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[eduardomontez]

Looks like we are getting some information about the new, lower-power consumption Atom chip. Its called the N280 and apparently has the northbridge built in.

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS9895185354.html

The article claims 9.5 hours of run time from an 8700mAh battery. I wonder how its power usage compares with the new ARM netbooks. But note the list price is twice as high at $400.

[teapot]

Part of this is a problem of timing. So much of the hardware and software design depends on the cpu, so it seems to me OLPC is going to have to decide real soon, and before it knows what Microsoft is going to do. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Why would OLPC care about anything Microsoft does? Just deny Microsoft access to developers' time (what OLPC failed to do with XO), establish a policy of never endorsing anything from Microsoft (what OLPC also failed to do with XO), and Microsofties can tinker with XO-2 or XO-65537 as much as they want with no impact on the actual project. The only way Microsoft can cause harm is by creating dependency on them -- Negroponte was doing fine until his little "open source fundamentalists" speech.

[eduardomontez]

Looks like Atom is going to cost $60-65.  That is way too much if XO-2 is going to achieve its cost goals.

Also it is running at 1.66mhz, which is much higher that I understand the XO-2 would use, and hence higher power usage.

It looks to me at this point like ARM is the only option.

[eduardomontez]

Here's something on power usage for ARM vs Atom.  A Freescale representative claims that Atom plus its chipset is 7.5 w but ARM SOC is only .5 w, so battery life is over 3 times longer.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39616090,00.htm

 

[eduardomontez]

Looks like ARM is going 32 nm early next year for Cortex.  That's not much of a manufacturing lead for Intel.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39616106,00.htm

[eduardomontez]

Oh wow:

"two sources tell BusinessWeek that Microsoft is experimenting with a version of its upcoming Windows 7 operating system that will work with chips based on the designs of Britain's ARM Holdings, and made by Intel rivals such as Qualcomm (QCOM) and Texas Instruments (TXN)"

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_08/b4120058126301.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

If that is the case, then the X0-2 could feature ARM and still keep to Negroponte's goal of running Windows.  I wonder if the team at Microsoft that is porting XP is also working on Windows 7?

[eduardomontez]

I had an amazing thought today.

To start, ARM is going multi-core, which means higher performance.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2341081,00.asp

Now if it should happen that Windows 7 is going to support ARM, does that mean that ARM might give Intel some fierce competition, not just in netbooks, but also laptops, desktops, and even servers?

[eduardomontez]

Well, maybe not. The advantages of ARM over Intel chips would be much lower cost and power consumption, and also much smaller size. On the negative side, they still are not nearly as fast, as far as I know, as the top Intel chips.

Could ARM catch up by adding more cores?  Increasing chip speed? Putting in two chips where one Intel chip serves at present? I don't know enough to say.

But even if ARM can't do this, it still seems to me that it could challange Intel in lower-end laptops, desktops, and maybe servers. There may be some interesting times ahead.

[teapot]

Oh wow:

"two sources tell BusinessWeek that Microsoft is experimenting with a version of its upcoming Windows 7 operating system that will work with chips based on the designs of Britain's ARM Holdings, and made by Intel rivals such as Qualcomm (QCOM) and Texas Instruments (TXN)"

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_08/b4120058126301.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

If that is the case, then the X0-2 could feature ARM and still keep to Negroponte's goal of running Windows.  I wonder if the team at Microsoft that is porting XP is also working on Windows 7?

That's Windows Mobile (aka Windows CE) -- it ran on ARM since umm... forever, and is responsible for destruction of the first wave of mini-laptops in 90's. Sane people keep themselves away from smartphones that use it, and even Microsoft's greatest fans don't want it on a laptop.

[ChristophD]

Oh wow:

"two sources tell BusinessWeek that Microsoft is experimenting with a version of its upcoming Windows 7 operating system that will work with chips based on the designs of Britain's ARM Holdings, and made by Intel rivals such as Qualcomm (QCOM) and Texas Instruments (TXN)"

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_08/b4120058126301.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

If that is the case, then the X0-2 could feature ARM and still keep to Negroponte's goal of running Windows.  I wonder if the team at Microsoft that is porting XP is also working on Windows 7?

That's Windows Mobile (aka Windows CE) -- it ran on ARM since umm... forever, and is responsible for destruction of the first wave of mini-laptops in 90's. Sane people keep themselves away from smartphones that use it, and even Microsoft's greatest fans don't want it on a laptop.

