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New embedded X86 CPU runs on a single AA battery

Oct 10, 2000 — by LinuxDevices Staff — from the LinuxDevices Archive — 3 views

San Jose, CA — (press release excerpt) — Rise Technology Company (Rise) today demonstrated the ultra low power feature of Rise's iDragon mP6 processor core. As the industry's lowest power consuming and best multimedia performing X86 processor core, Rise iDragon mP6 processor can playback VCD movie titles with only a single off-the-shelf AA battery. This demonstration showed the potential of the Rise iDragon mP6 processor core for future multimedia-enriched handheld appliances. The Rise x86 CPU supports multiple operating system platforms including embedded Linux, Windows CE/2K/NT, QNX, BeOS, and others.

Powered by a single AA battery, the iDragon mP6 processor with its superior three-scalar multimedia architecture played back entire VCD movies or MP3 music for many hours. In the demonstration, the voltage of the battery started from 1.5V and was down to 1.1V at the end. This shows that mP6 can dynamically operate effectively in a wide range of voltages.

“Traditionally the battery-powered handheld appliances, like PDAs and mobile phones, are based on RISC microprocessors, which normally consume only a few hundred mini-watts while the traditional X86 microprocessors consume more than ten times of that figure.” said Mr. David T. Lin, CEO of Rise Technology Company. “However, Rise iDragon processor core has deployed the smart power saving features embedded inside its super-scalar architecture. These power saving features will enable the Rise iDragon mP6 processor core to reach a power consumption level, not only lower than traditional X86 microprocessors but also comparable to RISC microprocessors. With the combination of low power consumption, superior multimedia performance, and vastly available x86-based multimedia software, Rise iDragon mP6 processor core is the best choice for the future multimedia-enriched handheld appliances.”

In the coming third-generation (3G) mobile communication era, with the high bandwidth network infrastructure established, multimedia applications, like videophone, multimedia streaming, video-on-demand and others, will vastly permeate all handheld information appliances. In order to run such multimedia applications and to process the complex 3G mobile communication protocol stack, the baseband module of 3G smart phones would require a much more powerful processing architecture while maintaining low power consumption.

Rise iDragon mP6 processor core embodies the super-scalar, super-pipeline, and single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) multimedia architecture, which can meet the demanding performance requirement for 3G mobile phones at a much lower clock rate than single-scalar RISC microprocessors. This performance efficiency at lower clock rate further reduces the power consumption for iDragon mP6 processor core. Because of its three-scalar architecture, iDragon mP6 processor core can efficiently process the Viterbi and Turbo algorithms for mobile phones comparable to the Digital Signal Processor (DSP).

Rise is developing the new-generation iDragon mP6 processor cores with even more advanced power management features, which will consume only a fraction of the power consumption of the current-generation. Based on these new processor cores, a series of highly integrated System-on-Chip (SOC) will be developed and targeted for the multimedia-enriched handheld appliances like PDA, 3G smart phones and others.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.



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