Maximum PC ARM RSS Feed

Microsoft VP: We Have No Current Plans for Windows 7 on ARM

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:53:09 -0600

Microsoft has time and again dismissed the possibility of Windows 7 finding its way onto ARM-based smartbook PCs. It remains reluctant to budge from its stand. Mike Nash, corporate vice president for Windows Platform Strategy at Microsoft, reiterated the company's stance on offering support for ARM-based processors in an interview with Digitimes. According to Nash, Microsoft will continue to honor its long-standing commitment to Intel and will not add support for ARM processors.

He went on to add that an increasing number of netbook users are opting for Windows 7 ahead of cheaper alternatives. After having slammed the door on a Windows 7 ARM port, he left a small window open by suggesting that smartbook vendors can use the ARM-compatible Windows CE instead. Microsoft's current reluctance to offer a Windows 7 ARM port probably stems from potential technical bottlenecks as much as its commitment to Intel.

Image Credit: Xtreview

Better, Smarter, Cheaper Smart Phones with ARM

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:16:03 -0500

Chip designer ARM has announced a new version of its popular Cortex microprocessor. The new chip, called the Cortex-A5, will have the performance if the fastest current generation ARM11 cores, as well as reduced power consumption. ARM will be making the chip available for licensing later this year.

ARM designs microprocessors, then licenses the designs to manufacturing. Most cell phones currently use ARM chips, but ARM isn’t content with owning just that market. They hope the new chip will find its way into other products, possibly in direct competition with Intel. The Cortex-A5 is fast enough to run a laptop or netbook, though Windows does not currently run on ARM chips.

Cortex-A5 chips are expected to run at clock speeds in the gigahertz range, and draw only 80 milliwatts of power. This should provide better performance and power efficiency than upcoming Intel chips. The first products with the new design should begin showing up sometime in 2011.

Marvell Launches its ARM-ada of Application Processors

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:42:29 -0500

Santa Clara-based chip maker Marvell has launched a new range of CPUs called ARMADA. Based on the ARM instruction set, the new processors will power “smartphones, smartbooks, consumer and embedded devices, and displays.”

The largest producer of ARM chips in the world claims its ARMADA chips will enable mobile devices to deliver PC-like performance. Support for Adobe Flash and Blu-ray functionality should also enable ARMADA-toting mobile devices to deliver a rich multimedia experience.

Based on their intended device segment, the new application processors fall into four different series: the ARMADA 100, 500, 600 and 1000. "Launch of the ARMADA family represents a watershed event in mobile computing,” said Marvell’s co-founder and VP, Ms. Weili Dai.

It's Happening: Servers with Smartphone Chips

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:17:32 -0500

Any large technology company relies on their server infrastructure to serve their customers. The sort of power that runs Google or Facebook doesn’t come cheap. It's not so much the cost of the hardware, it’s the massive cost of powering that infrastructure that eats into the bank account. Two start-ups aim to change the server game with some new, low-power alternatives to conventional servers.

SeaMicro, from Santa Clara, is putting together servers based on the low power Atom chip seen most often in Netbooks. Those in the know have indicated that SeaMicro will be able to pack 80 Atom chips in a very small chassis. These Atom servers would offer massive reductions in energy costs, but still provide adequate processing power to serve up data. After all, how much power does it really take to push out some Google results?

In Austin, Texas, there’s an even more ambitious server project afoot. Smooth-Stone is working to integrate the ARM chips you’ve seen in smartphones, like the iPhone, into a new server architecture. Smooth-Stone CEO, Barry Evans, accumulated a great body of knowledge working for Intel’s mobile products group. This seems to jive nicely with the company’s apparent goals. Details on this one are scarce, but if the performance is sufficient, the energy savings could be staggering. Could it be that the era of companies running rack after rack of Xeon-based web servers is coming to a close?

ARM Announces Strategic Partnership with GlobalFoundries for 28nm Processor

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:42:29 -0500

A newly announced partnership between ARM and GlobalFoundries could mean the next generation of mobile devices will be faster than anyone expected. The project will focus on the ARM Cortex-A9 chip. The current Cortex-A8 powers the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre. The new chip will be based on a 28nm process.

