As a follow-up to the popular ultra mobile PC CPU Overview article written in March 2006, here’s an update on what has happened during the second half of 2006 and what there is to look forward to in 2007.
VIA
Since the launch of the C7-M earlier this year, VIA haven’t announced any major news on core processor architecture. There are however a few new chipset products (northbridge, southbridge, GPU) that are relevant for the ultra mobile PC market. Firstly, there’s the VX700 chipset. This device combines the best of VIA’s southbridge (perepheral controller) and Northbridge (memory and GPU control) on one package. Although there’s no real new technology in here it will be very important for UMPCs as it will simplify and reduce the size of the traditional north/southbridge chipsets, therefore reducing the cost of making a small motherboard for a UMPC. Secondly, how about package thats going to play a very important role in UMPC’s in 2007. Its the Core-Fusion, pc-on-a-package codenamed ‘John’.
The John package combines the core processor technology of the C7-M ULV processor and the VX700 comnbination chipset mentioned above on one very small package. Again, this will simplify, reduce size, reduce power and reduce the cost of designing and producing a mortherboard for a UMPC. VIA have said that they expect the device to be available on 2006.
It will be interested to see more details about the Samsung Q1b as the timing of this product co-incides nicely with the planned availability of ‘John’ and the VX700 chipset. One ultra mobile PC designer that is using the VX700 chipset is Mobits. They have already made public three designs that use the VX700 chipset As yet, the designs aren’t on the market.
Intel
Intel really don’t make things easy for anyone trying to find out and compare processor products. One has to wade through a huge number of monikers and numbers for CPU’s and chipset technology to get to the core information. Yonah, Merom, Santa Rosa, Core Solo, Core Duo and it goes on with all the prodcut codes.
New on the market in the last 6 months and relevant to the ultra mobile PC market has been the ultra low voltage (ULV) Core Solo processors. You can seen these as a progression of the Pentium-M ULV product and they offer both processing power and power-saving advantages. They are based on the 65nm Yonah manufacturing process and come in two flavors. 1.06Ghz and 1.2Ghz. In the ultra mobile PC product lines only the The Sony UX and Fujistsu Loox P70 are available with these at the moment. These should start appearing in more high-end UMPC’s over the next 6 months.
A variation of the Core Solo processors, to come under the Celeron-M brand will use the Yonah Core Solo core as above but, as with the current Celeron, will use a cut-down architechture. Its not clear whether the speed-stepping will be disabled. Look out for UMPC’s with the Celeron-M ‘423’ processor in the middle-low end of the Origami-ultra mobile PC market.
Available soon will be a dual-core version of this processor, the U2500 at 1.2Ghz. This is going to be an expensive part and its dificult to beleive that dual-core is going to have so much advantage in the average ultra mobile PC useage scenario. Whats needed is more information about the power-useage envelope before we can see these as a possible solution for UMPC’s
Looking into 2007, Intel have their Merom range of Ultra Low Voltage processors planned. In Aug 2006 the Low Voltage version launched in a number of notebook PC’s but not until the ULV versions arrive in 2007 will there be a new choice for UMPC’s. The Merom range of processors will be Core 2 (Duo) based. They will also be expensive! Don’t expect to see these in middle-of-the-road UMPC’s at all in 2007 especially if you consider that the latest ASUS R2H ultra mobile PC that has just been announced looks like it will use the Celeron-M that was launched in 2004.
Looking at other reports and research on the Merom processors, it appears that Intel are concentrating on improving processing power rather than improving power efficiency. This could be driven by the need to support Vista and to fit into the new Santa Rosa (next-gen Centrino) architechture. VIA seem to be keeping the processing power as a near-constant and reducing the power requirements where possible. As battery technology improves, it could be that Intel find themselves in the best position to offer processors that can support Windows Vista as well as having an ‘acceptable’ battery life. For lower end devices with longer battery power, (Linux based perhaps) VIA could be in the best position.
Santa Rosa a mobile standard (next-gen Centrino) March 2007. Better Wifi support (Wi Max) better graphics support. Mobile 965 chipset, ICH8M and a new wireless solution with 802.11n
AMD
There’s nothing realyl to say about AMD. Although they’ve been all over the news in the last 2 months, it hasn’t been because of low-power processors.
There are 3 consumer devices being launched that use the Geode LX800 processor (HiPAD II, Pepperpad 3, Vega) but these are low-end devices and don’t compete with the Origami architecture based on Intel and VIA processors.
We’ll have to see what AMD are planning in this area becuase at the moment, there’s a big gap and if UMPC’s take off, they won’t be in the game.
Opinion
In comparison with battery, screen and storage technology, low-power CPUs and chipsets are moving into an area where improvements are having ever decreasing effects on the overall battery life of a device. VIA are reaching the point With ‘John’ Core Fusion device where processor and chipsets are almost as efficient as they need to be. Its time to start using LED backlighting on LCD panels, better battery technology and flash drives and using a percentage of the energy savings to enable a better user experience. With Windows Vista around the corner a 50% increase in processing and GPU power could bring the ultra mobile PC to the point where it can fully utilise some of the advanced user features and in many cases, be used as a low-end desktop replacement.
In this respect, although the Intel devices seem to have a slightly higher power-drain, it appears that when battery life reaches ‘acceptable’ levels, Intel could have the better strategy. Of course, for the ultimate battery life, VIA still seems to be the processor of choice. Watch out for the Samsung Q1b , a ultra mobile PC announced with 5 hours battery life and a VIA C7-M at its core.
