VIA must be pleased with the C7-M right now. The ultra mobile PC product bracket seems to be filling up with C7-based devices faster than you can say ‘Santa Rosa’ and with the John CoreFusion package (system-on-chip) still to be introduced, they have another ultra mobile trick up their sleeve that could take things much further for them.
But what about Intel? Where are the new ultra low voltage (ULV) processors from them? Whats the latest on Santa Rosa? Steeley? What is 2007 gong to bring and how might it affect the design of new ultra mobile PC products?
First lets take a look at the Intel CPU technology we know about today.
Currently we see the old Celerons and Pentium-M’s along with the newer U1400 Core Solos (Sony UX and Fujistsu P1610.) In the upcoming LG C1 and Flybook V5 we have the Core Duo U2500. All current production CPU’s.
Next in line for Intel-based UMPCs is the Merom (Core 2) architecture and over December there was a small bit of news that gives us some idea of the latest plan and timescales. Here’s a summary of whats coming up based on current knowledge.
New Celeron M-500 family
The next generation of the entry-level Celeron brand will be Core 2 Solo (Merom) based. This month (Jan 2007) we should see availability of the first ULV version of these CPUs, the 1.6Ghz Celeron-M 520. Its a 5W TDP device. Not a great deal better than the current Celeron, Pentium and Core Solo devices in terms of power efficiency but a good step forward for processing power. Following closely behind the Celeron M520 is the 1.7Ghz M530 with the same power credentials. In Q3, a Celeron 523 1.06Ghz low-end part should be available. again, TDP is 5W.
The Celeron devices represent the ‘value’ range and we could see these in sub $1000 UMPC’s very soon. Note that the Celeron versions will not support ViiV, Hyperthreading, 64bit operation or Intel VPro. Unfortunately too, the devices will not support Enhanced Speedstep.
Full-spec ‘Pentium’ versions to be released.
The Pentium-M brand appears to have completely gone now. Core 2 Solo is the name of the game and the current U1400 CPU (as seen in Sony UX) will be replaced by the U2100. The U1500 by the U2200. These are full-spec versions at the same 1.06 and 1.2Ghz respectively and have a similar 5W TDP. Importantly they support enhanced speedstep technology and all the nice ViiV, VT and other Intel enhancements. The timescale is a little unclear. Somewhere between Q1 and Q3 is likely. So again we have advances in processing power but this time, coupled with some new power-saving technology. Prices will, however, reflect that advanced technology.
Santa Rosa. Late 2007
None of the above CPUs have anything to do with Santa Rosa, the next-gen ‘Centrino’ platform (info here.) They are all Socket M (Napa refresh platform) which means they can only use the current generation of chipsets (945GM with GMA950 + DirectX 9 graphics as seen in the Sony UX) The next gen chipset are currently available (965GM, GMA X3000, Direct X 10 support) but are power-hungry. ULV Mobile CPU’s that can use these won’t even be available until the second half of the year and even then, unless there is a serious advance in battery tech, this would be a seriously power-hungry solution for a UMPC. Discreet GPU’s could be the answer until Santa Rosa chipsets are made more efficient. This is the approach that Flybook and LG have already taken in the V33 and C1 products. Unfortunately, it means more design complexity and I would expect the cheaper and smaller devices to rely on the VIA solutions for now. This Intel architecture is for the very high-end of UMPCs in 2007.
Steeley: 2008
Steeley is the processor that Intel talked about at the IDF. (1/10th power. See info here.) This is 45nm tech and there’s no new news on this at the moment. Expected 2008.
VIA developments.
At the moment it appears that VIA don’t have any new low-power products on the roamap. In fact, its difficult to even get roadmap or product info from VIA. The last we heard from them was at the VFT in Computex.
The C7-M and VX700 seem to be good choices for the consumer UMPCs and integrating these onto the John CoreFusion chipset will bring further power and space saving to the platform but theres room for improvements. What about support for the VIA co-processor hardware in Vista. Is it there? If it is it will bring advances as there have been very few software packages that have been able to use the security and video processing hardware in the chipset.
VIA may also have to look at their 3D graphics support too as it is falling behind in some areas. Where Intel is looking at low-power integrated Direct X 10 support, VIA still has only Direct-X 7 hardware support. An update to the integrated GPU is badly needed in this area as more and more software starts to use 3D. Google Earth, iTunes and Vista being big examples. There is a reference to DX9 support in a slide shown at the VTF [pdf ] at Computex in 2006 but that’s all there seems to be at the moment.
Expectations. VIA and Intel will setttle into seperate markets.
It looks to me like we’ll see a 1.7Ghz ultra mobile PC before long. CeBit (March) is my prediction for this. I’m sure the mainstream press and PR agencies will love it as it represents a huge increase on that highly abused specification. This could help perception of UMPCs performance in the market. Introduction of the Core 2 processors will widen the performance gap between Intel and VIA further but this will lead towards separation in the ultra mobile PC market. The Intel UMPCs will remain fairly high-end devices with VIA focusing on the lower-end of the market with smaller consumer umpcs, carputers, uber-smartphone (will we see the first x86 based smartphonepossibilities in this area. in 2007?) and high-end PMP/Navigation devices. The introduction of John core-fusion will enable even more
Power consumption of the Intel CPU/Chipset soutions will stay relatively high (compared with VIA) during 2007 and will have to be offset by using more expensive designs and components such as flash HDD and high-end battery technology (which I expect has been set back by the Sony battery recall problems of 2007). I expect Intel devices to remain at the 1KG weight mark due to design requirements with higher prices and larger form factors. The 8.9″ convertible ultra mobile PC segment could be the best niche for the Intel ULV solutions.
With so many sub-segments of the ultra mobile PC market appearing, it makes sense to me that Intel and VIA settle into niche target areas. They can focus research resources and make the choices easier for designers.
AMD Geode – No news. AMD need to do something fairly drastic with this architecture in order to keep up. I don’t see it happening. It may end up being used for high-end PMP’s and school devices only until it fades away. I hope I’m wrong.
Note for gamers: Affordable gaming umpcs are still a long way off. Don’t expect anything sub $1000 in 2007.
One last note. I still don’t know what is going to happen with the Intel vs VIA legal problems. This could change a lot of things including slowing the progress of ultra mobile PC R&D.
