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Atom vs ARM9

Hello,

We are considering using an upcoming version of the Intel Atom SoC, I believe the current code name is tunnel creek. Anyway, my boss asked me the other day how we could expect the Intel Atom to perform in comparison to a comparable ARM9(same amount of cache, clock, bus to RAM, amount of RAM). I was a bit stumped, another engineer said he would expect the Atom to blow away a comparable ARM9, he said he would expect it to be two to three times faster. I'm not familiar with the architecture of the Atom, or what tricks Intel has come up with recently. It's been about five years since my computer architecture courses in school. Can anyone done any benchmarks, or could anyone comment from a theoretical point of view?

Regards, Eddie

Reply to
dawydiuk
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Atom and ARM9 are two completely different CPUs aimed at different markets. It's a bit like comparing a 386 with a Pentium. Atom would indeed be about twice as fast at the same clockspeed, but the ARM9 would use significantly less power even if you clocked it faster to get the same performance. ARM9's typically run at around

200MHz (the fastest are 600MHz), so it's not in the same league as a 1.6GHz Atom.

A better comparison would be with the 1GHz Cortex-A8, which is like Atom an in-order dual issue superscalar. There are few publicly available benchmarks, but ARM published benchmarks showing Cortex-A8 easily beat Atom in web browsing while using just a fraction of the power. I tried a Javascript benchmark which the 600MHz Cortex-A8 in the iPhone runs faster than my 1.8GHz Athlon64. It's funny Intel originally promoted Atom talking about it's supposedly superior web browsing capabilities compared to ARM...

Power consumption is Atoms main issue, not only the core but the whole chipset. There are people who claim that Intel can overcome these issues, but I believe that the extra cost of all the x86 compatibility is large enough that it cannot make an x86 CPU which would be suitable for a mobile phone.

Wilco

Reply to
Wilco Dijkstra

that

make an

Roger Wilco,

In 1943, it was reported that the world would only ever need a maximum of 5 personal computers.

Almost anything is possible. :-)

Cheers Don...

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Don McKenzie

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Reply to
Don McKenzie

I doubt that in 1943 they were even considering the concept of

*personal* computers.
Reply to
Dombo

Yep; it was "5 computers", period.

Reply to
Nobody

Another metric for your boss: how long does Intel usually keep a chip in production?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

ohhps, correct, take that back.

I didn't check the words that are coming out of my mouth (or keyboard for that matter) :-)

Don...

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Reply to
Don McKenzie

another hint : why is he the boss and asks lower ranking people ? that should ring the bell ;-) Go ARM, since Atom is needed only when legacy SW is required. And today, PC legacy CAN be overcome, and with it, soooo many troubles.

yg

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Reply to
whygee

markets.

about twice as

power even

Interesting, this is exactly what I was looking for.

1.6GHz Atom.

There are faster chips available. We are currently designing in a 1.2 GHz ARM9 from Marvell. Although, Marvell owns the rights to modify the instruction set so to be fair it's a modified ARM9 core.

chipset.

believe that

cannot make an

We build industrial SBCs... I believe we will be connecting a touch panel display to the Atom(assuming we design in this part). I really wasn't sure how the 1.2GHz ARM9 from Marvell would compare to a similiar Intel Atom chip... Thanks for the info.

Regards, Eddie

Reply to
dawydiuk

Intel is trying to break into the embedded industry again, so they have been doing a few things differently to try to appeal embedded designers. For instance several versions of the Atom will be guarenteed to be available for at least five years.

Regards, Eddie

Reply to
dawydiuk

Well he owns the business and is an EE who isn't really familiar with computer architecture details like this.

Well I'm just a software guy working at a small hardware company ;) Although, I do hear lots of bells; in this economy I'm happy I have a job and the company I'm working for builds cool products and is doing well. Although, if you know of anyone looking for a passionate embedded software guy feel free to let me know :)

I agree Atom's big selling point is all the legacy software(aka the PCs popularity). Our Arm and PowerPC products I'm sure will beat Atom with out question when it comes to power consumption. Although, we'll have a touch panel on the SBC we're looking into designing. We'll be running Debian Linux and I have a feeling all the software(Linux kernel, X/QT...) will be easier to get up and running(e.g. less engineering time and less bugs) on an x86 architecture.

Regards, Eddie

Reply to
dawydiuk

hmmm depends on if you want to be paid ;-)

some mistakes : * touch panels are not CPU-specific. * Debian runs nicely on ARM. I've even logged in through serial tty on a board with Debian, booting off a USB flash key, about 32MB SDRAM and rediculous power draw. And that was more than 2 years ago with an old silicon.

What you will gain with ARM is a lot less questions related to off-topic monstruosities dating back the the 80's. Less cruft so less Flash storage for the boot loader, for example. I don't say that it is very easy to make one's boot loader (I haven't done it) but you won't be the last or the first one, and a lot of solutions already exist. This requires some efforts in the beginning, but it pays in the end.

BTW, send me the datasheet of the board when it's ready ;-)

yg

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Reply to
whygee

Hasn't Intel made that promise before? As I recal they lost that market for a very good reason.

Robert

Reply to
Robert Adsett

As a general rule, promises engage those who believe them. I don't do any promise anymore, unless I am paid ... And even then, it's hard.

yg

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Reply to
whygee

We are working here with many different ARM CPUs and the Atom on the other side. Yes, the Atom is a fast CPU. But not as fast as we expected it, and needs _much_ more electrical power than we expected! Due to the BIOS and legacy hardware support it also fights with System Management Mode software against incompatibilities. So, it does a really poor job when we try to use a realtime Linux kernel (RT-Preempt) on it. On the other side we are using some 400MHz ARMv6 CPUs. Due to their modern SDRAM interface, second level cache and hardware floating point you can compare their computing power with the Atom. Really nice CPUs, and very "cool", even if they run our test suites with 100% load.

jbe

Reply to
Juergen Beisert

That's interesting. Did you do direct benchmark comparisons with ARM11?

Wilco

Reply to
Wilco Dijkstra

Various tests with scheduler load, filesystem load and memory load (based on a 2.6.29.5-rt22 kernel)

Latencies: ARM11 11us .. 73us Atom 61us ... 284us (with a bad BIOS up to 58406us)

jbe

Reply to
Juergen Beisert

Strangely, I quoted it from an ad on the National Geographic channel on cable TV.

Just saw the same ad, and they again quoted "Personal" computers.

Mind you, I did google it and found who was credited with saying this without the word "Personal" :-)

Cheers Don...

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Reply to
Don McKenzie

I can't find the report to cite, but there's one kicking around that says the above... but it's rather meaningless in that you can't actually clock that particular ARM that fast. It's a bit like saying a Ford will beat a Bugatti at fuel consumption at 250mph... only none of Ford's cars can actually go that fast at the moment.

Of course, if the ARM's performance is sufficient the above suggests it'll win over an underclocked Atom. Or maybe you can find another ARM to run at a sufficient rate to match the Atom.

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

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Hi,

I did read about an ARM9 running @ 1 GHz a while ago, not too much information but a 2 page product brief was there:

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If fast software development on a Windows platform is of the most importance I would definitely go for the Atom, if not, probably not. However, I would check out options with a Cortex-A8 to get to a comparable performance to the Atom.

An Schwob

Reply to
An Schwob in USA

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