not to mention... [LWN.net]

not to mention...

Posted Feb 11, 2008 7:32 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
In reply to: Umm, no. by leoc
Parent article: Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)

Not to mention that several chips sold as high-end FPGAs actually contain one or two PPC cores
in addition to acres of general-purpose programmable logic.  Many of these cores are used eg.
as DSP processors; many are permanently idle.

AFAIK Apple dropped PPC for one reason only; that IBM had repeatedly failed to deliver on its
promises for high-performance, low-power (or flexible-power) CPUs for laptops, whilst Intel's
PentiumM and CoreDuo range were too tempting for words.

I have no idea if more recent performance PPC chips are potentially as battery-friendly as
Intel (or AMD) processors, but this doesn't seem to be quite as urgent a consideration in most
of the devices where they're being deployed (low price, no requirement for long battery life)
as it is in high-end laptops.

On the subject of non-x86 laptop processors, did I once see a DEC laptop announced with an
Alpha processor, circa 1999?  Did such a beast ever exist, or is it a figment of my fevered
imagination?

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Alpha Laptop

Posted Feb 17, 2008 17:45 UTC (Sun) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link]

On the subject of non-x86 laptop processors, did I once see a DEC laptop announced with an Alpha processor, circa 1999? Did such a beast ever exist, or is it a figment of my fevered imagination?

I once saw a laptop based on an Alpha CPU, but not from DEC. On Wikipedia I find mention of the ALPHAbook 1 by Tadpole (based on the 21066). I don't know if the laptop I remember is the ALPHAbook 1. A problem with the Alpha in laptops was that there never was a low-power Alpha CPU.

Tadpole also produced a number of SparcBooks.

And there used to be some ARM-based laptops around.