Intel's Solar-Powered CPU

[siopao1984]

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gi share ni poldopunk sa FB... ako pod i-share dri sa istorya

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...-powered-cpu/1

Intel Names The Solar-Powered CPU

Intel has named its solar-powered CPU, which it first showed at IDF 2011 a few days ago. Codenamed Claremont, the CPU is based around an old Socket 7 Pentium design but has been modified to operate at a peak power consumption of less than 10mW. Ultra-low voltage CPUs currently consume 15W or more, which is roughly 150 times as much power.

The low power draw is a consequence of a new technique used to apply voltage to a silicon chip called Near Threshold Voltage. The idea is based on the principle that processors are currently given plenty of voltage to ensure that the transistors within switch with no trouble, but by reducing the applied voltage to be just above the required level for transistor switching – the threshold voltage – you can decrease the vcore and therefore power draw (and waste heat).


A solar-powered CPU - we doubt Claremont CPUs will look as weird in practice

It's basically the same principle as underclocking and undervolting a hand-me-down CPU from a retired desktop PC in order to build a basic, quiet PC. However, we’re not sure whether the solar-powered CPU on show had any other technology inside to help achieve the low power draw.

In fact, we’re not even sure what the solar-powered CPU project illustrates. When we first saw the CPU on day one of IDF, we thought it was a demonstration of how Intel is pushing down the power draw of x86 CPUs.

However, a part of the reveal of the solar-powered CPU’s name was the fact that Intel could have reduced the power draw by orders of magnitude still by using a current architecture. We were even told that Intel didn’t have any motherboards lying around to use, so it had to search eBay and scrounge from dumpsters to find the Asus P/I-P55TZP4 pictured. Then Intel had to modify these boards to allow the desired ultra-low voltages, which we believe to be in the region of 0.1V*.


This is pretty much all we currently have on Claremont at the moment

Intel then revealed that it saw a 10x performance boost from running the CPU at its ‘nominal voltage.’ What Claremont seems to be offering is a tiny power draw when asked to do moderately taxing tasks, but the ability to boost up to a normal power draw and level of performance on demand. We could therefore see the solar-powered CPU demonstration as showing a new type of SpeedStep; one where CPUs don’t necessarily boost to a maximum speed and power draw.


* Socket 7 Pentium CPUs have TDPs of 15.6-20.6W and vids of 2.85-3.6V, giving amperages of 4.7-7.1A. Assuming that Claremont has a TDP of 0.8W, this gives us a vcore of 0.11-0.17V (amps/volts=watts).
Sources: Intel Ark, Wikipedia

[siopao1984]

What's Claremont For?

The interpretation that Claremont was an example of a new method of performance and power draw throttling wasn’t supported by Intel, however. No mention was made of SpeedStep, and the codename given to the CPU suggests that Intel sees Claremont as a product in its own right. But if that’s the case, why bother modding an old CPU that you haven’t even got a motherboard for? Why not use a Sandy Bridge CPU and a custom LGA1155 motherboard? The Intel engineer even said that, had Intel used a current generation processor, the power draw would have been 6-8 times lower.

However, earlier in the presentation, Justin Rattner, CTO and director of Intel Labs (among other titles), was talking about the challenge of delivering multi-core (32+) CPUs at a reasonable power budget. The Socket 7 Pentium is a basic CPU core, which simplifies the message of the demo: one CPU core consuming less than 10mW of power.


The solar panel that powered the Socket 7 Pentium Claremont CPU



There are no single-core Sandy Bridge processors that don’t have integrated graphics units, so using an LGA1155 processor might have confused the desired message. The basic design of the Pentium might also have helped the Intel engineers break into the processor package – we saw some weird adaptors and inputs to get the power from the solar cell into the processor package (it was only the CPU that was powered by the solar cell, not the whole system).

We’re still a little confused about the exact nature of Claremont. The codename seems to suggest that it’s a single-core CPU that can perform some tasks at a power draw of less than 10mW, while delivering decent amounts of performance when desired (unlike an Atom CPU, which would always be slow). If Claremont is destined to become a product, Intel is also likely to use a new processor package (probably an FBA one for an embedded platform) rather than resurrecting Socket 7.


The basic packaging of the Socket 7 CPU might have been one reason for choosing it for the demo -
those additional inputs might have been tricky to apply to a modern CPU package

However, Claremont is also described as a concept CPU, and so could be the basis of a 64-core CPU with a power draw of around 50W. This CPU would comprise relatively slow cores for that TDP, but would have the ability to boost some or all cores to ‘nominal’ frequencies and votages should the workload demand.

Then again, Claremont could just be a concept to prove that Intel's Near Threshold Voltage technology works, and that Intel has realised that it doesn’t need to supply quite as much voltage to its CPU as it previously thought. Or that we could see a SpeedStep-like technology on future CPUs where the frequency and power draw remain low even when it’s asked to perform some tasks.

We’ll attempt to follow up with more information, but we invite you to leave your thoughts on what you think about Claremont, and what you’d like to see as a result of the solar-powered CPU project.

[jack_cool]

Nice pla kha magasto sa paghimo ani

[zarcon.phut1986]

pila sad kaha ni?ug asa ni ma palit or ma order?

[kenox]

i thnk d pa ani available in stores...na test pa ngali ang intel ani =)

[infin8cebu]

when dyud kaha ni mogawas sa market para makatipid ta sa koryente.... nindot kaau ni...