Via making a 64bit, 65nm, OoO, superscalar CPU?

[Avalon]

I was looking up something on Wiki, and this was buried as a link in there. Not knowing what it was piqued my curiosity, so I clicked it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Isaiah

Seems Via is making a 64bit, 65nm, OoO, superscalar CPU, which goes against their norm of in order, 32bit scalar CPUs made for very low power.

I did some reference checks between their last C7 Esther CPU and this one, and it seems like the improvements being made are theoretically massive and sometimes several fold.

Granted this has no chance of intending to or actually competing in the x86 high end(due to a myriad of reasons, one of which being this is only going to be single core), but this seems interesting since the old C7 2.0Ghz Esther core was often about 60-65% as fast as a slightly lower clocked P-M Dothan.

Being this is an enthusiast forum, I'm expecting little interest...but this does seem interesting and kinda cool to see, no?

 

[myocardia]

I think it's great. The more competition there is in any arena, the better for us, the consumers. Besides, with as much experience as they now have in the extremely low power CPU market, it might even be something that we'll be interested in, once they transition to dual-core. Hey, don't laugh, you never know.:laugh:

 

[Fox5]

This might be a bad idea for them. Their big thing right now is low power, low temperature, and OOO by its nature kind of goes against that.
I think they'd be better off going massively multicore with cheap, low power cores. Heh, it'd be kind of interesting if AMD fell by the wayside and VIA came out with the next Intel beater though.

They really need to update their chipsets and graphics tech though, they're still stuck in the year 2000.

 

[heyheybooboo]

enthusiast forums are not always about whose is biggest, fastest or most expensive ...

V4 Bus speed of 1333MHz, up from 800MHz previously, and support for ECC (error checking and correction) memory and virtualization technology. The L2 Cache will also increase to 1MB from 128KB previously.

If they upgrade the VIA pc3500 motherboard sounds like a weener to me ...

 

[daveybrat]

Yeah, i've always thought the VIA low power chips and the mini-itx boards were neat concepts, but the motherboards really do suck azz. Such old video and audio technology...ugh. Update to an IGP with hardware decoding of high def video and some high def onboard sound already.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: daveybrat
Update to an IGP with hardware decoding of high def video and some high def onboard sound already.

Umm, their IGP already supports hardware decoding of MPEG2 video, and they've got the only Micro-ATX IGP that does. Besides, which full sized ATX IGP's support hardware decoding of 1080P?

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: daveybrat
Update to an IGP with hardware decoding of high def video and some high def onboard sound already.

Umm, their IGP already supports hardware decoding of MPEG2 video, and they've got the only Micro-ATX IGP that does. Besides, which full sized ATX IGP's support hardware decoding of 1080P?

You can do such a thing with PCs?!

 

[Avalon]

Well, it "should" be out this quarter, so I guess we'll find out what it's all about soon enough. I'm still thinking it's not going to compete though. It'll obviously be fairly low power, but it's going to suck much more power than the old 20W TDP C7...anywhere in the ballpark of around 40W...and I know some C2D that can get that low.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: Avalon
Well, it "should" be out this quarter, so I guess we'll find out what it's all about soon enough. I'm still thinking it's not going to compete though. It'll obviously be fairly low power, but it's going to suck much more power than the old 20W TDP C7...anywhere in the ballpark of around 40W...and I know some C2D that can get that low.

C7's peak at 20w. Idle/normal operation is much less than 5w. It remains to be seen but let's hope 90nm->65nm helps 'em stay close to that range.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Great we need 3 players in x86. This could be a nice chip for Third world countries. and the low end. We need Via to strengthen it position because AMD's is weakening.
Myself I would love to see Via pull a AMD64 on both Intel and AMD . It would help intel greatly in monolply area. Since AMDs lawsuite against intel it forces both intel and AMD to play nice. Or look out lawsuites.

It just keeps getting better. Now Via needs to come up with a great multi core chip . It will be awhile but go via go .

This chip should sell well if it => better than Dothan . China India those countrie . This chip should do well . If the performance gains are as stated over last generation . This would put this chip faster than dothan and about = to K10 in single thread.

If the old chip was 60%- 65% as fast as Dothan 2x improvement would put it 20%-30% waster than dothan. Dothan was onpar with AMD64. Minus 64bit.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Nemesis 1
Great we need 3 players in x86. This could be a nice chip for Third world countries. and the low end. We need Via to strengthen it position because AMD's is weakening.
Myself I would love to see Via pull a AMD64 on both Intel and AMD . It would help intel greatly in monolply area. Since AMDs lawsuite against intel it forces both intel and AMD to play nice. Or look out lawsuites.

It just keeps getting better. Now Via needs to come up with a great multi core chip . It will be awhile but go via go .

This chip should sell well if it => better than Dothan . China India those countrie . This chip should do well . If the performance gains are as stated over last generation . This would put this chip faster than dothan and about = to K10 in single thread.

If the old chip was 60%- 65% as fast as Dothan 2x improvement would put it 20%-30% waster than dothan. Dothan was onpar with AMD64. Minus 64bit.

Have you been to China or India? Recently?

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

Originally posted by: Avalon
Well, it "should" be out this quarter, so I guess we'll find out what it's all about soon enough. I'm still thinking it's not going to compete though. It'll obviously be fairly low power, but it's going to suck much more power than the old 20W TDP C7...anywhere in the ballpark of around 40W...and I know some C2D that can get that low.

C7's peak at 20w. Idle/normal operation is much less than 5w. It remains to be seen but let's hope 90nm->65nm helps 'em stay close to that range.

True. I'm not counting them out, but I'm just not hopeful. This is a radical departure from what they're used to designing. Who knows, we may be pleasantly surprised.

 

[nyker96]

sounds cool, if we have three vendors in x86 arena things could get cheaper. Wondering if they intend to multicore this thingy. I wouldn't mind getting a VIA cpu if the price is right and performance is acceptable.

 

[ScrewFace]

VIA is like S3 and Duke Nukem' Forever. You hear about it but it never sees the light of day, know what I'm sayin'?