMOS mode on quad-pumped FSB IO
- Split IO power supply
- Single CPU core 2-issue in-order pipeline
- SMT (Symmetric Multithread) architecture
- 25mm^2 die size (2500 CPUs per 300mm diameter wafer)
- Can achieve 2GHz core frequencies at 1.0V
- Intel VT (Virtualization Technology)
- Intel 64 architecture (formerly EM64T and compatible with AMD64)
Intel’s press release also mentions the processor codenamed “Diamondville”. DailyTech reported some leaked information that Diamondville would be released in a single and dual-core version at 4W and 8W TDP. Diamondville will be soldered on to an Intel 945GSE chipset motherboard and judging from the photo, it looks to be a replacement for the D201GLY and D201GLY2 developing market platforms. The Intel D201GLY2 uses a lower power Celeron 220 (Core Solo architecture) with a TDP of 17W so Diamondville is a huge boost in energy efficiency. The current D201GLY and D201GLY2 also utilizes a third party SIS chipset which doesn’t support S3 sleep/suspend states while the Diamondville 945GSE platform will.
Given the fact that it’s highly unlikely (too expensive) that Intel would design a whole separate CPU for this type of a solution, it is very possible that Diamondville is simply a soldered-on-motherboard derivative of Silverthorne and the dual-core version is simply an MCM (Multi Chip Module) version of Silverthorne. AnandTech’s Anand Lal Shimpi seems to agree with this theory and goes on to explain that the slightly higher TDP with slightly lower 1.6 GHz clock is simply due to a higher voltage allowing for much higher yields. Since this is for the low-cost value market segment, that theory makes a lot of sense.
At present time Intel seems to be hinting that Diamondville will also carry the “Atom” branding but they’re vague on the specifics. What is certain is that the emerging market will enter in to a whole new level of energy efficiency and the appliance/embedded do-it-yourselfers like me are drooling over Diamondville’s power specifications.
February 24th, 2008
Leaked Intel Nehalem performance projections over AMD Shanghai
It appears that the rumors about Intel’s next major microprocessor “Nehalem” being a huge juggernaut may be true according to leaked documents from Sun Microsystems (removed Sunday night). The slides appear to be inadvertently placed on Sun’s publicly accessible website and “jokerman” posted the link on Aceshardware (thanks to tip from ZDNet reader JumpingJack). The slides looks like the real thing meant for Intel’s partners and they’re probably well known in the server industry.
Reliable sources have reported in the past that Intel’s Nehalem processor will have three channels of DDR3 memory per CPU versus two channels of DDR2 memory per AMD Barcelona or upcoming Shanghai processor. That would mean that AMD’s massive memory bandwidth advantage will turn in to a large memory bandwidth. So what does this mean for Intel Nehalem’s performance? Take a look at the following charts I generated after carefully measuring the length of the performance bars on a pixel level.
Since Intel’s charts were normalized to an Intel E5160 dual-core processor on SPECint_rate_base2006 and SPECfp_rate_base2006, I had to start somewhere and make some guesses on the base performance. I used Intel’s highest published SPEC CPU integer and floating point score of 60.8 and 45.1 for the E5160 processor as of 2/23/2007. This is probably not the exact reference point that Intel used so the numbers might be off a little.
When I compared my extrapolated numbers to the published SPECint scores for all of the shipping products other than the E5160, I found that Integer performance was 2% to 7% too low and the average was 4%. When I compared with published SPECfp scores other than the E5160, I found that my extrapolated numbers were all 4% too high for all models except the Opteron 2220 extrapolation which was 12% too high. To adjust for this, I raised the SPECint estimates 4% and dropped the SPECfp estimates 5% and generated the following chart which is a closer match to the published scores.
I tend to believe that the second adjusted chart is more accurate. We’ll most likely know by the end of this year what the actual scores are, but I doubt they will be more than 5% to 10% off from these estimated projections.
So how can Intel pull off such a massive performance boost over their current reigning champion “Harpertown” X5482 processor? Consider the fact that Intel’s current generation 45nm Harpertown processors lead the benchmarks despite the memory bandwidth disadvantage because of a much faster execution engine and larger cache. Then we factor in the fact that Intel will implement SMT (dual threads per CPU core), improve the already-fast execution engine of Harpertown, and feed it with three channels of DDR3 memory per CPU instead of the old shared front side bus. AMD’s Shanghai on the other hand is essentially a die shrink, a cache size boost, and a clock speed boost. Taking all these things in to consideration would easily explain how Intel could widen the lead so far.
I would also note that Intel’s leaked slides compare these processors in pairs where the Opteron 2220 DC (Dual Core) faces off with the Intel E5160 DC processor and the 2222 faces the X5365. These two pairs represent a snapshot in time to when the products competed against each other. The last two pairings on top may be generous to AMD since Barcelona processors aren’t shipping yet because of the TLB bug whereas Intel launched the X5482 in November 2007. AMD’s Shanghai processor didn’t have first silicon until four months after Intel showed off their first silicon at spring IDF 2007 in September, but the difference is that Intel has showed the Nehalem running a real Operating System while AMD has not done the same for Shanghai.
