VIA Isaiah becomes Nano in quest to topple Atom and Puma

Today is a day that PC Perspective is calling "one of the most pivotal days in the history of VIA Technologies." That isn't just hyperbole either, son. Via's Isaiah processor is now official and re-dubbed Nano. The Atom-spanking (at least preliminarily), 65-nm processors come in U (ultra-portable) and L (desktop and laptop) classes with a maximum power rating pegged between 5W to 25W. The 1GHz U2300, 1.3+GHz U2400, and 1.2GHz U2500 pull just 5W, 8W, and 6.8W, respectively with an itty bitty 100mW idle draw. Products are expected to hit shelves (and your palm) sometime in Q3. We'll bring you the detailed Nano vs. Atom vs. Puma benchmarks just as soon as we get 'em.

[Thanks, Ryan]

[Fenway Beer Man @ May 29th 2008 4:42AM]

I for one welcome...

...FIERCE COMPETITION IN THE MOBILE CPU MARKETPLACE.

Thank god I didn't make an "overlord" joke.

[ThePengwin @ May 29th 2008 4:52AM]

But will it play......

........The latest games at a reasonable framerate?

[Chris2 @ May 29th 2008 6:08AM]

VIA ISIAH!!! He's run the knicks into the ground
Wait...

[Mike Cerm @ May 29th 2008 6:53AM]

Considering the dismal performance Atom has shown so far in benchmarks (more than 50% slower than a Core2 at the same clock speed), I'd say that Via's actually got a shot at taking the enthusiast UMPC market.

[B @ May 29th 2008 9:15AM]

You aren't going to get sub 10W TDP C2D chips for cheap. VIA isn't also known for reliability and Nano is already 5W at 1GHz where mobile Atom is just 2W at 1.6GHz. Costs aren't at the VIA's side too (65nm where Atom is manufactured at 45nm and has a smaller die). Finally Celeron-M 900MHz (used in current EeePCs) was 5.5W long time ago at 90nm. Doesn't look too rosy for VIA.

[Zorque @ May 29th 2008 10:18AM]

It might not actually blend, but at least you can run Blender on it.

[rektide @ May 29th 2008 2:01PM]

I see a lot of people debating power consumption (watts). This is far less important than performance/watt. Higher performance means you can do the work faster and get back to being idle quicker.

This was a problem that somewhat plagues the Transmeta Crusoe chips. They are low powered, but spend so long doing work that on another cpu would have finished a long time ago. The net was that if you had even a mild workload, it would be less efficient.

[gad get @ May 29th 2008 4:50AM]

I for one welcome our new low-watt processor overlords!

[w00t @ May 29th 2008 6:27AM]

Oh you had to spoil it didn't you!

[gad get @ May 29th 2008 7:25AM]

I apologize if I have offended anyone.

[Shunnabunich @ May 29th 2008 5:15AM]

That's great, but they could've shown their enthusiasm by at least photoshopping the dust off the product shot. :P

[André @ May 29th 2008 7:20AM]

What dust? You mean the signals running on the package?

[thehumanyawn @ May 29th 2008 5:17AM]

This will probably be the year that people will start taking them seriously. AMD and Intel? The big two just became the big three.

[kevinm @ May 29th 2008 5:41AM]

Ya! Now is a great time to pump out low energy processors. I just don't want to see Intel as the only relevant company to go to for processors.

[lance @ May 29th 2008 6:31AM]

maybe the big 4 with Nvidia jumping around doing cool stuff.

[gad get @ May 29th 2008 7:28AM]

"...jumping around doing cool stuff."

Parkour?

[Schfelzerberg @ May 29th 2008 6:49AM]

Wow. Now it's a threesome with Intel, AMD and VIA. That's hot.

[雙魚 @ May 29th 2008 6:57AM]

The interesting part is: VIA for VIA, Intel, AMD...lol

[Fr0 @ May 29th 2008 7:22AM]

Soooo... when is HP gonna announce a Mini-Note 2133 with one of these inside? heh...

[mr2dxtream @ May 29th 2008 7:26AM]

did they say for your palm or for your palm?

