Netbooks At Computex: x86 CPU (And Chipset) Thoughts

It’s probably no surprise to many of you that a disproportionate percentage of the computer industry attention at this week’s Computex show was focused on netbooks (now once again a politically correct term) and other thin-and-light-and-inexpensive systems. Per-unit profit margins may be scant in this particular market segment, but revenues and therefore aggregate profits are still decent, thanks to robust unit sales (compared to other PC categories of late, largely by virtue of the lingering worldwide economic malaise). Just last night, in fact, I saw in the latest issue of eWEEK that IDC estimates worldwide netbook shipments will total 22 million units this year.

This is a big subject, one that no single (and reasonably sized) blog post could do justice to. As such, I’m planning to break it down into (at least) three days’ worth of writeups, beginning with the theme showcased in the above subject line. Here’s a sneak preview of the other planned pieces:

• Netbooks At Computex: Assessing ARM’s (and MIPS’) Chances
• Netbooks At Computex: Microsoft Versus Innumerable Linux Variants

Focusing first on x86 CPUs, those of you who closely follow this particular product space already know that Intel’s Atom is currently the "10,000 lb. gorilla" in the room regardless of whether the platform surrounding it is running Windows or a particular Linux distro. I most recently covered Atom in detail in my early January cover story, where I benchmarked (among other processor candidates) its single- and dual-physical-core variants, with each physical core capable of dual virtual core emulation via HyperThreading support.

As you’ll see when you review the hands-on evaluation results, Atom is a capable nexus for most if not all mainstream processing tasks germane to a netbook’s price-defined expectations. The bulk of the industry criticism regarding Atom concerns not the CPU, but its companion chipset…specifically its dearth of hardware-assisted video acceleration capabilities. Enter Nvidia’s alternative single-chip Ion (i.e. GeForce 9400M) IC, showcased in Apple’s latest mobile Macs and a product that I tested in early February.

Emboldened by Intel’s recent troubles with the European Union, Nvidia’s executives are claiming that unfair Atom sales practices are shutting Ion out of potential customer accounts. Intel counters that it’s well within its rights to offer more attractive pricing plans when its customers purchase multi-chip bundles. I’m not going to take a stab at assessing who’s right(er) in this battle of words But Nvidia can point to at least a few design win successes here at Computex, notably a $50-premium build-to-order option for Lenovo’s S12 netbook, Dell’s Studio 14z notebook PC, and a slew of nettops.

If the graphics processing of the GeForce 9400M is a don’t-care for you (as may be the case, given the systems’ small screens and other factors) and low-CPU-utilization video decoding is therefore your primary concern, Ion’s not the only option available for your consideration. More than two years ago, Broadcom briefed me on its Media PC video processing ICs, which hearkened back to the dedicated MPEG-2 decoding chips necessary in the early days of DVD and ATSC. The company’s sporadically announced design wins since that time, but it struck pay dirt at this year’s Computex with an (optional) presence in HP’s Mini 110 netbook.

While Intel officials begrudgingly admit that the current Atom CPU-plus-chipset combination isn’t optimal for leading-edge video codecs and high frame resolutions (even with battery-draining and unsanctioned overclocking), they confidently believe that Nvidia’s Ion and Broadcom’s Media PC have a limited lifetime of relevance ahead of them. The claimed reason for this premature competitive extinction is Intel’s next-generation Atom platform spin, called Pine Trail and due out later this year. Take a look:

As you can see, the Pineview CPU embeds the previously discrete GPU and memory controller; the former is both feature-enhanced and runs at a faster clock speed, both capabilities intended for more robust video performance. If you’re feeling an integration sense of déjà vu right now, it’s probably because you read my Core i7 piece published roughly 24 hours ago!

More generally, Intel would love to move the bulk of the thin-and-light mobile PC market away from CPUs costing a few dozen dollars and back to CPUs costing a few hundred dollars. Therefore the motivation for the company’s CULV (consumer ultra-low voltage) processor line, which will reportedly resurrect the Pentium marketing moniker. Given my past published analysis, you might not be surprised to hear that I’m skeptical Intel will have notable success in this customer up-scaling endeavor.

And I can’t help but chuckle at Intel’s attempts to position CULV as something new, since the 1.5 year old first-generation MacBook Air I’m typing this writeup on already contains a CULV chip (albeit with a prior-generation chipset), specifically a Core microarchitecture-based dual-core Intel CPU that courtesy of CoolBook, runs at 0.8V across its entire clock frequency range. Unfortunately, AMD’s doing little to blunt Intel’s competitive aspirations in the mobile computing category; all the company was able to muster at Computex was an announcement that its voltage- and clock-speed-lowered 65 nm Athlon christened Neo, first unveiled at January’s CES, is now shipping in production volumes.

Via…now that’s happily a different story. Back at the Embedded Systems Conference West, company officials told me that they’d rev’d the microcode of the Nano CPU that I tested at the beginning of the year, with the twin end results of boosted performance and lowered power consumption in various operating modes. Alp Sezen, Managing Director of Via’s Embedded Platform Division, said that potential customers were awaiting the release of silicon using this revised microcode before they put the CPU through product qualification cycles, and I would therefore soon start hearing of substantial Nano design wins.

I’d actually already caught wind of one notable Nano customer; Samsung, with its NC20 netbook, which is currently $550 at Newegg. More recently, Dell unveiled a Nano-powered blade server, and at Computex Shuttle released a Nano-based nettop PC. Lesser-known suppliers, which sometimes end up as design houses for bigger brand names, also showcased their Nano-fueled products.

Next time, I’ll discuss how ARM and its army of licensees plan to compete against the x86 juggernaut in netbooks, point out the potential barriers to the fulfillment of the ARM architecture’s aspirations, and offer some predictions on its consequent prospects for realistic success.