Question N100 CPU

[StinkyPinky]

So I bought a mini PC with this CPU with 16GB of ram and I'm shocked at how responsive it is. You can legit use this as a basic desktop device for school kids etc. Playing a 4K video (on my 4K display) while typing this up and a spreadsheet open and there is zero lag. Installing software while watching 4K video puts it to 100% cpu usage though

I guess I'm showing my age but I have flashbacks to how awful those Atom cpu's where and just kinda assumed this would be similar.

Sometimes I think we take modern cpu's for granted

 

[StinkyPinky]

A ridiculous $150 by the way

 

[gdansk]

Yes, that was my impression of the N100 as well. Perfectly usable system in 2024.

And apparently modern phones are twice as fast as these? Maybe more? Lots of wasted performance (in my case, anyway. Other people use their phone more).

 

[DavidC1]

Intel has been constantly 30% faster per clock since Silvermont, and Silvermont is 50% faster per clock than original Atom.

The original Atom could only equal 800MHz Pentium M at 1.86GHz. Gracemont in N100 is pretty much Skylake class. Also they've been increasing clocks by 10% every geration as well, for a combined total of roughly 50% per gen.

Bonnell - Baseline
Silvermont - 1.5x
Goldmont - 1.3x + 10%
Goldmont Plus - 1.3x + 10%
Tremont - 1.3x + 10%
Gracemont - 1.3x + 10%

Combined total of 4.3x perf/clock and cumulative gains of 7-7.5x will do that for you. That's ignoring the core count increase, improved FP performance and support for extra instructions.

 

[poke01]

So I bought a mini PC with this CPU with 16GB of ram and I'm shocked at how responsive it is. You can legit use this as a basic desktop device for school kids etc. Playing a 4K video (on my 4K display) while typing this up and a spreadsheet open and there is zero lag. Installing software while watching 4K video puts it to 100% cpu usage though

I guess I'm showing my age but I have flashbacks to how awful those Atom cpu's where and just kinda assumed this would be similar.

Sometimes I think we take modern cpu's for granted

I would get this over a Pi any day but my heart for a mini PC will always be for a Mac mini.

 

[LightningZ71]

My daughter has an N-100 based chromebook+ and it is plenty fast for anything that she does for school.

 

[alcoholbob]

Yes, that was my impression of the N100 as well. Perfectly usable system in 2024.

And apparently modern phones are twice as fast as these? Maybe more? Lots of wasted performance (in my case, anyway. Other people use their phone more).

Flagship phones these days basically have the same IPC as a 12700K in single thread performance while using a tiny fraction of the power using a benchmark like Geekbench. That said they aren't running x86 and would probably fare pretty badly trying to emulate Windows programs like those new Qualcomm laptops...

 

[cebri1]

Sadly intel is being stupid enough to not offer an 8 core Chadmont on Intel 3. Maybe that will come in 2025, as you say my N100 is right now my media center and it’s a very good little machine.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Using it for tiny SBC-

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Using it for tiny SBC-

I've got a couple of these. Really a compelling little package, however they only routed a 32 bit bus to the LPDDR5X module, so it's extremely memory constrained and it hurts any workloads that are memory intensive at all - geekbench shows a decrease in MT score of something along the lines of 20% vs an N100 with a full 64 bit bus.

I haven't heard any official explanation for this, just youtubers saying "there wasn't enough space to route the traces".

 

[LightningZ71]

Volumes on those should be comparatively low. This could be specifically recovered processors that have a failed memory channel.

 

[SteinFG]

This could be specifically recovered processors that have a failed memory channel.

Intel doesn't sell defective chips under the same name. If it's N100, it has 64-bit memory bus.

I haven't heard any official explanation for this, just youtubers saying "there wasn't enough space to route the traces".

Looking at the SBC, it's clear that the intent was to make it as close to rpi in size as possible. They could only make it with 1 mem package it seems. Plus there's cost cutting benefit - with just one mem package they got the price down to same range as pi 5, that's insane.

Lunar lake SBC when? 😂

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Intel doesn't sell defective chips under the same name. If it's N100, it has 64-bit memory bus.

Looking at the SBC, it's clear that the intent was to make it as close to rpi in size as possible. They could only make it with 1 mem package it seems. Plus there's cost cutting benefit - with just one mem package they got the price down to same range as pi 5, that's insane.

Lunar lake SBC when? 😂

LPDDR5X packages can typically be wired in a 64 bit configuration. I have another N100 mini PC with a single LPDD5X package wired as 64 bit.

The module they used is an 8x8 bit layout, which can be wired as either 8x8 single rank for 64 bit, or 4x8 dual rank for 32 bit. The X4 bios indicates only 2x16bit subchannels of the memory controller are enabled, so they obviously opted to wire it in a 32 bit dual rank layout.

 

[SteinFG]

LPDDR5X packages can typically be wired in a 64 bit configuration. I have another N100 mini PC with a single LPDD5X package wired as 64 bit.

Nah, It all depends on the package itself, not the wiring. Most are 32bit, some are 64. I know apple m series, lunar lake, and steam deck oled, use 64b packages, but all LPDDR5X laptop disassemblies I've seen feature 32b packages. so they're more common

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Nah, It all depends on the package itself, not the wiring. Most are 32bit, some are 64. I know apple m series, lunar lake, and steam deck oled, use 64b packages, but all LPDDR5X laptop disassemblies I've seen feature 32b packages. so they're more common

It seems I did misinterpret and misremember some details. However, from how it looks, the LPDDR5X package used appears to be 4x16 bit, 16Gbit dies, which would imply it's a configuration like in the diagram.

Which would indicate it's a 64 bit LPDDR5X package. But I suppose this is the far limit of my understanding of LPDDR.

I can 100% confirm this is the package present on the 8GB models I have.





Edit: this has me pretty confused, and also not relevant to the thread so I'll stop discussing it.

 

[burninatortech4]

Does AMD have an equivalent to this? The Athlon 3050e seems slower (and on a much older process).

 

[gdansk]

Does AMD have an equivalent to this? The Athlon 3050e seems slower (and on a much older process).

Mendocino 7520U/7320U but it (typically) draws more power.