[SC.LUG] Bill Gates to be Knighted?

[Rick [Kitty5]]

On Tue, 2004-01-27 at 18:42, Ian Molton wrote:
> It also offers PCI-X (althought the ionix only presents 64bit 66MHz PCI).

So aside from raid and dsp's (but you wouldn't buy an xscale based box
for either of those) what good is it?

> > 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.

You going to have to help me out here, what is the point of buying one? 

Its certainly not for the cheap-retro beige box it comes wrapped in, or
the hardware performance. The awesome range of RiscOS software perhaps?
Nostalgia? Misplaced sense of loyalty? 

> 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.

Clock for clock an xscale doesn't even appear on the same map.

10 whole watts, amazing, who would have expected it from a CPU designed
for low power mobile devices. Oh wait, thats before you plug in a vid
(and I bet it goes through the roof once you get the nvidia card going
some, oh but without a fpu its not going anywhere, forget I mentioned
it)

As for the lack of active/passive cooling - Another design side effect
fobbed off as a feature, Woohoo! I bet the single DDR slot also has
unexpected benefits!



-- 
Rick

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