Is AMD Now In the Ultra-Mobile Game with Ontario?

Posted on 25 November 2010, Last updated on 25 November 2010 by

In our podcast on Monday, we spoke briefly about AMD’s ‘Atom killer.’ Coming from the ultra-mobile sector we were fairly negative about the potential impact of Fusion architecture. A comment on Carrypad made me think twice and take a closer look at the low-end of the Fusion processors (or APU’s Accelerated Processing Units- as AMD calls them) to see just what might be possible with Ontario.

I’ve seen a demo of Zacate, the dual-core 1.6Ghz version of the APU and yes, it was impressive. What demo isn’t? What was deeply imprinted on my mind though was the scary TDP of 18W. Even if that part is able to get things done and let an OS sleep faster than others, thus reducing average drain, designing around it is going to result in netbook sized devices. It’s nothing for mobile tablets.

Zacate is dual-core running at 1.6Ghz so seeing an opportunity for another part, AMD have cut down the clock and managed to reduced the design power to 9W with the Ontario part. (The overall platform is called Brazos.) We’re probably looking at 900Mhz to 1.2Ghz clock speed on a single-core here. Remember, this is a dual-core out-of-order CPU so not directly comparable with the 1.5Ghz Atom parts.

The power-envelope will be similar too. The N550 is an 8.4W part.

ontario
Image from AMD Fusion Blog

At this point though, it’s time to say ‘stop’ because once again, we’re talking about a netbook platform. Sure, we’ll see it in a tablet or two (it’s highly likely to be in the Acer slate) but don’t expect them to be much less than 1KG and average less than 8 to 10W drain. With the standard 30Wh battery inside this isn’t going to break new ground in terms of battery life and with battery life the #1 consideration for ultra-mobile computing, what’s the point of talking about HD decoding and GPU-accelerated HTML5?

AMD’s Zacate and Ontario will help bring competition to the netbook sector for sure and that’s a good thing. It will highlight how badly the Atom Netbook platform needs HD video decoding and a boost in 3D performance (although that is likely to be fixed in the Cedar Trail product in 2011) but it isn’t something for the ultra-mobile market. Looking at the roadmap, it looks like the 28nm ‘Wichita’ might be competition for Oaktrail with Windows but don’t expect huge leaps forward.

What the X86-based ultra mobile market needs is a change of platform AND operating system to permit always-on, ultra-low-power sleep states, high integration of Wi-Fi and 3G on new platforms. This is why ARM/Android devices are idling, connected, at 0.5W and a netbook is taking 10x that amount! It’s also why MeeGo and Oaktrail/Moorestown are being developed. Migrating away from Windows desktop support is probably the best long-term strategy there is.

 

Some information in this hothardware article was used in this report.

17 Comments For This Post

  1. UMPCPortal says:

    Is AMD Now In the Ultra-Mobile Game with Ontario? http://www.umpcportal.com/?p=22821

  2. Steve 'Chippy' Paine says:

    RT @umpcportal: Is AMD Now In the Ultra-Mobile Game with Ontario? http://www.umpcportal.com/?p=22821

  3. Gretchen Glasscock says:

    Is AMD Now In the Ultra-Mobile Game with Ontario?: In our podcast on Monday, we spoke briefly about AMD’s ‘Atom … http://bit.ly/fd5vT4

  4. Alltop Mobile says:

    Is AMD Now In the Ultra-Mobile Game with Ontario? http://bit.ly/hq3Rkt

  5. AhmedJamal Ibraihimi says:

    RT @Alltop_Mobile: Is AMD Now In the Ultra-Mobile Game with Ontario? http://bit.ly/hq3Rkt

  6. Torminx says:

    i have found lots of netbook fans to be very dismissive Zacate, while the benchmarking sites are very optimistic of it. the reason being for netbook fans? basing current negative misconceptions on past missteps from AMD.

    the question i see popping up over & over is, while the CPU is performing on par with CULV why is AMD giving it such impressive GPU performance (slightly more powerful than ION16 & 2x Intel HD4500)? simple, AMD is looking forward to the future. everything, and i mean everything is going GPU accelerated. everybody knows Flash is now heavily backing GPU acceleration, but do people know that every major browser vendor is also going towards GPU acceleration? NVidia has been saying for years that the future is in GPU’s not CPU’s, if you ask any hardware engineer they will also tell you that the era of CPU dominance is coming to an end. why do you think Universities across the world are using PS3’s instead of PC’s for Seti, not just because of money but because of performance.

    this is the area where AMD trumps Intel in spades & they are betting on it bigtime for the future. if theres anything to be said about all of this, with the rise of mobile, Android, ARM, AMD, NVidia, the era of a Wintel monopoly is finally over … MS/Intel know it and they’re scared.

  7. Will says:

    I don’t think AMD got the balance right though. GPU acceleration for the UI (like Aero), video decoding or even the browser does not need a powerful GPU.

    You still need a reasonably powerful CPU to do basic tasks like run applications or render a webpage and with Zacate being only slightly more powerful than the D525, I think the CPU will still be the biggest bottleneck in these low-power, low-end netbooks.

    Intel’s next Atom netbook refresh due in Q1 2011, Oak Trail, will feature a more powerful GPU (GMA600) and maybe improved CPU performance. By the time Zacate is ready, it will have to compete with Oak Trail.

    Cedar Trail will then shrink Atom to 32nm in late 2011, further reducing power draw and improving CPU/GPU performance. It is good that AMD in fighting in this arena but Intel will be hard to beat.

