Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 4:39 AM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Mitch Bradley w...@laptop.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: AMD sees no Geode chip replacement in sight AMD on Monday said it has no replacement for the aging Geode low-power chips that are used in netbooks and set-top boxes. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/274414/amd_sees_no_geode_chip_replacement_sight The cost of developing and supporting a processor family is staggering. AMD bought the Geode business from another company. Often, when a company buys a business unit, that unit withers on the vine. The new kids on the block have a difficult time establishing a strong place within the established pecking order, so in the competition for resources, the new group often comes up short. When there is an economic downturn, the new group is often the first to go. AMD barely has the resources to maintain a competitive stance in the part of the market that has traditionally been their core, especially now that the economy is bad. I'm sure that AMD would be very happy if they had enough money to go after the low power market, but they just don't. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel Somebody on Slashdot (yeah!) has a good write-up pointing to the fact that AMD isn't halting production. Its just not going to develop Geode further. http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1105799cid=26623857 From the comment: begin quote AMD is NOT halting production of the Geode. They are not leaving the market (RTFM!). They have decided that it serves it's niche AS IS and will be kept AS IS. That's a very different statement. They're saying that it is a mature product (a rare thing in IT). Currently, the Geode is good enough for many applications and would be a step up for others. The embedded world tends away from the shiny object model of upgrades. If it worked last year, it works this year, and it'll work next year. Changes in the product are considered undesirable. AMD's statement doesn't even mean there won't be a die shrink or even a faster Geode in the future, just that they won't be updating it's architecture. It's not a bad decision either. There is a significant niche for the Geode between the Atom (too hot, too power hungry) and things like the Dragon Ball and mips (not enough power). Geode isn't in trouble until Intel comes out with an x86 that doesn't need a heatsink (or at least doesn't need a fan). This is also referred to, in another thread, but the Atom draws very little power. I already referred that you can get an Atom that has a 0.65W TDP, not 3.whatever like in the Geode LX. These are the Z series and they draw very little power, top of 2.4W for the 1866MHz model. The other low-end chip(also $20), the Z510, has a TDP of 2W - any one of these can run without an heatsink, mostly a small metal plate that allows the silicon core to dissipate heat, since it's a fliped-chip design. The Z500 is obviously very very good for embedded applications. The Z series use a lower power CMOS bus, instead of the power hungry GTL+, which when paired with Poulsbo it should make for a remarkable package. The next iteration will also have the graphics core and some other stuff embedded, for further savings. Best regards, Tiago Marques ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Jordan Crouse jor...@cosmicpenguin.net wrote: Edward Cherlin wrote: National Semiconductor, which bought the line from Cyrix. I edited several of the pin- and register-level manuals for various chips for them more than ten years ago, and updates of my work are still online on the AMD Web site. OLPC has educated AMD on how to use the power-management registers to do things that nobody previously knew were possible. AMD may have made some odd decisions over the years, but they don't deserve the kicking they are getting. AMD gave OLPC unprecedented access to the combined software and hardware expertise for the Geode - AMD didn't have to be so open and OLPC didn't ask for it. The AMD engineers (and there were many, many more than I) worked hand in hand with the OLPC designers from the beginning, long before virtually everybody on this mailing list or in the IRC room had jumped on the bandwagon. I was fortunate to be working with brilliant developers such as Mark and Mitch who were able to read datasheets and ask interesting qeustions, and they were fortunate to be able to have a nearly direct connection to the silicon designers that designed the part. AMD and OLPC educated each other My point. I took it as obvious that AMD had to teach OLPC about the Geode processors, and commented that OLPC also found some other things in addition to what they were taught. - and the result was arguably the most open processor in history on one side, and a little green machine on the other. So I take exception to the idea that AMD was the bumbling fool in this partnership - Which is not what I said. I know something about combinatory mathematics, and a good deal about the definitions of the Geode registers, and I think it would have been astounding if OLPC had not found combinations and sequences with new uses. I am also well aware that AMD contributed greatly to the design of the XO, as did Red Hat and Quanta. I am also aware that power management design and implementation is nowhere near finished. that is an unfair characterization, and an insult to the AMD engineers that spent a lot of hours reviewing schematics, looking at USB debug traces and writing code - much of which is still running on the system to this day. Jordan -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