Since it usually takes one year from first silicon to production parts, it’s a bit hard to believe that Shanghai will ship at the same time as Nehalem. But even if it does ship at the same time as Nehalem, the competition from Intel looks very daunting if these estimates are anywhere close to being accurate.
February 19th, 2008
Cracking open a Toshiba HD-A30 HD DVD player
Updated 3:00AM - By now the news is out that the end of HD DVD might be near since Toshiba is considering its options that may include the possibility of stopped production on HD DVD products is confirmed dead. There are more than a million HD DVD owners, two exclusive HD DVD studios, and the adult movie industry who are now left holding the bag on an optical disk format with no future.
While it may be a sad day that the more affordable and fully-baked format lost, I know many friends who bought one of these sub-$150 players as a great 1080i or 1080p up-converting DVD player which happen to come with 7 HD DVD movies. A common consensus is that while Blu-ray may have “won” the format wars, a lot of people aren’t in the mood to jump over to the $300 Blu-ray set-top boxes that can’t be upgraded to Blu-ray profile 2.0 next year and they’ll be left with another obsolete high definition player.
Since I have the opportunity to review my friend’s Toshiba HD-A30 which is the pinnacle of HD DVD set-top boxes and might be the last production HD DVD drive ever, I thought I’d crack it open and take a look inside. See higher resolution gallery here.
This $150 1080p up-converting HD DVD player comes with 2 HD DVD movies (300 and Borne Identity) out of the box. It also has a coupon offer for an additional 5 free HD DVD movies. Given the fact that a discount HD DVD movie goes for $15 while the newer ones are $25, this seems to be worth at least $105 in HD DVD movies. The fact that existing DVDs look great on it when played on a 1080i or 1080p display seems to be a nice bonus.
Just what we need, another remote control to add to my collection of dozens of remote controls. This remote seems to be a simple and straight forward infrared remote with no backlighting and it works well enough. The menus in the HD DVD titles are fairly responsive and they work and overlay the main feature while the movie is playing.
Here’s the Toshiba HD-A30 unit sitting on a table and it’s fairly small and light weight. I measured idle power consumption to be around 22 watts and peak consumption around 28 watts during HD DVD playback which is a vast improvement over the first generation HD DVD players which consumed around 60 to 80 watts. Boot times still seem a bit disappointing at one minute long and there’s no low-power sleep state with instant wake but this seems to be a problem with the Blu-ray set-top boxes as well.
After popping off a few screws on the Toshiba HD-A30, the cover came off. You can also see what the back looks like. It comes with an RCA audio/video standard definition output, an HDMI HDCP output, an analog component HD output, and a S/PDIF digital audio output. The Ethernet port is standard on all HD DVD players for future upgradeability and interactive features.
Here’s a topside view of the Toshiba HD-A30 with the covers off. It’s a fairly simple device with an embedded motherboard with CPU and graphics processors on the right, an HD DVD ROM drive on the left, and an open frame power supply on the lower left. The very first Toshiba HD DVD drive used a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz processor while this one uses something that has much lower power consumption with passive cooling. Since the CPU heat sink was glued on, I didn’t want to rip it off and damage my friend’s unit so I didn’t see what the chip was. The memory, GPU, and CPU are all soldered directly on to the motherboard. In theory, this would make a decent $150 media extender that hooks up to any high-definition monitor if we could put in a hacked operating system. In theory it could be turned in to a computer but it lacks USB ports for hooking up input devices.
The Toshiba HD-A30 seems to be using a miniature 40-pin PATA IDE connector for the optical drive and a small 3.5″ floppy drive power connector. You can see the thin 40-pin ribbon taped down to the chassis.
This is a close-up of the motherboard.
February 15th, 2008
The $330 IPCop/Copfilter firewall 25 watt appliance
A lot of you probably already know my disdain for desktop anti-virus because of how sluggish it makes your computer and how it actually becomes more of a liability in terms of security. I’ve talked about how wonderful it would be if you could run your anti-virus at the gateway to protect all of your computers. The one thing I couldn’t really offer up until recently is how you actually implement this with a practical and relatively cheap solution.
One of the things a lot of people did was to take an old computer that made a lot of noise and probably takes a lot of power which adds up on the electricity bill. Another option was to buy a $600 embedded appliance which is too expensive. The third option which Justin James attempted was to order something all the way from China which took nearly 2 months along with a steep money transfer fee and shipping costs. I got so desperate that I even thought the Apple TV would make a nice low-power cheap appliance only to find out that the EFI BIOS was going to be a pain to deal with.
