Comments on: Intel’s Moorestown Platform. From Smartphone Through Smartbook and Beyond.

By: Kola

Kola — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:32:57 +0000

As I understand it’s already Windows capable in term of working, but at least standard Windows ACPI driver won’t distribute power saving features which are the main benefits. If Intel only needs to make new ACPI driver than it’s ok, but Windows have some persistent background activity caused by different programs and services which also can be an obstacle to reach normal power saving. Actually I’m not a specialist in this so maybe I’m wrong…

By: Chippy

Chippy — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:48:05 +0000

The price is likely to be higher to start with simply because smartphones on Moorestown will be premium devices. Slightly bigger. Targeted at early adopters. Business. etc.

As for your second question, I don’t really understand it. X86 support for non windows means it will only support Moblin OS first and then Windows later. Moblin is high highly tailored to get the best out of the initial Moorestown platform.

I guess they are forced to make a WIndows-capable version so that they don’t face anti-competitive claims.

By: Kola

Kola — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:31:43 +0000

Thanks for review, Chippy. It was interesting. There’s two questions – the price of a unit compared to ARM solutions and the meaning of x86 support under the non-Windows OS.

By: DavidC1

DavidC1 — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:38:37 +0000

ARM is really not that far away power-wise compared to x86. At the moment they have the advantage because they have already invested in the ecosystem and the platform for lowering power consumption. SoCs are one of them. x86 has yet to get there. The largest contributors will be process technology differences and target performance.

That said, the Moorestown presentation compared a 600MHz Lincroft CPU and a ~1GHz level Silverthorne CPU for power consumption purposes. There was another presentation earlier that said 30% better experience/performance compared to Menlow.

I think the thing to take here is the base SKUs won’t be lowering power that much(compare Atom Z530 to A110 for example), but it will still be lower, and it’ll have a per-clock advantage thanks to the integrated memory controller. On another end of the scale, we’ll have probably 600MHz Lincroft CPUs that perform similar to Z500 but consume significantly less power.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:39:09 +0000

All sounds great, although they would claim they are better than Arm….

I carry various forms of extra power for my iPhone when I travel to ensure I’m never short.

Hopefully that should change this week and I’ll see how much my first business with my new MID effects my smartphone battery life (meaning will I use it instead of the instant convenience of my phone?).

By: Steve 'Chippy' Paine

Steve 'Chippy' Paine — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:25:21 +0000

New article: Intel’s Moorestown Platform. From Smartphone Through Smartbook and Beyond. http://cli.gs/Q9rhV7