I *don't* think that the article is talking about Windows Mobile 7, first of all the story is very much focused on "PCs" and secondly Windows Mobile 7 will of course run on non-x86 architectures, so why then would anyone mentioned that Microsoft is "experimenting" with this?

I mean this could still turn out to be little more than a rumour but I do believe that BW is in fact talking about Windows 7 on non-x86 platforms which would be quite the story I dare say!

[eduardomontez]

I agree, BW has to be talking about Windows 7, not Mobile. But let me add that people get confused sometimes because, by coincidence, Windows Mobile 7 is coming out in 2010.

It sort of makes sense Microsoft would port Windows 7.  There are only two other options. One would be to port nothing and let Linux and Android have the whole market, and that would be totally unacceptable. The second would be to port CE, but that is a crappy OS, so it wouldn't sell well. That leaves only Windows 7.

If it does get ported, the big question is the price. Josh Bancroft, who works at Intel, thinks this  is going to be a big problem for Intel netbooks because Microsoft wants to charge something like $100, but that would destroy sales. He also thinks Windows 7 is too big for smaller SSD's

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/02/03/windows-7-skus-revealed-which-one-will-land-on-netbooks/

[teapot]

It sort of makes sense Microsoft would port Windows 7.

To ARM? I don't think, they can -- their whole development model is based on having binary compatibility within a single controlled vertical environment, so any additional platform (even if it's x86, x86-64 and IA64) quickly becomes a separate product. Initially Windows NT ran on non-Intel architectures (Alpha, PowerPC and MIPS), and Microsoft dropped support for anything non-Intel after few years, even though by then non-Intel hardware was still dominant on servers.

I am sure, this is yet another attempt to pass Windows Mobile for Windows -- this is what they did to hinder other systems' adoption on PDAs in 90's.

[eduardomontez]

I still go with ChristophD's view. But who knows, maybe you're right and Microsoft is going to push Windows CE.

However, I don't think that would work very well. CE is a pretty crumby os, from all I have heard. Besides that, desktop Window's applications mostly don't run on it. That didn't matter much back in the PDA era, but it does a lot more for netbooks. All of which pushes Microsoft toward porting Windows 7, even if it disrupts its development model.

And no matter which os Microsoft ports, it is still going to have to accept far lower licence fees than it want to if it is going to get any significant market share.

[teapot]

Besides that, desktop Window's applications mostly don't run on it.

Correction -- not "mostly", they just don't run on it. Windows CE/Mobile has similar libraries/infrastructure, so it's possible to develop simultaneously for both, however Windows applications don't run on Windows CE, and Windows CE applications don't run on Windows.

That didn't matter much back in the PDA era, but it does a lot more for netbooks.

Oh, it mattered then a whole lot. All advertisements proudly proclaimed that Windows CE runs "Internet Explorer" and "Microsoft Office". People bought those (and ignored superior systems such as Symbian or even Palm), then discovered that "Word" and "Excel" for Windows CE not only have only superficial similarity with their Windows counterparts, they don't even understand their formats, and the whole system is neither Windows nor anything one would expect on PDA.

All of which pushes Microsoft toward porting Windows 7, even if it disrupts its development model.

If Microsoft could accept this kind of  disruption of its development model, Windows 7 would be released as Win32 and .NET subsystems running on top of Linux.

And no matter which os Microsoft ports, it is still going to have to accept far lower licence fees than it want to if it is going to get any significant market share.

Microsoft does not care about license fees for anything but corporate desktop and maybe infrastructure products. Its presence in all other markets serves one single purpose -- destroying something that can provide some kind of competition in corporate desktop market.

[eduardomontez]

When I said that few Windows desktop programs run on CE, I meant few Windows desktop programs have been re-writen for CE.

You say that Microsoft will launch an advertising program to fool people about this. Well maybe so, but it won't work for very long. There is huge attention on the netbook market, word gets around, and I think a lot of oem's will be behind the ARM netbooks, so Microsoft isn't going to get very far this way.

Regarding licensing fees, from all I have read it makes an enormous amoung of money from consumer sales. And its lock-in in the corporation is mainly due to its development tools and the immense amount of in-house and propriatary code that run only on Windows

You say Microsoft wouldn't accept a disruption of its development model. I say this situation may well force it to.

I think we have a basic disagreement about how much power and freedom Microsoft has. Yes, it has run over the rest of the market in many areas. But sometimes something comes along that Microsoft can't conquer, and Microsoft has to adapt to it, contrary to what it wants. I think ARM netbooks, for several reasons, are just that sort of situation.