A year has passed and I’m happy to inform you that the bad old days are over and you can finally buy a low-cost low-powered x86 appliance for a little over $330 with no gimmicks or hacks. Enter Logic Supply’s Perimeter B4 appliance for $291 which includes 3 gigabit ports and 1 FastEthernet port as shown in the picture above and below which I got a chance to review. It’s an all metal chassis that can be mounted on the wall or just placed in the corner somewhere. [See gallery for a closer look.]
This particular model came with a 2.5″ hard drive and 512 MB RAM, but the current model being sold only has 256 MB RAM and 256 MB flash. I’m not sure why they no longer offer the hard drive and more memory option on their website but you might be able to custom order it. If not, you can buy 512 MB of DDR2-533 memory for $9 including shipping and a 20 GB 2.5″ hard drive for $29 including shipping. This is the recommended amount of memory you’ll need for running IPCop/Copfilter and the hard drive is perfect for transparent caching which speeds things up immensely. If you spend $14.38 including shipping for 1 GB of RAM, that would give you more room to grow.
The noise level in this device is moderate with the three small fans inside (1 for CPU and 2 for chassis). It’s a lot quieter than your 1U Cisco switch or router and quieter than some PCs, but it’s no silent enough for under-desk operation in my opinion and you might have to make some modifications to the fan to slow them down. You can generally replace the yellow wire leading up to the fan with the red wire which cuts the voltage from 12 to 5 volts and that will significantly slow down the fan. The temperature seemed to be low enough that you could reduce the speed of the fan. I did complain to Logic Supply that they should implement variable speed fans that only speed up and make noise when the system is getting too hot.
Inside the chassis you’ll find a standard mini-ITX Jetway J7F2WE-1G motherboard with 1 GHz Via C7 processor which is plenty of performance for a gateway device like this. Typical power consumption was around 25W so it should cost about $22 a year to operate 24×7 at 10 cents per kilowatt*hour.
Here I detached the hard drive and the Gigabit Ethernet daughter card. The hard drive is a standard 2.5″ PATA IDE hard drive mounted on a metal holder. There is only one DDR2-533 slot for memory so make sure you buy enough memory.
The system comes with a 10/100 FastEthernet interface on the motherboard and a 3-port gigabit Ethernet card which uses three Realtek RTL8110SC network processing chips all compatible with Linux and BSD. Note that the CPU in this appliance isn’t fast enough to turn this thing in to a gigabit router but it’s plenty fast as a gateway device. This particular daughter card actually uses the strange 120-pin plug (see gallery for higher resolution image) in the picture above.
IPCop and Copfilter are free Open Source applications and Justin James has a simple guide on how to install IPCop here if you want to get started right away. I’ll be following up with a more detailed guide.
February 4th, 2008
ISSCC 2008: Details on Intel Silverthorne
At this year’s ISSCC 2008 (International Solid State Circuits Conference), details of Intel’s new 45nm Silverthorne will emerge. Intel CTO Justin Rattner held a press briefing last Wednesday to preview some of the highlights of this week’s highly technical ISSCC conference in San Francisco.
Credit: Intel Corporation (from ISSCC preview presentation)
Intel Silverthorne is a brand new Intel x86 processor for the Menlow platform developed from the ground up for low-cost and ultra-low power applications. This includes UMPC (Ultra Mobile PCs), MID (Mobile Internet Devices), set-top applications, some embedded applications, and eventually for smart phone applications though this initial generation may not be suitable yet. Its small 25mm^2 die size on a 45nm process allows 2500 chips to fit on a single 300mm diameter wafer allows for extremely economic production.
From Rattner’s press conference last week, we know that Silverthorne will launches in the first half of 2008 but Rattner will not give a yes on a Q1 launch in response to one of the questions. The first Silverthorne dies were publicly shown in April of 2007 in IDF China so it’s quite possible that we’re looking at a second quarter launch. Rattner also explained that Silverthorne was a dual-issue in-order pipeline architecture with HT (Hyper-threading) and that this was better than hyper-threading in out-of-order architecture. I later got verification via email that the HT type was SMT (Simultaneous multithreading) and not SoEMT (Switch-On-Event Multithreading).
The slides shown by Rattner indicated that Silverthorne had a power consumption below 1W and up to 2W and that it was “10x lower power than ULV Dothan”. The Dothan was the second generation Pentium M product and ULV parts had a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 5W. I later got clarification via email that Silverthorne processors can have TDPs as low as 0.6W with lower clock speeds and higher clocked parts will have a 2 watt TDP. I spoke with analyst David Kanter of Real World Technologies and he explained that 0.6W which doesn’t factor in chipset power consumption might be too high for smart phone applications. However, its immediate successor in the Moorestown platform which may launch late 2008 may solve that problem with its SoC (System on Chip) design.
Update 3:10PM - There are quite a few inaccurate reports out there on Silverthorne’s power consumption. They have reported the power consumption of Silverthorne as 0.6W to 2W which is not correct. 0.6W is actually a TDP rating which describes PEAK power consumption. Actual idle power consumption can dip down to 0.01W for some models and 0.1W for other models. Intel is not saying too much more right now but it is reasonable to assume that this extremely low power state is designed to maximize battery life in Smart Phones. Keeping a continuous Skype or SIP application presence in a UMPC or MID device to receive calls is now a possibility.
