Via launches Isaiah: 64-bit low-power, high-performance processors
--Snip--Optimized for a World of "Small is Beautiful" Devices
With its unique blend of high performance and low power consumption, the VIA Isaiah Architecture has been specifically optimized to meet the rapidly growing demand for smaller, more functional, and more stylish mobile and desktop computing and personal electronics devices that will allow people to fully enjoy the rich media content and interactivity of the broadband Internet lifestyle.
These devices range from easily portable slim and light notebooks and pocket-sized Ultra Mobile PCs and Ultra Mobile Devices with rich multimedia and wireless broadband capabilities to Small Form Factor Green PCs and Digital Entertainment Centers that combine space saving designs with minimal energy consumption.
VIA Isaiah Architecture Highlights
The VIA Isaiah Architecture has been specifically designed to deliver all the performance and features necessary for running the most demanding computing, entertainment, and connectivity applications on today's and tomorrow's Internet, including high-definition video, 3D games, imaging, and virtual worlds, within a very low power and thermal envelope that makes it ideal for small form factor mobile devices such as Mini-Notebooks and Ultra Mobile Devices. Its key highlights include the following:
64-bit Superscalar Speculative Out-Of-Order MicroArchitecture
The VIA Isaiah Architecture comprises a host of advanced architectural features, including a superscalar and out of order architecture, macro-fusion and micro-fusion functionality, and sophisticated branch prediction, that significantly improve processor efficiency and performance. In addition, it also features a full and unrestricted 64-bit instruction set with plenty of headroom to support 64-bit operating systems and applications as they become available, and a new virtual machine architecture for running systems more securely and efficiently in virtual environments.
High-Performance Computation and Media Processing
As well as support for clock speeds of up to 2GHz in initial products and a high-speed, low power Front Side Bus scalable from 800MHz up to 1333MHz, the VIA Isaiah Architecture also has a highly-efficient cache subsystem with two 64KB L1 caches and 1MB exclusive L2 cache with 16-way associativity for more effective memory optimization.
For further enhanced multimedia performance, the VIA Isaiah Architecture also integrates the world's fastest x86 processor Floating Point Unit (FPU) with the ability to execute four floating point adds and four multiplies per clock and also featuring a new algorithm that minimizes latency. Support for new SSE instructions and a 128-bit wide integer data path further boost multimedia performance.
Advanced Power and Thermal Management
To minimize energy consumption and reduce heat, the VIA Isaiah Architecture utilizes new low power circuit techniques and in addition to aggressive management of active power includes support for the new "C6" power state, in which power is turned off to the caches.
Extensive Adaptive PowerSaver™ Technology features further reduce power consumption and improve thermal management, including the unique TwinTurbo™ dual-PLL implementation, which acts like automatic transmission in permitting smooth transitions between activity states within one clock cycle, ensuring always-on service and minimize latency, as well as new mechanisms for managing the die temperature.
Scalable Upgrade to VIA C7™ Processor
The VIA Isaiah Architecture is pin-to-pin compatible with the current VIA C7 processor family, enabling OEMs and motherboard makers to transition to the new architecture smoothly, and to fulfill a wider range of market segments with a single board or system design.
VIA PadLock™ Hardware Security Features
To enhance the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of electronic data, the VIA Isaiah Architecture incorporates industry-leading on-die hardware cryptographic acceleration features within the VIA PadLock Security Engine, including the world's best random number generator (RNG), an AES Encryption Engine, SHA-1 and SHA-256 hashing for secure message digests for data integrity, and a new specialized "secure execution mode" that includes features such as a secure on-chip memory area and encrypted instruction fetching.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nathan @ Jan 24th 2008 2:05AM
Looks like the Everex desktop might be worth getting in a few months, assuming they undo the aesthetic abortion that is it's case.
JohnH @ Jan 24th 2008 8:04PM
My Everex PC I bought myself for Christmas does what I bought it for - it plays video and sits as a small file server. But I agree it is ugly as sin. However - it is the quietest PC I have ever owned, the cpu fan is bios controlled and never comes on. Have to look at the leds to see if it is on.
John
jaredwork @ Jan 24th 2008 2:23AM
I respect Via for all the cheap hardware they spin-out in all their varying "awesome"ness, but there's no way in hell I'm buying a processor from Via. Maybe if I were comparing Intel ARM processors or the like... maybe, but as a PC computer, the machine would have to be sub-$200. And even then... you know it's probably made of monosodium glutamate, lead, donkey anus, and hair.
Via ftw! Except for anyting that actually runs a computer. Then it's Via for the wtf?
Sam @ Jan 24th 2008 3:39AM
Greenpeace+Donkey anus= love.
Cody Peterson @ Jan 24th 2008 2:24AM
Would be interesting to see this benchmarked against intel and amd's latest and greatest...
Although Via's past has been.... shaky... I always welcome potential competition into the ring as it can only help spur more development by all...
cmonkey @ Jan 24th 2008 2:34AM
Eh, they are barely in the same market. Via isn't going to be gaining ground in the desktop market any time soon, but this could lead to some pretty interesting competition for Intel's Silverthorne for the next generation of UMPCs/ultraportables/set top boxes.
tyler @ Jan 24th 2008 2:31AM
Y'know, everyone who's saying "what's the point" ... these processors are awesome for developers and for small devices.
There's a video around somewhere about a VIA C3 cpu showing how it puts out so little heat that it doesn't even need a heatsink.
