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Long Lasting Linux Laptops?



On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Ron Peterson wrote:

> I have an ASL 450MHz PIII (www.aslab.com) that actually runs three hours
> on its three hour battery!  Probably not if I was listening to CD's or
> something though.  I'm mostly just using emacs and gcc compiles
> sometimes.  Oh, and sometimes my programs actually work, and then I get
> to run them also!!!  I.E. - not really straining my CPU too much.  It's
> a PIII Celeron, I believe, which might help account for lower power
> requirements.  Less cache (256K), but at full CPU clock speed.  Maybe
> all mobile PIII's are Celerons?  I used to know these things, but I've
> kinda stopped keeping track.  I've gushed about ASL before, so I'll tone
> it down this time...

I think all the mobile PIII chips have the cache on-chip (256K
full-speed), just like the new Coppermine desktop chips, but unlike the
original desktop PIIIs (512K off-chip). Celerons only have 128K cache
(but it's still full-speed), and don't have the SIMD instructions.

Conventional wisdom is that the 128K Celeron cache is about equal to the
original PIII cache in performance, and the 256K Coppermine-style cache is
superior.

For those of you with money to burn, the new SpeedStep PIII chips sound
interesting. 650MHz when you're on wall power, and still 500MHz (and low
power) unplugged.

Final observation: the name of Coppermine might lead you to believe that
it uses the new copper interconnect wiring on the chip that Intel is
working on. But it doesn't; they don't yet have a commercial product using
that technology. AMD and Intel are both working on it, though.

So far as I know, IBM is the only chip foundry actually shipping copper
products - and only for internal use, at that. Sad fact for Mac fans: IBM
has faster PowerPC chips ready (650MHz G4 and 800MHz G3!), but Motorola
won't let them sell them to anyone, because Motorola hasn't figured out
how to manufacture faster chips, and doesn't want IBM embarassing them.


-- 
Mark J. Dulcey               mark at buttery.org
Visit my house's home page:  http://www.buttery.org/
Visit my home page:          http://www.buttery.org/markpoly/

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