The 2 GHz variant of the Silverthorne processor will operate at 1 volt and it will have performance equivalent to a first generation “Banias” Pentium M notebook processors circa 2003. Rattner confirmed this was for single-threaded performance on a broad range of applications. This would seem to imply that with multithreaded applications, the performance would be even higher than Banias which lacks Hyper-Threading.
Here are some additional quotes pulled from Rattner’s slides:
- Deep power down C6
- Optimized register-file and cache 6T bits cells
- CMOS mode on quad-pumped FSB IO
- Split IO power supply
Here are some additional email responses:
- 0.6W to 2W measured TDP power on real world applications – over the lifetime of the processor/architecture
- Can achieve 2GHz core frequencies at 1.0V
- Will support features such as Digital Media Boost (SSE3), Intel Virtualization technology, Intel 64 Architecture support, HT
February 1st, 2008
San Clemente chipset gives HP lead on energy efficiency
The January 30th 2008 batch of test results are in for SPECpower_ssj2008 energy efficiency benchmark and it looks like Hewlett Packard has claimed the energy efficiency lead with their newest low-cost 2U HP Proliant DL180 G5 server. The secret to their success appears to lie in the selection of the Intel 5100 series “San Clemente” chipset. While the detailed SPECpower disclosure doesn’t actually mention the chipset anywhere, the power characteristics, the six memory DIMMs, and the ICH-9 storage is a dead giveaway.
To see where the modern servers stand on power consumption, I’ve plotted out some ESTIMATED charts to compare the results. Since the AMD system from Colfax International has 8 registered DDR2-667 DIMMs and the HP San Clemente system has 6 registered DDR2-667 DIMMs, I’ve had to adjust them both down to 4 DIMMs to do a fair comparison with the other Intel systems which used 4 DIMMs. To do this I had to use an approximation based on known measurements for memory power consumption and I subtracted 1.875 watts to 3.75 watts for each registered DDR2-667 DIMM on a linear sliding scale based on load percentage. That means I subtracted 7.5 watts for the AMD system at idle and 15 watts for the AMD system at peak power. For the HP San Clemente system I subtracted 3.75 watts at idle and 7.5 watts at peak loads.
Since it was shocking that a dual-processor eight-core 3 GHz Intel system was drawing lower power than a dual-processor four-core 2.4 GHz AMD system, I thought something might be a little off. I realized that Colfax had used a pair of redundant 700 watt power supplies whereas the HP San Clemente system uses a single 750 watt power supply which means the power supply for the AMD system is relatively inefficient. At this point I had to make a reasonable guess at PSU (Power Supply Unit) efficiency and I guessed that the HP single power supply had to be around 80% efficient whereas the Colfax dual-PSU would be around 70%. Therefore I estimated the power consumption of the AMD system had it used an 80% efficiency power supply instead of a 70% efficient power supply.
Unfortunately this is a rough educated guess so the accuracy is dropping quickly but I wanted to take a reasonable shot at it to level the playing field on PSU efficiency. Companies in the future when making SPECpower submissions should avoid using dual power supplies and stick with 4-DIMM configurations so that we can get apple to apple comparisons and measurements. For now the following estimated power consumption graph is what I came up with.
The thing that really sticks out is the fact that the Intel 3 GHz 45nm E5450 processor system uses less power most of the time than the special low-voltage variant of the Intel 2 GHz 65nm L5335 processor. This shows how drastic an improvement Intel made using HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) materials and a shrink to the 45nm process.
The DIMM and PSU adjusted power consumption for the AMD Opteron 2216HE 4-core 2.4 GHz system has dropped significantly by more than 32 watts at the peak but it’s still more power hungry than the Intel 8-core 3 GHz E5450 at less than 80% load. Despite the fact that AMD takes a deeper clock speed dive down to 1.0 GHz at idle while Intel only dives down to 2 GHz, Intel’s C1E state seems to dominate the power savings.
This can also tell us something about the “Barcelona” quad-core “HE” (High Efficiency) 1.9 GHz system because it has a TDP of 79 watts which is 11 watts higher than the 2216HE under maximum load per CPU. Realistically the difference will be smaller than 11 watts per CPU and probably more like an 8 or 9 watts difference so an AMD 2347HE 1.9 GHz dual-processor 8-core version would probably consume 16 more watts. That would likely put the AMD 8-core 2347HE 1.9 GHz server at higher power consumption level than the 8-core 3 GHz E5450 Intel server running on a San Clemente chipset. That seems counter intuitive since Intel’s TDP rating for its 45nm 3 GHz processor is 80 watt TDP and that doesn’t even count the memory controller on the motherboard.
