Following up on the previous story I did about the 12" Dell Mini, it looks like it really is going to happen.
The size and form factor is of no interest to most readers but what’s going on underneath is very interesting.
Up until now, the performance of Z-series-based PCs running XP or Vista has been less than exciting. Video playback and 3D performance is almost non-existent in devices like the Kohjinsha SC3 and way below what people are seeing on the cheap Atom-based netbooks. In theory, it should be a lot better. Many people have been waiting for fresh drivers for the system controller hub (SCH, Aka Poulsbo) chipset under Vista and for XP-lovers, there’s absolutely nothing out there except rumours. Intel have no choice now but to ship good quality drivers otherwise they will have a big customer problem.
So why are Dell using the Z-series Atom processors? Battery life. Atom Silverthorne and the SCH offer much higher power efficiency so it gives Dell’s engineers the best possible chance to produce an 8hr device. The SCH also has the video decoding hardware built-in so we could be looking at a great long-haul video playback device here.
For those looking for Silverthorne/Poulsbo drivers, keep an eye on the Dell 1210 driver download page.
Source: CSM Report.
whats the difference between the Atom found in this versus the Atom in other netbooks?
From a technical standpoint the atom chips themselves are the same. Silverthorne chips are just selected as the best atom chips from a power consumption standpoint. Whereas the best Core 2 Duos are binned for speed the best Atoms are binned for power consumption. The biggest difference is in the chipset. Current netbooks are using older intel chipsets that have tons of unused features drawing power that can’t be turned off, older and less capable power management and are built using intel’s old 90 and 130nm processes. They are tired and have no place in low power devices. One thing they going for them is they are cheap because intel builds them basically for free. The fab space can no longer be used to make processors since intel doesn’t make 90nm or 130nm chips much anymore and since they have already designed the 945GSE for older laptops they have no need to invest in designing new silicon.
Poulsbo is a brand new chipset that strips features that are unnecessary for low power and low cost devices. It does away with SATA since serial interfaces draw more power along with a host of legacy features. It only uses a single chip rather then a northbridge/southbrige to save power and space on the PCB. It includes a very powerful but very low power graphics engine (actually designed by PowerVR and not Intel. You may recognized the name from ARM graphics so you know it’s going to be low power), decode acceleration for h.264 and MPEG2. It even supports 1.5V DDR2 (spec is 1.8) to save additional power though it is unlikely Dell would go to this extreme.
There are some trade offs like a maximum output resolution of 1366 x 768 and 1 GB of RAM but these are minor prices to pay for increased battery life (or a lighter battery and the same life)
Dell Inspiron 1210 MINI 12
So I talked to my special dell Rep and he says it will not be a Solid state Drive.
It will be a regular SATA drive and a nice size like 60GB-80GB.
Also will have an Optical drive. CDRW/DVD or DVDRW. 12″ screen of course.
Should be very nice and prices at around $499.00-$599.00
It will be before Turkey DAY.
HAVE FUN!!~!!!
The mini9 is way too small.
This is the device I have been dying for. I can take or leave the 12 in screen (I’d be just as happy with 10 in 1280×800 but 1024×600 is too small for replacing a full sized laptop) but the use of the Poulsbo is something that has been sorely lacking from every netbook released so far.
I love the idea of a tiny laptop that fits in a small bag and can be taken anywhere but saddling an excellent low power CPU like atom with the older (and frankly terrible) intel chipsets is criminal. The Silverthorne/Poulsbo combination does cost a bit more then Diamondville/910 but I’ll happily pay the difference to get a device that doesn’t need a fan and gets better battery life. The whole netbook category has pigeon-holed atom into low cost tiny laptops. Atom is more then enough performance to do research at the library, check email on a friend’s wifi, surf the web from the couch, chat on IM while making dinner and balance your chequebook on the kitchen table. I just want to do all those things in a row without ever getting near an outlet
Hopefully LG and Wibrain put the Moorestown in their upcoming devices.Due to devilery problems of the Atom in general it would be the logical next step especially for MIDs.