Edward Cherlin wrote: National Semiconductor, which bought the line from Cyrix. I edited several of the pin- and register-level manuals for various chips for them more than ten years ago, and updates of my work are still online on the AMD Web site. OLPC has educated AMD on how to use the power-management registers to do things that nobody previously knew were possible. AMD may have made some odd decisions over the years, but they don't deserve the kicking they are getting. AMD gave OLPC unprecedented access to the combined software and hardware expertise for the Geode - AMD didn't have to be so open and OLPC didn't ask for it. The AMD engineers (and there were many, many more than I) worked hand in hand with the OLPC designers from the beginning, long before virtually everybody on this mailing list or in the IRC room had jumped on the bandwagon. I was fortunate to be working with brilliant developers such as Mark and Mitch who were able to read datasheets and ask interesting qeustions, and they were fortunate to be able to have a nearly direct connection to the silicon designers that designed the part. AMD and OLPC educated each other - and the result was arguably the most open processor in history on one side, and a little green machine on the other. So I take exception to the idea that AMD was the bumbling fool in this partnership - that is an unfair characterization, and an insult to the AMD engineers that spent a lot of hours reviewing schematics, looking at USB debug traces and writing code - much of which is still running on the system to this day. Jordan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: AMD sees no Geode chip replacement in sight AMD on Monday said it has no replacement for the aging Geode low-power chips that are used in netbooks and set-top boxes. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/274414/amd_sees_no_geode_chip_replacement_sight The cost of developing and supporting a processor family is staggering. AMD bought the Geode business from another company. Often, when a company buys a business unit, that unit withers on the vine. The new kids on the block have a difficult time establishing a strong place within the established pecking order, so in the competition for resources, the new group often comes up short. When there is an economic downturn, the new group is often the first to go. AMD barely has the resources to maintain a competitive stance in the part of the market that has traditionally been their core, especially now that the economy is bad. I'm sure that AMD would be very happy if they had enough money to go after the low power market, but they just don't. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Mitch Bradley w...@laptop.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: AMD sees no Geode chip replacement in sight AMD on Monday said it has no replacement for the aging Geode low-power chips that are used in netbooks and set-top boxes. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/274414/amd_sees_no_geode_chip_replacement_sight The cost of developing and supporting a processor family is staggering. AMD bought the Geode business from another company. Often, when a company buys a business unit, that unit withers on the vine. The new kids on the block have a difficult time establishing a strong place within the established pecking order, so in the competition for resources, the new group often comes up short. When there is an economic downturn, the new group is often the first to go. AMD barely has the resources to maintain a competitive stance in the part of the market that has traditionally been their core, especially now that the economy is bad. I'm sure that AMD would be very happy if they had enough money to go after the low power market, but they just don't. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel Somebody on Slashdot (yeah!) has a good write-up pointing to the fact that AMD isn't halting production. Its just not going to develop Geode further. http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1105799cid=26623857 From the comment: begin quote AMD is NOT halting production of the Geode. They are not leaving the market (RTFM!). They have decided that it serves it's niche AS IS and will be kept AS IS. That's a very different statement. They're saying that it is a mature product (a rare thing in IT). Currently, the Geode is good enough for many applications and would be a step up for others. The embedded world tends away from the shiny object model of upgrades. If it worked last year, it works this year, and it'll work next year. Changes in the product are considered undesirable. AMD's statement doesn't even mean there won't be a die shrink or even a faster Geode in the future, just that they won't be updating it's architecture. It's not a bad decision either. There is a significant niche for the Geode between the Atom (too hot, too power hungry) and things like the Dragon Ball and mips (not enough power). Geode isn't in trouble until Intel comes out with an x86 that doesn't need a heatsink (or at least doesn't need a fan). end quote I've seen the Geode in action in Soekris boards (http://www.soekris.com/) when I was doing fun Wi-Fi stuff, and used to wonder what it would be like if we had a Geode machine running a laptop...well that wish came true with the XO :-) I'll also point out (peripherally) to a comment made by Jeff Bezos in a BusinessWeek article (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081064880218.htm), where he says that frugality leads to innovation (necessity being the mother of invention, etc.) and I think the frugality of XO's design has definitely lead to many innovations. I for one would *not* have thought that I would be using a 433MHz x86 laptop with 256MB RAM as my favorite machine :-) Hats off to the Geode! cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Jan 27, 2009, at 8:14 PM, Mitch Bradley wrote: On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: AMD sees no Geode chip replacement in sight AMD on Monday said it has no replacement for the aging Geode low- power chips that are used in netbooks and set-top boxes. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/274414/ amd_sees_no_geode_chip_replacement_sight The cost of developing and supporting a processor family is staggering. AMD bought the Geode business from another company. Often, when a company buys a business unit, that unit withers on the vine. The new kids on the block have a difficult time establishing a strong place within the established pecking order, so in the competition for resources, the new group often comes up short. When there is an economic downturn, the new group is often the first to go. Much worse, as AMD bought Geode from National, who had obtained it six years earlier through acquiring Cyrix. wad ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Mitch Bradley w...@laptop.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno object...@gmail.com wrote: AMD sees no Geode chip replacement in sight AMD on Monday said it has no replacement for the aging Geode low-power chips that are used in netbooks and set-top boxes. http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/274414/amd_sees_no_geode_chip_replacement_sight The cost of developing and supporting a processor family is staggering. AMD bought the Geode business from another company. National Semiconductor, which bought the line from Cyrix. I edited several of the pin- and register-level manuals for various chips for them more than ten years ago, and updates of my work are still online on the AMD Web site. OLPC has educated AMD on how to use the power-management registers to do things that nobody previously knew were possible. Often, when a company buys a business unit, that unit withers on the vine. The new kids on the block have a difficult time establishing a strong place within the established pecking order, so in the competition for resources, the new group often comes up short. When there is an economic downturn, the new group is often the first to go. AMD barely has the resources to maintain a competitive stance in the part of the market that has traditionally been their core, especially now that the economy is bad. I'm sure that AMD would be very happy if they had enough money to go after the low power market, but they just don't. I am delighted that this premature obituary also turns out to be greatly exaggerated. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel Somebody on Slashdot (yeah!) has a good write-up pointing to the fact that AMD isn't halting production. Its just not going to develop Geode further. http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1105799cid=26623857 From the comment: begin quote AMD is NOT halting production of the Geode. They are not leaving the market (RTFM!). They have decided that it serves it's niche AS IS and will be kept AS IS. That's a very different statement. They're saying that it is a mature product (a rare thing in IT). Currently, the Geode is good enough for many applications and would be a step up for others. The embedded world tends away from the shiny object model of upgrades. If it worked last year, it works this year, and it'll work next year. Changes in the product are considered undesirable. AMD's statement doesn't even mean there won't be a die shrink or even a faster Geode in the future, just that they won't be updating it's architecture. It's not a bad decision either. There is a significant niche for the Geode between the Atom (too hot, too power hungry) and things like the Dragon Ball and mips (not enough power). Geode isn't in trouble until Intel comes out with an x86 that doesn't need a heatsink (or at least doesn't need a fan). end quote Marvell has bought XScale from Intel. That may be the principal alternative. The Encore Mobilis being bought by Brazil for its schools uses an XScale processor and MontaVista Linux, so Sugar Labs should be working on an XScale port of Sugar soon. I've seen the Geode in action in Soekris boards (http://www.soekris.com/) when I was doing fun Wi-Fi stuff, and used to wonder what it would be like if we had a Geode machine running a laptop...well that wish came true with the XO :-) I'll also point out (peripherally) to a comment made by Jeff Bezos in a BusinessWeek article (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081064880218.htm), where he says that frugality leads to innovation (necessity being the mother of invention, etc.) and I think the frugality of XO's design has definitely lead to many innovations. I for one would *not* have thought that I would be using a 433MHz x86 laptop with 256MB RAM as my favorite machine :-) Alan Kay loves to ask how Doug Engelbart and his team managed to shoehorn all of the Online System (NLS) in The Mother of All Demos into 192K in 1968.This included realtime videoconferencing and instantaneous, seamless crash recovery. People come up with all sorts of technical theories, but Alan's answer is, Because they wanted to badly enough. Hats off to the Geode! cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin)
Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Edward Cherlin echer...@gmail.com wrote: AMD bought the Geode business from another company. National Semiconductor, which bought the line from Cyrix. I edited several of the pin- and register-level manuals for various chips for them more than ten years ago, For National Semiconductor, that is. -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin) ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