    BTW Via is out of the game. Knowing Via, the Nano DC will be significantly delayed and it certainly won’t be competitive in the performance/$ or performance/watt game.

  8. Golum says:

    Your obsession with power envelopes is misguided. The only Atom processors that are intended to be relevant to low power computing are the new embedded ones. It’s a tautology. The Atom processors that you discuss in this article have a single advantage: price. That’s it. If your article is based around anything else then it’s invalid. Intel’s Core i3/i5 are more efficient than their Atom counterparts. Your logic seems to imply that it’s possible to increase the gas mileage of a large car by replacing its engine with a low-powered one because that engine “consumes less fuel”. It’s not about that. It’s about platforms that are both more powerful and more efficient. This is what Ontario is. The real point here is that AMD and Intel are both moving to new platforms in which the GPU is on-board the chip. This will have all kinds of advantages for both platforms, but one must also keep in mind that Intel and AMD are also much more liberal with their drivers support, which will bring this power and efficiency to more platforms. For example, NVIDIA’s Optimus technology is perhaps the most state-of-the-art technology available in terms of graphics support and power management, but it’s only available to specific tiers of Windows 7.

  9. zeo says:

    No, Chippy’s right, the mobile tablet market is dominated by ARM processors mostly because the power usage is far better than any x86 solution to date.

    Performance isn’t the only concern in the mobile market, otherwise netbooks would have long been phased out as ATOM’s are far less efficient processors and only dominate that market segment because they use far less power to allow for lighter system designs and longer battery run times that allow for smaller capacity batteries to be practical and reduce the cost of building those systems.

    The key word in this article being mobility, which is Chippy’s main concern when discussing mobile devices, and greater power requirements means you need larger batteries, more cooling, etc. All of which adds weight and size, not to mention increases the price, and that counters mobility.

    Leaving AMD’s Ontario as a solution that competes more with netbooks than mobile tablets.

  10. DM says:

    Chippy small correction, from what I have seen the Ontario parts will be both single and dual core (as will Zacate interestingly) with a lower CPU clock speed on the dual core part.

    C-50: Dual core at 1.0GHz
    C-30: Single core at 1.2GHz

    (both at 9w and about another 2.5w for south bridge)

    Also both Ontario parts have lower speed GPUs running at 280MHz (vs 500MHz for Zacate).

    I would echo Golum’s point about cost to some extent because for the first time in a long while x86 parts are not being manufactured “in-house” by AMD/Globalfoundries, instead these parts are being produced on a bulk process by TSMC just like AMD’s and Nvidia’s GPUs. These APUs are small chips = more chips per wafer so cheaper chips.

    Admittidly Intel’s fabs still use a very good mature process (it is Intel after all) for Atom but for the first time in a while AMD will, in this market segment, have a CPU (or APU should I say) on a smaller process than Intel. I guess this may hurry Intel into producing some 32mn Atoms.

    DM

    Source:

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4023/the-brazos-performance-preview-amd-e350-benchmarked

  11. Alessandro Tucci says:

    RT @umpcportal: Is AMD Now In the Ultra-Mobile Game with Ontario? http://www.umpcportal.com/?p=22821

  12. Steve 'Chippy' Paine says:

    Looks like all my responses failed. Broken comments system?

  13. Steve 'Chippy' Paine says:

    OK. I lost 4 detailed responses to you guys. Sorry.

    The core of my reasoning is that an ultra mobile PC (not a netbook, laptop) has to be built around a platform TDP with a wild operating system and user in mind. Hot devices are not good and fans are not good. If the CPU is theoretically more efficient it doesn’t stop an OS or user from using it inneficiently and that’s usualyl what happens in todays operating systems. I’ve tested many many mobile devices and the high-TDP cpus always cause issues for design and heat.

  14. animatio says:

    … and that is a real issue. standby / sleep modes and heat produced together with energy consumption influencing operability and endurance

  15. Will says:

    The problem is that Windows 7 works reasonably well on 10″ and larger netbooks with existing x86 hardware. Oak Trail, Cedar Trail, Zacate and Ontario will make these devices even more feasible with lower power requirements and better performance.

    If we’re talking about sub 1kg, 5-9″ tablets with “all-day” battery life, then ARM is still leading and will be the best platform for these devices for the next few years. This market is still in its infancy and obviously iOS is the main OS at the moment but in a few months time when Google releases a tablet-optimised version of Android, HP releases WebOS for tablets and RIM releases the PlayBook, we’ll have several decent platform choices.

  16. Marc says:

    There’s a reason why even the AMD slide up there says “notebook” CPU: AMDs product offering is _not_ for the mobile market, it’s for netbook-type and bigger devices, laptops.

    When Chippy talks about mobility he means a different type of device, where the issue is not CPU/GPU performance or 3D graphics acceleration – but heat, weight, battery life and standby times.

    It’s called “mobility”, and it means “Instant on, work anywhere, mobile computing”.

    Anything with 18W TDP is simply irrelevant in this area, no matter how cheap to produce or how nice the graphics.

  17. Turloi says:

    “mobility” is no good when the hardware is so awful it cannot create a decent user experience.

    Atom was fine during the XP days & before HD really became ubiquitous throughout the web. but since W7 & HD exploding everywhere, plus the future of the web being GPU accelerated flash & browsers it just cant deliver anymore.

    browsing use to be a “light” task but not anymore, have you seen how heavy websites are now days? flashblock isnt enough & if you turn off scripting you might as well not even browse.

    sub 10w devices will still exist, even flourish, but just not with x86/64 anymore, ARM instead.

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