When looking at the difference between the HP San Clemente chipset based server and the HP 5000 series chipset based server, there is roughly a 32 to 40 watt difference even though the two CPUs are identical. Most of that difference is due to an extra 6 to 7 watts per FBDIMM and the remaining power delta is mostly due to the newer chipset on the motherboard. Had both of these servers had 8 DIMMs, the power gap would have been approximately 26 watts wider because of the extra power consumed by the FBDIMMs on the Intel 5000 series chipset.
Next I plot out the power-adjusted ESTIMATED energy efficiency numbers. I adjusted all the systems to four DIMMs and gave the AMD Opteron system a boost in power supply efficiency from an assumed 70% efficiency to 80% efficiency. Again this is a rough guess but it’s reasonable considering the fact that Colfax used a dual 700W power supply instead of a single 750W power supply. If Colfax International is reading this blog then I would suggest to them not to shortchange their own results in the future and use 4 DIMMs and a single PSU like everyone else.
Hopefully the next batch of results will give us some performance numbers on faster single-socket systems using the Bigby chipset and a 45nm processor so we can see how high on the efficiency scale those servers will go.
January 30th, 2008
Painful lesson in OLPC mesh networking for Mongolians
The Mongolians have had a painful lesson on mesh networking according to the OLPC current events webpage. Broadcast storms in the overly dense mesh environment along with excessive mDNS broadcast traffic seem to have crippled the Gobi desert experiment. Here’s an excerpt:
We have painfully discovered the limitations of the mesh and current collaborative software in Mongolia, where the convolution of the number of laptops with bugs #5335 (more mDNS traffic than expected) and #5007 (mesh repeats multicast too much) make the perfect storm, which prevents anybody from using the network. We will continue to improve the mesh performance, but clear guidelines are needed as to what network infrastructure to deploy under what conditions. Once a certain density of students is exceeded, a wired backbone and conventional access points will be required.
The limitations of mesh topology are well known in the wireless engineering community and I’ve raised the issue and pointed out the limitations last September. Each mesh hop you add increases the propagation delay as well as multiply the radio traffic and congestion. Performance on a mesh network is fundamentally many times slower than a non-mesh network and when the density gets high enough, the system simply breaks down.
When on a tight budget, I had always recommended the usage of a cheap $60 router running open source DD-WRT would have sufficed and you get a free router with it which you need for IP sharing anyways. The addition of a high-powered antenna would allow the access point to hear distant signals from faint clients and it will amplify the broadcast signal. A simple in-door $26 9 dBi antenna placed up high can easily cover a small school. A $60 12 dBi outdoor antenna positioned on the roof would easily cover an entire campus. If you put two centralized Access Points and large antennas on channel 1 and 11 (avoid adjacent channels because of channel bleeding) in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, you can load balance and have redundancy if one set of AP/antenna fails.
My fellow blogger and teacher Chris Dawson feels that the ability to do peer-to-peer collaboration with or without an Access Point has great potential. But peer-to-peer wireless collaboration could have been done with regular ad hoc networking technology without the expense or problems of a full 802.11s mesh implementation.
The inclusion of full 802.11s stack has been challenging. The need for a radio system that stays on and continues to forward packets even while the laptop is off added unnecessary expenditure to the OLPC XO and it unnecessarily drains the laptop batteries. When you multiply this expense and complexity across all the clients and realize that the wireless access point comes free with the router, it becomes clear that this may not have been the best design decision.
January 28th, 2008
Mac Pro is now the cheapest high-end workstation
Earlier this month I wrote “Build a Mac Pro equivalent workstation for 1/3 the cost” and the pricing didn’t look good for the Mac. Now that the new Mac Pro with updated specifications and a much lower price has come out, I figured it’s time to do an updated comparison. But during my research I came to a stunning conclusion: it’s the cheapest name brand dual-processor workstation on the market IF you know how to buy third party memory and storage. It’s not only cheaper than the slower $3817 Dell workstation I looked at earlier this month, but I can’t even build a cheaper generic PC clone unless I switched to a lower-end CPU. If you’re in the market for a high-performance Apple workstation, keep reading to learn how to get the best deal.
The new Mac Pro uses Intel’s latest 5400 series “Stoakley” platform with the “Seaburg” chipset. For the CPU, it uses the 1600 MHz FSB version of the 5400 series CPUs which have clock speeds of 2.8, 3.0, and 3.2 GHz. The graphics card has gone from AMD/ATI 1900XT to an NVIDIA 8800GT. The memory was upgraded from Fully Buffered DDR2-667 to Fully Buffered DDR2-800.
As configured in the screen shot to the left, the stripped down system is $2999 with relatively few memory DIMMs and two minimum hard drives. Since they’re only going to reduce the price by $500 if you only buy one processor and the fact that it would cost you $900 to replace that chip, it’s not worth buying one CPU from Apple. The memory and hard drives were still too expensive so I left them on the default settings but you will most likely have to take them out and replace them. The video card will also cost more to replace with a third party brand so it isn’t worth skipping either. It’s also possible that a third party 8800GT might not work so I wouldn’t even bother trying.