With Dell, it’s the keyboard. JKK on his live show the other night called it the worst netbook. I agree, I just can’t live with that keyboard.
Well I am very excited about this. Been waiting for this computer, hopefully not too much longer to wait, and hopefully not extremely expensive.
I really like the 12 inch screen as it then is a full laptop replacement for me. Obviously the computer industry does not want that. Which I fear might keep the computer priced a bit expensive.
Any way I think something to keep in mind is that although the new chipset and cpu will definitely save a bit of energy, I think that screen will probably take back alot of that energy savings. As the 12inch screen is probably 50% larger in respects to screen AREA.
So I probably thinking that battery life will probably be around 6-7 hours. I think I did read that 10 hours is the target. I doubt it with the screen size.
Anyway hoping for some good XP drivers. Realistically I would like linux video accelerations, but don’t think that will be happening anytime soon. SO definately would settle for xp drivers. Would be a real shame if this chipset was only supported(beyond basics) in Vista.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are pretty decent linux codecs available (though they may not be open source). Poulsbo is the MID chipset and intel is pretty committed to building a MID distro in moblin
On paper polsbo looks good,but right now it really doesn’t work like it should.
power usage difference to netbooks with gm950 is not even that big compared to poor performance.
Eee 901 uses 5 watts on idle where much smaller U2010 uses 3.3 and on average use 901 use 9 watts where U2010 uses 7.
I would not want to have such a poor graphics if it can only deliver 30 mins better battery life on 12 inch device.
On MIDs it is the way to go but it sucks on others right now.
jkkmobile…
So how is it you already know about how Poulsbo does on power utilization in real systems? I thought this was the first Poulsbo system we had seen… obviously not in your case?
There are UMPCs and MIDs already using it.
As I mentioned in the article, the Kohjinsha SC3 and others.
Rgds
Steve.
Do you have linux running on any of those devices? I’d love to know what the powertop (http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/tool) intel developed has to say about the difference between 945GSE and Poulsbo.
correction: link is http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/
tool ought to be included in the sentence but not the link
On average from 5W to 3,3W that would be 30% longer battery life!
Also from 9 to 7W as well!
As long as it’s capable of displaying HD 720p movies I think I’d prefer a device like this.
I wouldn’t want the 1GB RAM. 2GB for XP is more my thing, but then again we’re talking mobile here…
that was idle and with different size devises.. 5.6 inch screen vs 8.9 inches…
so the different would not be that much..
..and 720p is nogo with current poslbo drivers where netbook gm950 plays them fine..
I have Fujitsu U2010 and Aigo MID and I had Kohjinsha SX3.. all Atom + Polsbo
I also have pile of Atom + GM950 netbooks
So yes, I have been testing them a lot.
I have to say, I have been very underwhelmed with the Intel Polsbo chipset solution, and went out and bought the Everun Note specifically because my SC3 has underperformed and been unreliable since I bought it.
Hows the Note treating you compared to the SC3
Chippy – thumbing on the sc3 and missing the Note.
I’m pretty happy with it – best machine I’ve owned in terms of power and size. I have yet to really test it on the road though, so I can’t speak for its power consumption (although I plan on using a backup battery when I do take it out).
if the new chipset limits resolution to 13×7 & 1GB RAM that is going to be a deal breaker for many many people.
It might be a dealbreaker for the external monitor, but the resolution is more than enough to support HD720p movies.
1GB of RAM is good enough to have FireFox opened with something like 7-10 tabs, writing a word document, loading several drivers and systray programs (including anti-virus and ad-aware), and azureus bittorrent client running in the background.
right now you cant play 720p on pulsbo.. not even with 1.6Ghz version
Well, the Dell Mini 12 is now out. There are still only Vista drivers available on the Dell and Intel sites. Haven’t seen a review of the Dell Mini that talked about whether it can handle 720p video or not. Anybody? Is Poulsbo making any progress, or still DOA?