Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Actually no "extra" chip area in comparison to x86 based solution.

They just throw away so much of cruft from the die like PCIE PHYs, and x86 legacy I/O with large area analog circuitry.

Redundant complex DMA, and memory controller IPs are also thrown away.

Clock, and power rails on the SoC are also probably taking less space because of more shared circuitry.

Same with self-test, debug, fusing blocks, and other small tidbits.



This is very interesting and first time I’ve heard / thought about this. Wonder how much power efficiency comes from exactly these things?


PCI is quite power hungry when it works on full trottle.

The seemed power efficiency when PCIE was going 1.0 2.0 3.0 ... was due to dynamic power control, and link sleep.

On top of it, they simply don't haul memory nonstop over PCIE anymore, since data going to/from GPU is simply not moving anywhere.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: