On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Geert Uytterhoeven <[email protected]> wrote:
> How does Cortex M0 compares to a 500 MHz MIPS64, performance-wise? Right... thank you for being the one to point this out to people who may otherwise believe that M0 will do the job, geert. clarification: how does cortex m0 with *no* PowerVR SGX graphics engine and no MPEG decode block compare to a 500mhz MIPS64 _with_ PowerVR SGX graphics and MPEG decode. > There's still a performance band where MIPS (licensing) is cheaper than ARM, > witness the abundance of MIPS in e.g. routers. yes. (fujitsu have a DVB-T decoder IC SoC solution which is 300mhz and $USD 3 in volume). SiS9561 and the SMC8656 are the right kind of thing. links here http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Processors the SMC8656 is that $USD 6 MIPS CPU i was referring to. the SiS9561 is a dual-core 750mhz MIPS, has 1080p (unknown, at least p30) MPEG decode, and has PowerVR SGX. SiS have android running on it. pricing ... estimated... $11, maybe? possibly $10. i'm waiting to hear back from SiS after chinese new year, to get more info on it. basically, MIPS has traditionally been stuck in an ultra-low-cost rut, and it's only the simplicity of the design that has saved them from going under. they used to be able to afford to do their own ICs but were priced out of the market by the exponential jumps in NREs, and were forced to become a "lowly" fabless semiconductor company. however, as i said at http://lkcl.net/laptop.html, 45nm and 28nm makes even a lowly 5-stage-pipelined MIPS design scream along so fast that its "lowliness" is completely and utterly irrelevant, thus bringing it suddenly *back* into the "good enough" computing range (750mhz to1.5ghz), with the sudden startling advantage that its "lowliness" means it's cheaper and uses less power. the 64-bit core is only 74,000 transistors for goodness sake! hence, even SiS (subsidiary of VIA) who have been stalling for ages, not doing any new chip designs for at least three years, suddenly took MIPS on-board including the PowerVR SGX block, instead of VIA's own 3D graphics engine(s)! lots of other companies are doing this kind of math, which places PowerVR SGX squarely into a position of prominence (as if intel's use of it for poulsbo GMA500 wasn't enough, with well over a hundred separate laptop designs using it). hence the importance of getting a free software engine off the ground, for PowerVR SGX. l. _______________________________________________ Celinux-dev mailing list [email protected] http://tree.celinuxforum.org/mailman/listinfo/celinux-dev
