When will Intel Atom processors receive configurable TDP?

[cbn]

The Windows 8 phone announcement today (link----> here) got me wondering about dockable smartphones running a desktop OS.....the point is fast approaching when this will happen.

So what is the timeline or prediction for Atom Smartphones being equipped with Configurable TDP (cTDP)? (to allow greater performance for desktop usage when docked to external power and cooling)

Silvermont atom?

Airmont atom?

 

[podspi]

I think one issue isn't power usage, but cooling. Even if you have your phone docked (and therefore are not worried about power draw), if you raise the TDP too high the phone will burn itself up. I've heard people talk about dock-augmented cooling systems, but I'm not sure how these are supposed to work.

 

[Idontcare]

I think one issue isn't power usage, but cooling. Even if you have your phone docked (and therefore are not worried about power draw), if you raise the TDP too high the phone will burn itself up. I've heard people talk about dock-augmented cooling systems, but I'm not sure how these are supposed to work.

If you think about it, from the heating/cooling aspect it makes no sense for a docking solution to rely on the processing capabilities (graphical or number crunching) to power the computing experience when in docked mode.

The allure of docked mode is seamless access and zero syncing issues/requirements.

What you really want is a docking system in all the processing for the docked smartphone is offloaded to an external processor (including graphics) so the cooling itself can be externalized to that of the smartphone chasis.

Basically turn the smartphone into a very large thumbdrive that also has a mobile connection.

You don't want it to be "dual-boot" though, you want seamless connectivity, so the user should be able to pull his smartphone off the dock to immediately answer an incoming phone call if they want to without needing the internal processor to boot up and reinitialize.

Hotswapping the processing center on the fly.

Then the power usage of the device scales with your usage of the device, using it as a smartphone means only smartphone power usage, use it as a docked computing solution means power usage (and cooling) scales accordingly. But all your apps, data, OS, its all exactly the same because it is the same.

Sure you could do it with the cloud but again you are back to not being seamless because you will still have syncing requirements between the points of content creation/manipulation/review.

Keep it all local because what is local to the entire picture is the presence of the smartphone.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I've heard people talk about dock-augmented cooling systems, but I'm not sure how these are supposed to work.

Just wondering aloud, one could imagine the processor attached to a heatsink whose cooling surface is on the outside of the device. When it's docked, the heatsink attaches to a larger sink (with fan, perhaps).

The difficulty would be in engineering this to ensure a tight thermal fit without any sort of interface material, but I'd imagine that's doable.

 

[podspi]

I've had similar thoughts, though I'm not sure how they would be achieved. One issue would be RAM and (to a lesser extent) storage bandwidth.

In order to be able to just take the smartphone off the dock without having to eject it first, you have to keep everything on the smartphone at all times, which means at the very least RAM and storage state between the phone and dock have to be synchronized. I guess this could be "faked" via wireless connection?

I agree that is the way to go, though. It seems like things aren't going that way, my Droid 4 has a docking station that allows me to hook up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and Microsoft's Surface essentially WILL be the computer, with any docking station just being a port replicator.

 

[cbn]

I think one issue isn't power usage, but cooling. Even if you have your phone docked (and therefore are not worried about power draw), if you raise the TDP too high the phone will burn itself up.

That is a good point considering the emphasis of "maximum lightweight and thin" for smartphone chassis.

How does Intel (or anyone else) allow headroom for cTDPup when the industrial design of smartphone chassis/cooling is fully optimized for cTDPdown?

 

[cbn]

Maybe the smartphone mainboard/chassis can be designed in such a way that extra cooling is more easily provided when the battery is removed?

P.S. According to this wikipedia link Lithium ion batteries do not like high temps or constantly being topped off to 100% charge.

The rate of degradation of Lithium-ion batteries is strongly temperature-dependent; they degrade much faster if stored or used at higher temperatures.

The rate of degradation of Lithium-ion batteries is also related to battery charge level; they degrade much faster when at 100% charge, than at lower charges. Since batteries die if deep discharged (depleted) and since a battery has some self-discharge it is frequently recommended to store batteries at 40% charge level.

So it according to that link there is some logical basis for removing the battery pack while these smartphone are docked to AC power (or another larger external battery in the case of a lapdock).

 

[Idontcare]

Just wondering aloud, one could imagine the processor attached to a heatsink whose cooling surface is on the outside of the device. When it's docked, the heatsink attaches to a larger sink (with fan, perhaps).

The difficulty would be in engineering this to ensure a tight thermal fit without any sort of interface material, but I'd imagine that's doable.

I was thinking about that too, then I thought about the fact that you can't just turn off the hotspot you created.

Whether or not the hotspot on the smartphone is connected to an external cooler, it is always connected to the things that are getting hot, so you will basically have a spot on the phone that no one will want to accidentally touch or need to have cool down before they pop the phone into a pocket or their purse.

Maybe the smartphone mainboard/chassis can be designed in such a way that extra cooling is more easily provided when the battery is removed?

P.S. According to this wikipedia link Lithium ion batteries do not like high temps or constantly being topped off to 100% charge.



So it according to that link there is some logical basis for removing the battery pack while these smartphone are docked to AC power (or another larger external battery in the case of a lapdock).