[gad get @ May 29th 2008 7:30AM]

Neither.

"...(and your palm)..."

[André @ May 29th 2008 7:30AM]

People don't really have a clue I guess.

Isaiah (Nano) has a Thermal Design Power of 20 - 25 Watt.

Silverthorne (Atom) has a Thermal Design Power ranging from 0.6 - 8 Watt.

Griffin (from AMDs Puma platform) has a Thermal Design Power of 35 Watt for the Dual-core version.

[gad get @ May 29th 2008 7:32AM]

I was wondering if someone would say something.

[Mike Cerm @ May 29th 2008 8:39AM]

"The 1GHz U2300, 1.3+GHz U2400, and 1.2GHz U2500 pull just 5W, 8W, and 6.8W, respectively with an itty bitty 100mW idle draw."

The power draw from the 1-1.3 GHz models is in line with Atom, and the performance-per-clock couldn't possibly be worse than Atom. The 1.2 GHz Atom is actually SLOWER than the 900 MHz Celeron currently in the EeePC. These VIA processors will outperform Atom, clock-for-clock.

25W is only for the 1.8 GHz model. You should probably read through the article.

[Thanol @ May 29th 2008 8:47AM]

Darling, the ultraportable versions consume 5-8 Watts. I know reading is hard, but you just have stay in there tiger and get through it.

[Mike Cerm @ May 29th 2008 8:51AM]

Oh, and just so we're clear, while it may seem like VIA's power draw is higher than Atom's (because the TDP numbers are higher), it's actually not what you think. VIA (and AMD) quote TDP numbers as the MAXIMUM output of the processor. Intel's TDP numbers are supposedly the output under "normal usage". So, a 2W Atom will actually put out significantly more than 2W under full load.

[André @ May 29th 2008 10:04AM]

You also have to factor in the actual size of the processor, in which case the Atom is clearly the smallest.

Thanks for the sweet talking ;)

[AMA @ May 29th 2008 7:43AM]

They just wanted a four letter name....

[RaynorWolfcastle @ May 29th 2008 7:47AM]

You know, this thing isn't really competing with the single-core Atom head-to-head. According to Intel's docs, the 1.86 GHz Atom Z540 has a TDP of 2.4W (+200mW for Hyperthreading), that's roughly half the consumption of even the U2300.

If dual core Atom processors have an 8W TDP as projected, Isaiah would really be competing with the dual-core Atom part. Also, at 25W consider that Isaiah has a higher TDP than the MacBook Air's Core 2 Duo processor (20W TDP) and Intel's LV C2D (17W TDP) and ULV C2D (10W TDP).

All I'm saying is that the single-core Isaiah had better be packing some serious performance if it wants to take Intel head-to-head in the 8W+ TDP game.

[Mike Cerm @ May 29th 2008 9:01AM]

VIA (and AMD) considers TDP to be the maximum output of the processor. Intel's TDP numbers are determined by "normal usage", so they skew lower.

[B @ May 29th 2008 1:07PM]

Unfortunately real word experience proves otherwise. It's AMD's and VIA's which runs hotter given performance.

[rektide @ May 29th 2008 1:55PM]

So B, where is your real world review of this just announced processor?

[rektide @ May 29th 2008 2:05PM]

5w Via TDP v. 2.4w Intel TDP is not a huge difference. If the Via chip ends up being twice as fast (not totally unreasonable), they would have equal performance/watt, which is the important metric.

Intels main advantage going into this is HT. This prevents the CPU from wasting power & time when its flushing its pipeline. But, in single threaded work, I fully expect Nano to outperform Atom by a large margin.

[Jimmy Chonga @ May 29th 2008 9:17AM]

A little background info about the Isaiah designed is that it was designed by Centaur Technology, a company VIA bought from Integrated Device Technology. Centaur first designed a low power computer processor to compete against Intel called the WinChip. It never caught on but it laid the foundation for the Isaiah(Nano). It will be interesting to see if the Nano can finally help Centaur break Intel's hold.

[Californian @ May 29th 2008 4:18PM]

Nice, finally some competition for Intel other than horrible amd. I hope this really, really helps VIA. Good company.