According to GlobalFoundries, the 28nm parts will take advantage of the manufacturer’s High-K Metal Gate semiconductor. The HKMG technology is known as “Gate First”, meaning that it should allow high performance with minimal leakage.

ARM CEO, Warren East, said of the collaboration, “This announcement reflects our business value and strategy of providing best in class processor implementation by marrying our own processor and physical IP with world class manufacturing semiconductor technology.” So get ready, the next round of ARM chips could blow your socks off.

Maximum PC Primer: Lightweight Netbook Computing with Linux

Will Kraft — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:00:00 -0500

These days, netbooks have become a very popular alternative to conventional notebooks for mobile computing. Netbooks are lightweight, have great battery life, and are relatively inexpensive compared to full-sized notebooks. This makes them ideal for students or people on a budget. Of course, the lower cost and extended battery life does not come without a trade-off—many netbooks have lower system specs as well, which means that they are not designed for heavy-computing applications.

Although many netbooks now run Windows XP because of Microsoft's hurried entry into that market, many earlier models were built to run Linux. (For instance, the Asus Eee 700 Series ran Xandros, and the current models are offered with either Linux or Windows) And although most current netbooks are x86-based (running the Intel Atom CPU), the usage of ARM-based CPU chips is likely to increase in the future since ARM offers far superior energy efficiency over x86 and battery life has always been a major factor in mobile computing. ARM chips have been used successfully for some time in smartphones and music players, including the newest Zune HD. Since ARM is a different CPU architecture than x86, Windows will not work on ARM. Earlier this year, Microsoft's Steve Guggenheim said that the company currently has no plans to port Windows 7 to the ARM architecture. Therefore, any new wave of ARM-based netbooks will run Linux once again. Unlike Windows, most Linux distros can be compiled for ARM if you have the requisite skills for doing so.

Linux is an ideal choice for netbooks for multiple reasons in addition to CPU architecture. Netbooks generally have lower specs than most full-size notebooks (not to mention desktops) so they are ideal for lightweight applications like web browsing, document preparation, etc. Linux does these tasks very well without the bloat that Windows systems have to deal with from anti-malware utilities. This primer will help you set up and optimize Linux for your netbook.

The Operating System

While any Linux distro will work for your netbook with some degree of success, it is better to use one that is explicitly designed for that purpose. Many specialized distros (optimized for a specific hardware configuration) have sprung up for models like the Acer Aspire One, The Asus Eee, and several others while more generalized distros exist for all netbooks. Most netbook distros are based on Ubuntu, since Ubuntu is very well developed and has enjoyed unparalleled success on more conventional systems.

The first distro we should address is Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which is a trimmed-down variant of Ubuntu designed for netbooks. It is compatible with most netbooks makes and models on both x86 and ARM architecture. (mainline Ubuntu support for ARM is coming soon)

Easy Peasy is another Ubuntu-derived distro that ships with a few proprietary applications. (Skype instead of Ekiga)

Crunchbang is a scaled-down variant of Ubuntu that is especially good since it packs in plenty of software and has a very small memory footprint compared to standard Ubuntu. Crunchbang uses the OpenBox window manager; like on Fluxbox, most activity is done through right-clicking.

Eeebuntu is an Ubuntu derivative that has been designed specifically for the Asus EEE. Unlike Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Easy Peasy, CrunchBang, and Eeebuntu only support x86 at this time.

Standard Xubuntu is also a good choice for low-spec systems, including netbooks.

If you prefer a lightweight distro that is not based on Ubuntu, Slax is also an excellent choice to use on a netbook due to its small footprint; memory usage is seldom over 256 MB at any given time, so you will experience minimal swapping. (in fact, you can run Slax entirely in RAM—just watch your memory usage while doing so!) Based on conventional Slackware, Slax offers a nice slimmed-down KDE 3.5 and a nice modular package management design if you need to add more stuff.

