VIA Nano CPU Benchmarked, Beats Intel Atom

Vigile writes "Back in May, when the Isaiah architecture was first disclosed, VIA declared a performance victory over Intel's upcoming Silverthorne technology. Since then, Isaiah has become the VIA Nano processor, and Silverthorne changed to the Intel Atom — and now we can finally see tests comparing the two technologies. The Nano's out-of-order super-scalar design is definitely an architectural leap over the Atom's in-order single-issue design, but with Intel including HyperThreading technology in their CPU the competition is closer than expected. The Nano does win the performance tests by a considerable margin, but what might be more impressive is seeing the Atom use only 4 watts of power under full load!" As reader Mierdaan points out, that's 4 watts more than at idle, for about 60 watts total.

conspiracy

[ILuvRamen]

And how does it stand up agains a 2.6Ghz Intel Quad Core? Seriously does anyone else see this conspiracy? They couldn't make any faster CPUs so they decided the best business decision was to start over at like 400 MHz and then pretend be making amazing speed increases all over again when really all they're improving is power efficiency a little. Maybe Microsoft should do the same thing and toss 7 out the window and make a Windows 3.1 clone and then go to a 95 clone and soon they'll be back at an incredible re-release of XP!

With only 4 more watts...

[kungfugleek]

I could have had a first post, too. :(

Re:conspiracy

[x2A]

yeah, a 2.6Ghz Intel Quad Core would do great driving my smart phone... those 5 minute battery times and second degree burns to the hand just make talking to people or connecting to my ssh server from my phone a pure delight!

Erm... different job, different tools???

Re:conspiracy

[Wiseblood1]

Yes but at least you wouldnt get you hopes up like people did with vista

That Which We Call a Rose...?

[camperdave]

Back in May, when the Isaiah architecture was first disclosed, VIA declared a performance victory over Intel's upcoming Silverthorne technology. Since then, Isaiah has become the VIA Nano processor, and Silverthorne changed to the Intel Atom...

OK, let me see if I've got this straight. The VIA Isaiah beat out the Intel Silverthorne. Then the VIA Isaiah was renamed the Via Nano, and the Intel Silverthorne was renamed the Intel Atom. Now the VIA is still beating the Intel? So what you're telling me is that a name change has no effect on chip performance? Well, color me shocked!

Re:That Which We Call a Rose...?

[Cajun Hell]

Well, color me shocked!

It's easy to say that in hindsight. But we know that having an "X" in one's name makes a thing faster (e.g. Xatom, Nanox) so the experiment had to be tried with changes less radical than doing that.

Isaiah sounds all biblical and stuff, and computer in biblical times were very, very slow (even slower than World War 2 computers), so it was thought that upgrading to a techie-sounding word might improve things, and "nano" is a very techie word (for a word without an "X" at least).

On the other hand, Silverthorne sounds like an internal code name, not nearly dumbed down enough for the mass market. Renaming it to "atom" not only sounds lamer, but implies it's from the "atomic age" (i.e. the 1950s).

By changing each name in an opposite direction, it was hypothesized that it might cause a performance delta on the order of adding an "X". So the experiment was run. Sure, now we know. But did you?

Re:Misleading title?

[mihalis]

I hate to actually read the article and then post, but

Get Out

Re:Wait for the next generation

[sardaukar_siet]

Wait for the next generation? You're telling that to this crowd? :D