If there is a comparison between the Intel and AMD offerings along with this--no doubt it'd be run over flat by the power of the Intel and AMD cpus, but when it comes to making a very tiny package (see the whole carpc forums to see what the tiny cpu has done for the pc-in-your-car scene)
Anyway, I can't wait to see this in some consumer products or even a dev board!
Syliss @ Jan 24th 2008 2:53AM
I wouldnt mind something like this in the new everex cloudbook.
Brent @ Jan 24th 2008 3:01AM
When procs reach the ceiling VIA will be king. Sure, they're underpowered, but then it's a blue moon that I see even my laptop, a (regular) core duo 1.6, hit 75% usage. I do hear the fan rev up plenty though, and I wouldn't mind a proc that could keep that from happening.
Jacob N @ Jan 24th 2008 4:53AM
Well, VIA certainly seems to have found their niche, whether or not what they offer is powerful enough for the average consumer. It would be really cool to see these chips going into media-centric thin clients and things like that, though, I think we can all agree. Having a media streamer capable of full 1080P playback without a fan? No way anyone's telling me that's not awesome.
EMoShunz @ Jan 24th 2008 8:11AM
way better processor, but in the same socket?
the amd-intel duopoly needs to take a lesson from this!
Eric @ Jan 24th 2008 9:32AM
I have used the Via C3 and honestly it's pathetic.
I could care less how it does in comparison to the Intel or AMD equivalents, the box can't even keep up with ssh when copying files. I've had to default to arcfour encryption just to get a reasonable speed ( while pegging the CPU at 100% ).
Oh, and if the CPU is not bad enough it's hemmed in by a chipset that is starved for bandwidth and designed by an idiot. The network card is dumb because it's zero copy is not even optimized for IP traffic ( needs 32 byte alignment for zero copy when the IP packets have a 17 byte header ).
Via's best efforts have been to integrate ASIC's into the core to make things like ssh and media less pathetic ( assuming you can find drivers ).
Ethyriel @ Jan 24th 2008 7:39PM
Yeah, the C3 was awful. Good thing they're four generations beyond that, and Isaiah will be eight.
Nobody expects this to compete with Intel and AMD's latest and greatest, but it sure beats the hell out of Geode. Silverthorne will be interesting, since it's going back to in order while this is VIA's first out of order chip. Plus it does all sorts of cryptographic computation in hardware, as well as it's random number generator.
Intel has some catching up to do in this market, which isn't to say they won't do it in one generation.
Ethyriel @ Jan 24th 2008 7:40PM
Yeah, the C3 was awful. Good thing they're four generations beyond that, and Isaiah will be eight.
Nobody expects this to compete with Intel and AMD's latest and greatest, but it sure beats the hell out of Geode. Silverthorne will be interesting, since it's going back to in order while this is VIA's first out of order chip. Plus it does all sorts of cryptographic computation in hardware, as well as it's random number generator.
Intel has some catching up to do in this market, which isn't to say they won't do it in one generation.
Ryan @ Jan 24th 2008 10:13AM
A good analysis of the architecture can be seen here: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=511
Ethyriel @ Jan 24th 2008 7:40PM
Ars has one, too.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/via-cpu-isaiah.ars
RijilV @ Jan 24th 2008 11:30AM
I think its totally fair to compare this chip against those made by Intel and AMD...but the comparison needs to be far... The VIA can run without a far, and in many cases without a heatsink at all... when doing the performance tests the Intel and AMD chips shouldn't be allowed those luxuries either :P
But seriously, these chips are very cool for what they do, and the new ones look like they're going to be very powerful for the power/heat
OneLove @ Jan 24th 2008 11:32AM
UMPC madness!!!
OddManOut @ Jan 24th 2008 12:36PM
I gotta say I'm rather impressed with VIA. They got knocked to the bottom of the barrel of the CPU world by Intel and AMD, but instead of letting themselves die out, or forcing the other two to kill them off buy continuing a futile claw for the top, they said, hey let's thrive right here. And they're doing a pretty good job.
As far as what to do with low power/low power consumption processors, what do we do with our full power PCs now that we didn't do 3 - 4 years ago ? I can't really think of anything particularly important. Websurfing ? Word processing ? E-Mail ? IM ? VOIP ? Audio playback ? Video playback ? Video streaming ? P2P transfers ? Casual gaming ? Taxes ? Photo editing / printing ?
I used to do all those things on my P-III 450mhz system...and still do them (in various ways and at various times) on a Celeron 550mhz tablet and a Crusoe 800mhz based ultra portable laptop. They work fine. Of course, I'm not watching Blu-rays or playing Crysis on them, but in general they do fine...
My Barton core Athlon system (circa 2003) that I just retired was clock around 2.0 ghz but ran Vista Business (ie with Aero and such enabled) fine (not zippy, but totally usable). And with lighter OSs like WinXP or Win2K it flew. I could surf the web while copying movie DVDs (DVD9 -> DVD 5) or play Silent Hill 2/3, Halflife 2, or Doom 3 on it and it ran great.
If this new CPU has about that much power, which it sounds like it will, it should do pretty much anything you'd want to do on any kind of system you'd put a cpu like that into. I mean you're not gonna try to play Assasin's Creed on an OQO or the like, are you ?
Jeffrey @ Jan 25th 2008 7:33PM
FYI, companies like AMD are working on new things like integrating the CPU and GPU on the same chip so it will be interesting to see if ideas like this force VIA out of the CPU business.