Instead of the heavy OpenOffice.org office suite, Slax includes parts of the Koffice suite: Kword (not to be confused with kwrite, a lightweight text editor) Kspread, and Kpresent. These are excellent lightweight alternatives to OpenOffice.org, but are not practical for most lightweight netbook distros since you have to install most of KDE to make them work. However, they work quite well in this situation since KDE is already included in the distro.

Media is also handled quite well with Juk and Kplayer handling audio and video, respectively. However, you may want to add a more powerful player like VLC that can do both. This is not as painful as it sounds, since you can easily custom-build your own Slax remix by using a rather unique tool before you even download it. If you choose to build your own Slax, just keep your netbook's limitations in mind and don't get too carried away with adding packages since having more applications create a heavier system.

Although Slax is designed as a pure LiveCD distro like Knoppix, it is possible to install it. The process involves copying the Slax files to your netbook's hard drive and running the bootinst.sh script in Slax's /boot folder. If you run into snags while installing Slax, there are online guides that can help you get things sorted out. Once you install Slax, you may have to do some tinkering (installing firmware or ndiswrapper) to make certain wireless devices and webcams work properly. Also, you may need to make sure that your bootloader is configured correctly.

If you really want to go lightweight, you should check out Damn Small Linux. This miniature 50MB operating system packs in a full Linux experience in a footprint that is about as tiny as a full-featured Linux distro can get these days. DSL is a Live CD distro but can also be installed in accordance with the same precautions as Slax. In both cases, preparing Slax and DSL for netbook use is best left to more experienced users rather than beginners.

Conventional full-size distros like Debian and Mandriva have been known to work well on Netbooks as well. If you go that route, try to keep a small installation and memory footprint to minimize the burden on your system.

Regardless of the operating system you use, a major priority should be to reduce disk activity, especially swapping. (swap is the Linux equivalent to the Windows paging file) On solid state disks, swapping is actually detrimental; SSDs have a finite number of “writes” before they begin to lose data integrity and swapping is a very write-intensive process. The number of write cycles may range anywhere between 100,000 to five million writes. This may sound like a lot, (especially on USB flash drives that don't get written to very often) but it really isn't if you use your netbook on a regular basis. Therefore, it is imperative that you minimize swapping as much as possible to avoid artificially shortening the life of your SSD. If you disable swapping altogether, your system will spontaneously crash if you run out of memory, so it is best to set aside only a small permanent buffer of swap space to keep this from happening. (additional swap can be added at a moment’s notice through swap files) With that said, you can also use Linux successfully without any type of swap at all if you keep a vigilant eye on your RAM usage at all times.

This situation does not apply to the few netbooks that use conventional hard drives; since there is no finite number of writes with that technology, you are able to swap normally to your heart's content. However, excessive disk activity can drain the battery rather quickly whereas RAM usage does not, so it still pays to run as much of the system in memory as possible.

Preparing the Operating System

Since many netbooks lack optical drives, the usual method of downloading an ISO of your favorite distro and burning it to a CD/DVD to create the installation medium will not work. Instead, the best choice is to use a USB flash drive as your installation media. Since the ISO can't be “burned” to a USB stick the same way it can be burned to a disk, you will need to convert it.

UNetbootin is a nice utility for Windows and Linux that can take a conventional ISO image and install it to a USB flash drive. Alternatively, it can download and prepare a distro for you automatically. Once this has been done, you will be able to boot from the flash drive and install the operating system as you normally would. Using a flash drive has the added bonus of being more efficient; since you can overwrite the contents of the flash drive as needed, you won't eventually end up with a big pile of obsolete installation discs.

Lightweight Starter Software

Since the best course of action is to stay within the confines of your netbook's physical memory regardless of the type of disk you are using, it is best to use lightweight applications that have a smaller disk and memory footprint. Regardless of the hard drive type used, most netbooks have a fairly low amount of disk space compared to full-size notebooks or desktops. For instance, most models have an 8GB or 16GB SSD or a 160GB hard drive, which isn't very big compared to the 500 GB and 1TB (or larger) drives found on today's desktops and some high-end notebooks. Likewise, many netbooks have only 512 MB to 1GB memory. Therefore, it is best to regard your netbook as simply being a low-power system, much like an older computer. Because of this, it is often essential to use lightweight software that works well on such systems.