Now once you buy this system, you’re going to need to buy some fully buffered DDR2-800 memory which is still very hard to find at this time. I found some for $245 (vendor claims Mac Pro tested) which is way more money expensive than other generic memory but it’s way better than the $1500 Apple is asking for. A few other people in talkback posted this link for two 2GB DDR2-800 at $220. The price will probably drop $40 in coming months as these get more common but I think the price isn’t too bad at this point. You will need to buy two of these for $440 if you want the system to run with the max four-channel memory but be sure to populate each DIMM in a separate channel to get the maximum benefit. Note that CPU-Z for Windows will let you confirm how many channels you’re running though I’m not sure about a Mac equivalent applet but I’ll update if I find out.
The hard drives can be replaced with any 3.5″ SATA hard drive and you can usually buy two 500 GB Seagate hard drives for $240 and put them in a RAID-1 configuration. This does mean that you’ll either need to leave your OS on the single 320 GB hard drive or you’ll need to manually move the OS to the 500 GB RAID-1 volume which makes the OS boot faster.
Now you have a 2.8 GHz Mac Pro for less than $3800 with all the trimmings which makes it the cheapest high-end workstation on the market. It’s still possible to get a great PC 2.33 GHz dual-processor workstation for less than $2400 but the high-end belongs to Apple. However, it’s not really practical to build a lower-end Mac Pro since I’ve got it stripped down to the bone so Apple still has plenty of profit to make even if you don’t buy their outrageous components. The bottom line is that Mac users can get a much better deal on Mac Pros than at the beginning of this month.
Update 10:30AM
If you’re installing Boot Camp and Windows, do the installation after you set up the RAID-1 volume. You will need these drivers from Intel’s website for Windows XP, Vista, and Server. If you don’t want to spend $3700 and you can live with a perfectly good dual-processor 2.33 GHz workstation for $2370 which has the same 5400 series chipset. Apple seems to have figured out the perfect strategy to keep a high margin yet keep you from building a cheaper clone with exact specifications.
January 23rd, 2008
Analysis: Server Side Java energy efficiency versus load
With the arrival of the latest standardized energy efficiency benchmark from SPEC, we have a good way to measure server efficiency. In light of the recent controversy over flawed energy efficiency studies that have unfortunately been touted by so many in the press instead of SPEC, I thought I’d offer some more in-depth analysis on energy efficiency.
The new SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark gives us a standardized way of measuring energy efficiency for Server Side Java. SPECpower_ssj2008 gives us efficiency data at varying workloads going from 0% to 100% at increments of 10%. Then it provides us with a Performance to Power Ratio curve along with an average efficiency of those 11 workload measurements. The two graphs below are compiled from the SPEC database. It represents the fastest Intel quad-core system (below left) versus the only AMD CPU submitted to the SPECpower_ssj2008 database to date which is a special energy-efficient Opteron 2216HE (below right).
The two graphs above show more than a 3 to 1 advantage for the fastest Intel system when we look at it in terms of percent workload. This is a perfectly valid way of analyzing the data, but the tradeoff is that you’re not seeing the efficiency of each processor at absolute workloads which might be valuable if you need a system with lighter workloads. So to offer an alternative method of interpreting the efficiency data, I plotted out the following Efficiency versus CPU capacity graph with published data from SPEC (and some MS Excel help from analyst David Kanter).
- DP = Dual Processor
- UP = Single Processor (Uni-Processor)
- QC = Quad Core
- DC = Dual Core
- FB = Fully Buffered
- “Operations per joule” is identical to ssj_ops/watt unit used by SPEC.
- “Operations per second” refers to Server Side Java performance.
The blue curve represents the Intel E5450 server shown in the SPEC “Performance to Power” chart above left while the cyan curve represents the AMD 2216HE system. You’ll notice that the curves are somewhat close together at the lower workloads which means the AMD system is almost as efficient as Intel at lighter workloads. But at peak performance levels, Intel is three times faster than the AMD 2216HE system and more then three times the energy efficiency. So if you had to buy three of the AMD 2216HE systems to get the same Server Side Java capacity as the Intel E5450, it would cost you three times the power.
You’ll also notice the pink curve spiking upwards in efficiency just shy of the absolute peak efficiency level of Intel’s latest 45nm E5450 3.0 GHz quad-core CPU. This single-socket single-processor 2.4 GHz XEON X3220 Intel server is by far the most efficient system at lighter workloads. Had a newer single-socket CPU like the 45nm QX9650 3.0 GHz 45nm quad-core processor been used, the efficiency curve would probably fly off this chart. Intel’s 5100 series “San Clemente” chipset will also get much better efficiency than anything on this graph because it uses lower power registered DDR2-667 memory like AMD.
