Absolute lowest power CPU boards?

ProDigit

Junior Member
Oct 7, 2008
7
4
81
Not looking for an X86 or X64 CPU here.
Just looking for a very simple CPU, rivalling the power consumption of a NEC V20.
The Nec V20 was used in the Wonderswan, as a successor to the Z8080 CPU found in the Gameboy, and ran at below 10Mhz.
The V30 was it's successor, but not a lot of info out there.

Modern CPUs (including ARM CPUs), are made on a much smaller die, thus should be more energy efficient.

If you were to create a portable machine, needing a low power CPU at more than 4 MIPS, but lower consumption than the z8080?

If I have to start from a board that exists, the Raspberry Pi Zero would come to mind.
Not sure how many MIPS it got, but a lot more than 4. (probably around 1200 or so).
Trying to see if there are any other boards that can run a basic OS, needed to run a basic computing program?

Low battery consumption is very important!
 

hojnikb

Senior member
Sep 18, 2014
562
45
91
If arduino isnt ok, orange pi 2g iot (or its non 2g equivalent) is pretty power efficient.i clocked mine at 250mW in idle