Choosing the right desktop environment can be a huge factor in the performance of your netbook. Conventional desktops like GNOME or KDE may overtax the system (unless they have been modified to be more lightweight than the standard build) and leave little free memory left for other applications. Most of the Ubuntu-based netbook operating systems like Easy Peasy, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and Eeebuntu have a simplified launcher system that is easier to read and navigate on small compact screens. This special launcher has large icons and a tabbed interface system that turns the entire desktop into a program selection menu. The rationale behind this design is that display space is a premium on small netbook displays and it is pointless to waste most of the desktop space on a wallpaper image while forcing the user to navigate small menus.

If you prefer a more conventional interface, lightweight desktop environments like XFCE (used by Xubuntu) and LXDE (used by Knoppix 6 and one variant of EeeBuntu) are ideal for netbook systems and low-spec systems in general. Fluxbox and similar window managers also fit the netbook niche very well.

Smaller, lighter applications can often get the job done just as well as heavier ones. Since netbooks are frequently used as a companion to more powerful computers, you should load them with only as much software as you really need on a regular basis. For instance, many people only need a word processor and perhaps a spreadsheet for day-to-day use. Therefore, it makes sense to install only a word processor and spreadsheet as standalone programs if you only need those things instead of carrying around a full office suite that has things you may not need regularly (like presentation, drawing, and database software).

Abiword is an ideal lightweight word processor that supports OpenDocument Text, Word 2007, “classic” Microsoft Word DOC format, and much more. Its interface greatly resembles that of OpenOffice Writer or pre-2007 MS Word, so users familiar with those programs should not have a difficult time using Abiword. Abiword has passive (red underline) and active spellcheck. In addition to that, Abiword has a passive grammar check option, (suspected grammar errors are underlined in green) a feature that Writer lacks altogether. GNUmeric is a standalone spreadsheet that has some resemblance to Excel. It can import/write many different spreadsheet formats and even has support for graphs.

For more information on running Linux and lightweight computing, refer to our previous guides on the topic.

ARM Confirmed to be in Discussions with Global Foundries

Paul Lilly — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:13:54 -0500

The rumors are true - AMD spin off Global Foundries and ARM are in talks about joining forces to build chips together. According to Kevin Smith, ARM's vice president, his company plans to add manufacturing partners as it expands its business beyond mobile phones.

ARM also hopes to capture 15 percent of the mini-notebook market by the end of 2010, Smith added. The company is already working with Freescale Semiconductor, Sharp Corp., and Pegatron Technology, and adding Global Foundries to the mix would be a major boost.

It would also be a major win for Global Foundries, who is now reported to have over 150 customers, after starting off with just two (AMD and ST Microelectronics).

ARM Announces Development of 2GHz Cortex-A9 Dual-Core Chip

Paul Lilly — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:40:35 -0500

ARM today said it has developed a pair of Cortex-A9 hard macro implementations which will enable devices to operate at 2GHz, and beyond. To achieve the additional speed without disregarding power consumption, the new design calls for a 40nm manufacturing process.

"The Cortex-A9 MPCore processor has already been widely accepted as the processor of choice for high-performance embedded applications across a broad spectrum of demanding consumer and enterprise devices," said Eric Schorn, VP marketing, Processor Division, ARM. "ARM’s parallel development of advanced, optimized physical IP components demonstrates a new level of collaborative differentiation while enabling our Partners to expand their penetration into high margin domains traditionally occupied by proprietary architectures."

According to ARM, chips built on the new design should consume just 0.25W per processor. TSMC will likely end up producing the bulk of the 40nm chips, though any company can start licensing the technology.

Where chips based on the new design ultimately end up is anyone's guess. The Archos 5 current uses the Cortex-A8 chip, as does Apple's iPhone 3GS.

Image Credit: poztifpc.com