Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-02-02 Thread Tiago Marques
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 4:39 AM, Sameer Verma  wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Mitch Bradley  wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno 
> 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.
> >
> >
> > ___
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> > 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=1105799&cid=26623857
>
> From the comment:
>
>
> 
>
> 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
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Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-02-01 Thread Edward Cherlin
On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Jordan Crouse  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)
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Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-31 Thread Jordan Crouse
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

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Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-27 Thread Edward Cherlin
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Edward Cherlin  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)
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Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-27 Thread Edward Cherlin
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Mitch Bradley  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno  
>> 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=1105799&cid=26623857
>
> From the comment:
>
>
> 
>
> 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).
>
> 

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/
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>



-- 
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my d

Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-27 Thread John Watlington

On Jan 27, 2009, at 8:14 PM, Mitch Bradley wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno  
>  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
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Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-27 Thread Sameer Verma
On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Mitch Bradley  wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno  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=1105799&cid=26623857

>From the comment:




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).



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/
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Re: AMD to stop working on Geodes (Carlos Nazareno)

2009-01-27 Thread Mitch Bradley
On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Carlos Nazareno  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.


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