Analysis: VIA strikes back with Isaiah: OoOE, Fast SSE3, 3.5 to 25W

Friday 25th January 2008, 06:00:00 PM, written by Arun

It might have felt as if VIA’s CPU designers were sleeping for the last 3 years and asked the package and PCB engineers to keep the company going for the next thousand years. But today, they prove nothing could be further away from the truth.

VIA’s Isaiah (aka CN) was designed by the same Centaur Technology team that developed all their previous processors, but it is by far the most disruptive change in architecture in the company’s history. The complexity of the architecture takes a huge jump, from the single-issue 486-like C7 to something that in many ways resembles Penryn more than any other chip out there. It sports out-of-order execution, x86-64, and a sophisticated microarchitecture.

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Tagging

via ± cpu, isaiah, c7


Latest Thread Comments (12 total)
Posted by tuanies on Friday, 25-Jan-08 18:38:21 UTC
So 1.5 years from now, as per typical VIA announcement-to-production fashion? :D

Posted by 3dilettante on Friday, 25-Jan-08 19:31:50 UTC
Phenom 9500 quad core at 2.3 GHz: 95W TDP.
Isaiah single core at 2.0 GHz: 25W TDP.

Phenom/4 = 23.75
If we peel off the IMC at, say 10 W, it's 21.25. We could probably shave off the .25 by dropping the L3.
It could probably drop 300 MHz and lose 1 W.

If AMD wanted to do it, a single-core Phenom wouldn't look too bad in comparison.
At least in SSE, Phenom does have a 3 specialized pipeline setup, while Isaiah has two specialized pipes.

Posted by Arun on Friday, 25-Jan-08 19:40:35 UTC
I honestly don't think comparing the 2GHz SKU to Phenom is very fair, because at 2GHz it has to be overvolted a fair bit while 2.3GHz runs at a much more 'designed for sweet spot' wattage. I think the fairer comparison is between the 3.5W ULV part and the Core 2 Solo @ 1067MHz. It would definitely be *very* interesting to compare the two.

I agree that Isaiah's advantage in terms of perf/watt may not be as much as VIA would like to imply that it is, however.

Posted by 3dilettante on Friday, 25-Jan-08 20:12:38 UTC
Phenom could probably shave off a number of watts if it were undervolted and underclocked to the same neighborhood.

Without its circuits and process tailored to that lower clock range, though, it might prove leakier.
I wonder what Griffin could do if pared down to one core.

Although with Griffin, Via is in the odd position of being superior in FP, since it has improved SSE support.

Posted by Blazkowicz on Saturday, 26-Jan-08 10:05:31 UTC
if you want a single core AMD why not look at the Sempron LE-1100 (65nm, 1.9GHz, 256K L2, dirt cheap). I've been wondering how does a mini-ITX with C7 compares to a µATX mobo with VIA IGP (or MCP78, or AMD) and Sempron. Looking for a review giving consumption, perf per dollar, perf per watt of the whole system, also ideally that review would look at hitachi P7K500 250GB vs other hard drives vs laptop hard drives to get the full picture.imo the future of computing is low end and low power :)The article gives a clue on underclocked sempron power usage :
Quote
# Isaiah Embedded: Unknown TDP (5-25W?) and will compete against AMD’s 65nm Sempron @ 8W running at 1GHz and Intel’s diverse embedded solutions.

Posted by INKster on Sunday, 27-Jan-08 05:17:56 UTC
A great tour through Centaur Technologies HQ in Texas, over at [H]ardOCP:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ1MywxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Posted by swaaye on Tuesday, 29-Jan-08 01:29:46 UTC
Quoting Blazkowicz
I've been wondering how does a mini-ITX with C7 compares to a µATX mobo with VIA IGP (or MCP78, or AMD) and Sempron.
Everest Ultimate has some C7 scores in its benchmarks. It looks similar to a P3 Tualatin or P4 Willamette (RDRAM) for integer tasks per clock fairly often, unless you use its AES unit and then it's faster than a quad core lol. But its AES unit is obviously for special apps. FPU is not hot.

Posted by Blazkowicz on Wednesday, 30-Jan-08 11:47:19 UTC
thanks. though, it's the power usage I was wondering about (with sempron at stock speed, at 1GHz, or overclocked)

Posted by nutball on Wednesday, 30-Jan-08 13:22:34 UTC
Quoting Blazkowicz
thanks. though, it's the power usage I was wondering about (with sempron at stock speed, at 1GHz, or overclocked)
My HTPC isSempron 3200+ 90nm, undervolted to 0.875V/1.050V at stock clocksNVIDIA 7050/630a-based motherboard3 DIMMs2.5" laptop drivePicoPSUIdles at 21W (CnQ), runs at ~36W under load (1.8GHz). This is without the TV cards, adding those bumps the numbers by ~10W.Using a 65nm Sempron might shave off a watt or two, but probably not much more than that I'm guessing. Breaking the 20W barrier with uATX is quite a challenge I think.

Posted by Fox5 on Monday, 04-Feb-08 04:51:25 UTC
This is a pretty interesting announcment, puts VIA out of the "it's fast enough to just barely work range" and into the "it's good enough range."
Can they compare in price though? Perhaps for ultra small systems, I suppose, but I doubt they have the production capability to compete with the Celeron and Sempron lines for standard laptops and desktops.


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