<Next page - How to spot a flawed CPU energy efficient study>
January 22nd, 2008
The polycarbonate all-in-one 22" LCD PC
The last time I built a wooden all-in-one 19″ LCD PC, my family wanted it in the kitchen and my mother wanted it in hers. To keep everyone happy, I built my mother another one (pictured above and below) out of 3/16th inch jet-black polycarbonate which makes the chassis look like the material from a grand piano. The result was something that was so glossy that I can probably shave in it, but I’m almost afraid to touch it and get finger prints all over it. Needless to say, she is very pleased with her new space saving computer. [See photo gallery.]
Cutting this material was fairly simple with wood-cutting and drilling tools. Just be careful to slow down on the table saw so you don’t chip the polycarbonate. I had initially avoided putting in vent holes in the back but the CPU fan and the PSU fan dynamically ramped up in RPM because of the increasing temperature and caused some noise. Once the 4 holes were put in the back, the CPU fan stayed at lower RPM and remained fairly silent even if I stress loaded the CPUs.
This time I mounted the on/off switch up top along with two USB ports which makes it easy to access and comes in handy for the webcam. I just wished I had a webcam that did away with the cable and just had a down-facing USB port so I can just plug it in right on top of the case. The other USB port is convenient for plugging other devices such as USB memory sticks or other devices I want sitting on top of the chassis.
As usual with these slim custom chassis, I used a slim 1.75″ 1U Sparkle SPI220LE 80 Plus 220 watt power supply. The idle power consumption on this computer is 43 watts and 63 watt under peak CPU loads generated by WPrime. The motherboard is an ECS 945GCT-M which came bundled with an Intel Celeron 430 CPU (Conroe-L 1.8 GHz single-core) I got at Fry’s for $70. I put in an Intel Core 2 Duo E2140 dual-core 1.6 instead and kept the lower-profile CPU fan which came with the Celeron 430. That lower profile fan came in real handy since it fit inside my 3″ thick chassis which is even less space inside because of the thickness of the walls. This chassis has plenty of room for additional devices such as a slim optical slot-loaded drive.
January 16th, 2008
Why DIDN'T the MacBook Air get the new 45nm CPU?
Intel launched their brand new 45nm mobile dual-core processors last week with 60% smaller packaging size. Yesterday Apple announced their Über-sleek MacBook Air ultra-slim notebook which also uses a specially designed Intel dual-core CPU with 60% smaller packaging. Naturally I assumed the new MacBook Air uses Intel’s latest Penryn-class 45nm technology with low leakage hafnium metal gates and I called Intel for confirmation of this “special” processor. I thought to myself: What’s so special about it if every PC vendor can use the same shrunken CPU?
To my surprise, Apple didn’t use the newest 45nm mobile processor with 107mm^2 die size; they really did use a “one-off” “Merom” 65nm 143mm^2 die designed-just-for-Apple CPU from Intel. Intel specially designed a larger 65nm core with a specially designed package that’s 60% smaller. This means instead of using the latest 45nm processors that are faster and more energy efficient and are already that small without any special packaging, Apple got a “special” 65nm chip.
This begs the question why Intel doesn’t make its new 45nm packaging even smaller than the current 60% reduction in size if it can reduce its packaging by 60% on 65nm technology. It also begs the question why Apple had to go to the trouble of a tailor made 65nm part when the 45nm part launched 3 weeks before the launch of the MacBook Air. Several other PC makers were already showing off their 45nm based notebooks last week at CES.
I spoke to a few people about this and asked for some theories and we came to a somewhat reasonable guess so I’ll offer these up as some possible reasons. For a product as specialized at exotic as the MacBook Air, the design would have needed to start some time ago. When that design started, it may not have been a certainty if 45nm Mobile Penryn would be ready to ship with MacWorld and there may not have been working samples to start the design process.
Despite the fact that other PC makers have 45nm based notebooks ready to launch, none of them are this sleek. So ultimately it doesn’t really change the appeal of the MacBook Air and it will be the thinnest notebook on the market. In 20/20 hindsight perhaps it would have been better if the MacBook Air had shipped with a 45nm CPU and maybe we’ll see a quick refresh from Apple to the new processor since the size is obviously not a problem. It’s just that “special” in this case isn’t a flattering thing when referencing the older CPU used in the MacBook Air, but the MacBook Air is still every bit special in a flattering way.
January 15th, 2008
Beware of flawed CPU efficiency study
Update 2/22/2008 - I originally used the word “rigged” to describe Neal Nelson’s study. My reasoning for using the word “rigged” was due to the fact that the test platforms used in Nelson’s study painted an inaccurate picture. Nelson’s study omitted two generations of Intel products while including pre-shippings products from AMD. Since I cannot know for a fact whether the test subject selection was intentional or merely coincidental, I changed the word “rigged” to “flawed”. Other than this change, I stand by my analysis here.
What if we held a football game involving the Patriots and any other NFL team where we set up a Patriots handicap that prohibited Tom Brady and the rest of his starting lineup from playing? What if the result was a loss for the Patriots and we splash the headline across the sports newswire that the Patriots just lost a football game? Would you think this was ethical behavior? Well that’s precisely what happened yesterday when the Neal Nelson report titled “AMD beats Intel in quad-core server power efficiency” spread across the newswire and got repeated as fact.