I gotta imagine placing such an inconvenient requirement on the end user would basically mean the docking bay never gets used. Who wants to have to take out their batteries, or put them back in, every time you use your docking station?

I once had a DELL laptop and docking station that for some brainchild of a reason the DELL engineers decided to make it such that the laptop dropped, and then reconnected, its ethernet connection when docking or undocking (even if you are still using the internal wireless connection the entire time).

That doesn't work when you are using VPN and so forth, net effect was my employer bought all its engineers these laptops with docking bays and none of uses the docking bays (and peripherals like the 19" LCD's and so on) because we'd lose all our work unless we closed out our terminal windows before docking.

 

[sefsefsefsef]

So what happens when it's acting as a desktop and you get a phone call? I don't want to answer phone calls on my computer. Do I just rip the phone out of its cradle? I hope the docking connection allows for that. But then I can't use the computer while I'm on the phone? It doesn't seem like a good idea to use a phone as a one-and-only computer unless user experience problems like this can be sorted out.

I don't see any problems with the 2+ device model of today. Why the need to "fix" it?

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I was thinking about that too, then I thought about the fact that you can't just turn off the hotspot you created.

Just put it behind a plastic cover or whatnot that slides out of the way when you pop it into the dock. Or similar. Product designers are pretty good about solving these sorts of issues.

 

[podspi]

So what happens when it's acting as a desktop and you get a phone call? I don't want to answer phone calls on my computer. Do I just rip the phone out of its cradle? I hope the docking connection allows for that. But then I can't use the computer while I'm on the phone? It doesn't seem like a good idea to use a phone as a one-and-only computer unless user experience problems like this can be sorted out.

I don't see any problems with the 2+ device model of today. Why the need to "fix" it?

Bluetooth headset? Another possibility is WiDi + Bluetooth for all peripherals, and the docking station is just a charger + trigger for automatic pairing of peripherals.

 

[sefsefsefsef]

Bluetooth headset? Another possibility is WiDi + Bluetooth for all peripherals, and the docking station is just a charger + trigger for automatic pairing of peripherals.

I could get behind that, if the "docking" station was nothing more than a power cord. However, bluetooth headsets are still lame. I'd need to be able to rip the docking cord out and walk around with my phone at a moment's notice for this solution to really work for me.

 

[cbn]

I was thinking about that too, then I thought about the fact that you can't just turn off the hotspot you created.

Whether or not the hotspot on the smartphone is connected to an external cooler, it is always connected to the things that are getting hot, so you will basically have a spot on the phone that no one will want to accidentally touch or need to have cool down before they pop the phone into a pocket or their purse.

Yes, I agree, the "hot spot" needs to be avoided.

Since these smartphone CPUs have stacked DRAM I am guessing a conventional heatsink is out of the question. (Someone correct me if I am wrong)

Maybe with these smartphone ball grid array chips engineers can create a method of improving the transfer of heat to the PCB....then (somehow) increase the distribution of heat throughout the PCB and then outside of the phone.

 

[cbn]

I gotta imagine placing such an inconvenient requirement on the end user would basically mean the docking bay never gets used. Who wants to have to take out their batteries, or put them back in, every time you use your docking station?

It depends on how the phone battery cover and battery are designed.

On a lot of old phones..... removing the battery took about two seconds. (slid battery cover off...and pop out battery, etc)

With that out of the way, the big question becomes how much overclocking gain (cTDPup) could be had?

If the overclocking (cTDPup) gain is too small....then maybe hassling with the battery cover, no matter how easy, is not worth it.

 

[Dratsab]

Maybe i am out of topic here, but with 4g and ever increasing wifi speeds, why wouldn't the cloud and/or sharing of the phone disk space through wifi be sufficient?

Im thinking along the lines of a Windows 8 core i5 tablet transformer ( does not have to asus specific but with the keyboard dock thingy) and all files but the os be shared, like dropbox but a local version between phone and tablet thru wifi.

and VOILA basically no major compromises for computing on the go.

Whatever you do on the tablet will be instantly synced with the phone either thru 4g when the tablet is not close enough to the phone or wifi if close enough)

Furthermore, where I live, you can get a cloned sim card from the local telco for 5 bucks extra a month so you dont even have to switch sim cards.

Thus no hassles of docking the phone etc.

Taking it one step further , the tablet can( only when docked with keyboard thingy with moar battery) have a slide out induction charging pad. Thus win win win.

If microsoft and its partners are able to do this , ill get a windows phone in a heart beat.

I used to own the Lg optimus 7 and since I basically bought on the day it was released, Microsoft's app store and browser was crap until like a year later when the finally rolled out the promised nodo update. The only thing I like about that phone was the metro U.I. In my opinion it was very intuitive , all they had tweak was the app drawer( which was basically a long list) and make in like what they did with the contacts (or people hub). Add in a fast search engine like ice cream sandwich and that metro U.I. will be awesome.

 

[podspi]

Few issues:

1) "The Cloud" is great in theory (and I use Dropbox, etc), but there is an open question of how secure and reliable these services are.



2) In the U.S. at least, data allowances are going DOWN, not UP. This makes using the cloud pretty impractical. Let's face it, if I only get 2gb a month, I'm not using that to stream MP3s and JPGs that I could transfer to my device.