[SC.LUG] Bill Gates to be Knighted?

[Ian Molton]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 16:18:51 -0000
"Rick [Kitty5]" <rick at kitty5.com> wrote:

> Ian Molton wrote:
> > They did - they doubled the speed of it. but podules are NOT
> > proprietary - full specs are available, and the chips used are simple
> > memory mapped devices - all off the shelf.
> 
> They are propriety when you can only connect them to equipment from a single
> vendor. The fact that the specs are available is beside the point.

Huh?

M$ meteoric rise was the only thing that kept other manufacturers using ISA (no PCI back then).

Theres 3 vendors with podule busses available I think anyhow.

> > You produce one cheaper.
> 
> Lets see, I could buy a xscale based ipaq, attach a keyboard, networking and
> video out and give it plenty of storage space for half the price. Hell, it
> will even run Linux.

You mean PXA based. The IOP321 uses DDR RAM (PXA doesnt) and runs at higher clockspeeds.

It also offers PCI-X (althought the ionix only presents 64bit 66MHz PCI).

> That said, I could just buy a cheep PC (with the same gfx and ram as
> castle's effort) and run Linux for half the price, and it would
> substantially outperform any xscale device.

Only because linux software is optimal on machines with hardware FP.

Ok, so clock for clock the XScale core is slower than X86 but then the machine requires NO active *or* passive cooling (ie. not even heatsinks). It also uses less than 10 Watts of power *including* the harddisc - show me an x86 capable of that.

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