This is a classic case where the measurements are most likely accurate, but what’s being measured isn’tNeal Nelson and Associates is a consulting firm that has made it a habit to put out these handicapped reports on processor efficiency. Last year they excluded Intel’s quad-core lineup when AMD didn’t have quad-core processors and declared AMD the winner and got lots of news coverage, now they’re comparing Intel chips released in Q4 2006 to AMD technology that may not be available to the general public until Q2-2008 and the press seems to be falling for it all over again.
Nelson compared AMD’s Opteron 2350 2.0 GHz quad-core processor (may not ship again until Q2-2008 when the TLB bug hopefully gets fixed) to Intel’s older 65nm “Clovertown” E5335 and E5345 processor which were released in Q4 2006. These weren’t even the newest 65nm G Stepping Clovertown processors from mid-2007 with lower power consumption; these were the older stepping released in 2006. But Intel launched their latest 45nm “Harpertown” processors in November of 2007 and these chips were excluded from this “study” on AMD versus Intel energy efficiency. This is a classic case where the measurements are most likely accurate, but what’s being measured isn’t. This is a critical omission because the 45nm chips from Intel made significant improvements in performance and energy efficiency which has a double impact on performance per watt.
Nelson basically took a product from AMD that hasn’t even sorted out the bugs yet and can’t be purchased yet, then compared it to Intel’s 2006 technology while excluding two newer generations of Intel technology that are available in quantity, and he declares AMD the “winner” on energy efficiency. Then in an ultimate twist of irony, Nelson has the gall to question the methodology of the latest SPEC power efficiency standard SPECpower_ssj2008 when his own tests are outright deceptive. But in reality, SPEC doesn’t go out and declare winners or losers for cheap headlines or overstate the importance of their data; they merely present data with full vendor disclosures and provide valuable data points to the public.
When I did my in-depth review of SPECpower_ssj2008, I tempered the results for AMD despite the fact that the early SPECpower_ssj2008 results showed complete domination by Intel over AMD. I stated that the results would have been more competitive for AMD (at least at comparable clock speeds) if a web server version of SPECpower was used and when AMD quad-core Opteron gets its bugs sorted out. I still stand by that assessment based on the fact that AMD does well on a clock-for-clock basis when looking at SPECweb_2005 performance. However, Intel still commands the clock speed advantage which makes them the performance leader but at least AMD can be competitive on web serving duties at the lower clock speeds if they can fix their bug and launch their quad-core parts.
So who should the IT manager believe when it comes to performance per watt? Ideally you run your own tests on your own applications and draw your own conclusions but that may not be an option for everyone. If running your own tests isn’t feasible, I would recommend finding publicly acknowledged reputable benchmarks like those from SPEC or TPC and try to find the benchmark that most closely resembles your workload. While that isn’t perfect, it’s the closest thing to commissioning your own tests. But what you should not do is rely on consulting firms that have of a track record for fixing the game.
January 8th, 2008
Panasonic's sub-$800 3CCD 1080p camcorder
Update 8:15AM - Note that 1080p is only in 24p mode.
Panasonic will release two new true (1920×1080) 1080p 24p 3CCD camcorders in March 2008 for a list price of $800 and $1100. That means both models will likely be under $1000 which illustrates how fast prices come down on new technology. Both models will have SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) flash memory slots but the larger model will also have a 60 GB hard drive built in. Both models shun the traditional IEEE 1394 Firewire port for standard USB 2.0 ports.
The smaller HDC-SD9 pictured below will be a flash only model allowing the use of SDHC flash cards of 4 to 32 GBs.
The slightly wider HDC-HS9 pictured below will house a 60 GB hard drive in addition to the SDHC slot.
Both models will continuously buffer 0.6 seconds of video as soon as the unit is powered on so that when you finally do shoot, your footage begins 0.6 seconds before you actually hit the record button.
Consumers may be confused by the lack of a Firewire port used by all digital video camcorders but this is actually a good thing. The older miniDV tape drive camcorders used a high speed 400 mbps firewire port but only allowed you to export movies at a snails pace of 28 mbps in real-time. These USB based units on the other hand essentially let you mount a drive as soon as you connect it to a PC and simply drag and drop the file over at up to 240 mbps sustained throughput if the camera and the storage device can keep up. Even if it doesn’t keep up, it will still be much faster than the old real-time method of copying tapes.
The random access nature of SDHC and Hard Drive storage also means you won’t need to worry about accidentally wiping out precious footage because you forgot to forward the tape to a point where you haven’t recorded yet. All these features and the price point of these new 1080p 3-chip camcorders are going to make 1080p video mainstream. If these two models live up to the specifications, it will be a compelling product. I’ll see if I can get a hands-on review.
George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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