XO-2 software plans

[Jim Gettys]

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 19:28 -0400, Andres Salomon wrote:

> If they put me in charge, I'd choose whichever CPU had the best
> performance, lowest power consumption, and lowest price - regardless
> of architecture.

Change the ordering: power consumption and price (closely related to
integration these days), then performance.  FP required...  That's what
drove us to the Geode.  FP is essential for Linux software to "just
work": I lived on the StrongARM with the iPAQ, and (almost) all free
software signal processing code (e.g. all multimedia code) is written
presuming a floating point unit.  At the time, there were many chips
whose spec sheet claimed you could get FP, but when you went to the
vendor, the FP unit didn't exist.  It's now 3 years later, so we have a
number of highly integrated chips with FP units that are pretty low
power to choose from.

Note that power consumption drives price through the entire chain; what
kind/size of power generation you need, etc.
                          - Jim



-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child