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ARM based processors coming to Linux netbooks (arstechnica.com)

14 points by brkumar ↗ HN
Freescale's ARM based i.MX515 will have the capability to power machines with up to 8 hours of battery life, with a display as large as 8.9 inches. Sporting an ARM Cortex-A8 core, the chip performs from around 600mHz to 1 GHz.

Seems like a clash between Intel and ARM is imminent.

14 comments

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axod
Cool, ARM are so much nicer to work with than Intel. Really well designed CPUs.
mcxx
As a normal user, how would I notice any difference?
sireat
If you are a normal Linux user, then you'ļl be fine, and modern ARM plus support chips should be less power hungry than Atom and chipset, although Intel has been making progress. I think it is about 9Watts average on Atom with newer chipsets, compared to first Atoms which use older chipsets and are consuming 26Watts. That "new" AMD chip for netbooks is an atrocity (IMHO) using about 45Watts.

If you want to run Windows, then you'll want to pass on ARM netbooks.

LogicHoleFlaw
PowerTOP on my Atom-using MSI Wind netbook shows a hair under 10 Watts total consumption at idle, and up to 13 Watts used under heavy load. There are probably some tweaks I could do to drop that even more but I think I've hit diminishing returns in that respect. I'm getting about 5 hours of real-life usage on the 6-cell battery.

Incidentally, the backlight on this thing is almost too powerful. I keep it on the lowest setting even on AC power because it's just that bright.

bulanga
> If you want to run Windows, then you'll want to pass on ARM netbooks

not necessarily. Remember Windows Mobile already runs on ARM so Microsoft already has plenty of experience porting to RISC machines (not to mention DEC alphas way back) I think MS could do it fairly easily if there really wanted to.

axod
Probably mainly the lower power usage, better battery life etc I'd say.
dchest
All we know at this point is that these computers will almost definitely be running Linux - these chips just can't provide enough CPU power to run any Windows operating system, including netbook standard XP.

I thought the reason was that Windows doesn't run on ARM.

davidw
Windows Mobile certainly does:

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

but, yeah that's not really windows for most people.

Also, even if MS ported Windows to ARM (it shouldn't be that difficult), the problem would really be the applications, which would either need emulating (on an already slowish computer) or recompiling.

dchest
Sure, not counting Windows CE variants here.
notauser
Linux doesn't run on Arm either.

...well, it does. The kernel does, and so do the desktop environments. And indeed so do most of the applications. But there is no Flash, no Skype, upgrading is a nightmare, support will probably end early and you will be very lucky if Java works well.

Every sub notebook and portable device I owned before my current (Atom based) Eee 1000 was a disaster because the system images for them were universally junk and/or crippled.

The default Linux image for the Eee is _also_ junk, but it doesn't matter because it takes five minutes to throw Ubuntu onto one. This should remain the case for at least the next two to four years as, being standard hardware, new software will keep on being made available for it.

By comparison mainstream support for running Linux on my G4 PowerBook never really began.

brkumar
From the article, "this chip will have the capability to power machines with up to 8 hours of battery life, with a display as large as 8.9 inches". We can finally hope for a long lasting laptop without having to weigh 4kgs (or 9 lbs).
jws
The Cortex-A8 is pretty spiffy (SIMD extensions, extra compressed instruction mode, ~GHz clockspeeds), but looking down the road, the Cortex-A9 intrigues me. All the same goodies of the A8 but it goes to 4 cores instead of 1.

The other change to look for in the next few years is cheap OLED displays. A 1 watt CPU, bridge chip, and a fractional watt display will change the battery life equation dramatically. Current displays make all the light a display could need to all white all the time and then throw most of it away. OLED displays only make the light you need. Say hello to the '80s and green text on black to stretch your battery for coding.

stcredzero
Someone should make something closer to the form factor of the Radio Shack Model 100, with the same instant-on capability and ability to run freaking forever on ordinary alkaline batteries.
handelaar
Netbook with a browser that can't run Flash.

Outside this place they're not going to sell many of those.