Marvell announces 1GHz cpu with 1 Watt power usage

[Modelworks]

I love the ARM architecture, chips like this show how good it can be. 1GHZ using only 1watt of power could make some awesome portable devices.
http://www.marvell.com/company/news/press_detail.html?releaseID=1407

Santa Clara (Apr 22, 2010) Marvell (Nasdaq: MRVL), a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today announced a new addition to the ARMADA™ family of application processors in honor of Earth Day 2010 – the Marvell® ARMADA 310. The new System-on-a-Chip (SoC) is designed to deliver scalable performance of up to 1GHz while consuming less than 1 Watt – a striking industry benchmark for the enterprise application developer community.

And it isn't just a cpu for that 1 watt

The ARMADA 310 offers scalable performance from 600MHz to 1GHz and the ability to power down as low as 700mW. To help maximize bandwidth, reduce power consumption and drive down system cost, the new SoC features an on-chip 16-bit DDR2/3 interface. The highly integrated IC also drives down bill of material (BOM) costs by adding a wide variety of communications options including two PCI-express bus interfaces, two Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) MACs, a USB 2.0 compliant port with an integrated PHY that can serve as a peripheral or host, and an embedded 16-bit LCD controller.

The CPU core on the ARMADA 310 was developed by Marvell and is ARMv5TE compliant. It features a four-way, set-associative L1 16 KB I-cache /16-KB D-cache and a 256-KB, unified four-way, set-associative L2 cache. To maximize throughput the chip uses an innovative on-chip crossbar architecture that enables concurrent transactions among multiple units.

Besides the features mentioned above, the new Armada 310 offers:

Two SATA 2.0 ports with integrated PHYs
Variety of boot options (NAND Flash, DDR2/3, etc)
Audio support with two TDM Channels
Network security engine capable of supporting various encryption algorithms
Variety of interfaces including, SDIO/MMC, NAND flash, SPI, two TWSI, and two UARTs
DMA/XOR engine with four channels
RTC and thermal sensor

It is a one chip NAS or portable device like a ebook reader or PDA solution.

Marvel has been rumored to be producing a tablet for $99 that would replace textboooks in classrooms. I had my doubts at the price, but with chips like this selling for $15 in bulk, they only need to add a screen, battery , case, storage and they have a product.

 

[SunnyD]

Shame it's not of the Cortex variety.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

WOW! Awesome!

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Id like to see 3ghz at 3 watts. Still though thats impressive

 

[Dadofamunky]

Wait a couple years