Lowest power 32-bit MCU with PCI, SDRAM?

Hi,

take a look at the ALCHEMY Au1500 made by AMD on:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/ProductInformation/0,,50_2330_6625,00.html

This has the features you want and is very low power.
Based on an enhanced MIPS core.
Pricing is in between 20 and 25 euros

Cheers,
	Lou

On 31 Oct 2004 20:30:42 -0800, ghazan.haider@gmail.com (Ghazan Haider)
wrote:

>I have seen plenty of ARM MCUs out there with impressive power
>consumption, but a very few offer SDRAM, and only one has PCI
>interface.
>
>The motorola types, Dragonball and coldfire have these features, but
>are an order of magnitude more expensive on power. What is the least
>power consuming 32-bit MCU with glueless SDRAM and PCI interfaces? I'd
>prefer architectures that can use the PalmOS 4.0 or higher (ARM9 or
>68k). I wonder if adding a PCI interface chip or SDRAM interface chip
>to an ARM9 or even an ARM7 will take lower power than all current
>offerings.

Take a look at AMD's 32-bit Alchemy, moree specifically the Au1500
which has a PCI interface.....very low power.

Cheers,
	Lou

> What is the least power consuming 32-bit MCU with glueless SDRAM and PCI interfaces?

Well, if it doesn't have to be an ARM, why not consider a MIPS RISC
device? VR4133 from NEC is quite interesting. It includes an SDRAM
interface, Ethernet Macs and PCI. Power consumption at 266 MHz is
200mA (typ.) at 1.5V and 30mA (typ.) at 3.3V. It will be less if you
run it a reduced speed. Performance costs power, so the question is
basically which kind of performance you have in mind for the 100mW
that you want to spend. And also look for on-chip memory or caches.
Accesses to external memory are very costly for the power budget.

Michael

> Well, if it doesn't have to be an ARM, why not consider a MIPS RISC
> device? VR4133 from NEC is quite interesting. It includes an SDRAM
> interface, Ethernet Macs and PCI. Power consumption at 266 MHz is
> 200mA (typ.) at 1.5V and 30mA (typ.) at 3.3V. It will be less if you
> run it a reduced speed. Performance costs power, so the question is
> basically which kind of performance you have in mind for the 100mW
> that you want to spend. And also look for on-chip memory or caches.
> Accesses to external memory are very costly for the power budget.

Now this looks VERY interesting. I'm not too bothered about power,
something like 100MIPS, or a 133MHz Pentium1 with 32mb ram is good.
The idea is a simplistic Linux based computer, but with the full array
of tools like web browser, office tools etc. I understand PCI takes
both power, and requires 3.3v at least. External ram will also be
costly, so I'll try to do one chip of 32mb, maybe at reduced clock,
and the MCU itself at 100MHz or so, possibly running at dynamic speed.

The device will hopefully be able to run with disposable batteries,
and should run for at least 10 hours straight (full use), unlike
current laptops. So the higher the power usage gets, the more
batteries I'll have to add, the less attractive it will seem compared
to a laptop. It will also kill my remote hope for a solar powered
802.11-run laptop.

The PCI is necessary. None of the MCUs have a good video device (3d
accelerated), none have 802.11a/b/g, few have pcmcia controller etc.
Best would be to have an x86-based chip, next ARM, next anything else
since the software support for ARM and x86, at least in Linux, is
good. This mips devices gives me a good alternative to look at beside
the x86 and arm, at the cost of wrestling with linux/netbsd to make
things go.

Ghazan Haider wrote:

>> Well, if it doesn't have to be an ARM, why not consider a MIPS RISC
>> device? VR4133 from NEC is quite interesting. It includes an SDRAM
>> interface, Ethernet Macs and PCI. Power consumption at 266 MHz is
>> 200mA (typ.) at 1.5V and 30mA (typ.) at 3.3V. It will be less if you
>> run it a reduced speed. Performance costs power, so the question is
>> basically which kind of performance you have in mind for the 100mW
>> that you want to spend. And also look for on-chip memory or caches.
>> Accesses to external memory are very costly for the power budget.
> 
> Now this looks VERY interesting. I'm not too bothered about power,
> something like 100MIPS, or a 133MHz Pentium1 with 32mb ram is good.
> The idea is a simplistic Linux based computer, but with the full array
> of tools like web browser, office tools etc. I understand PCI takes
> both power, and requires 3.3v at least. External ram will also be
> costly, so I'll try to do one chip of 32mb, maybe at reduced clock,
> and the MCU itself at 100MHz or so, possibly running at dynamic speed.
> 
> The device will hopefully be able to run with disposable batteries,
> and should run for at least 10 hours straight (full use), unlike
> current laptops. So the higher the power usage gets, the more
> batteries I'll have to add, the less attractive it will seem compared
> to a laptop. It will also kill my remote hope for a solar powered
> 802.11-run laptop.
> 
> The PCI is necessary. None of the MCUs have a good video device (3d
> accelerated),

This will become a problem for you since MIPS is not x86 compatible
and most 3D video drivers are binary only...

Andmost recent 3D boards have fans to remove heat...

I think you will have some trouble buying a good video board:
* for PCI
* with open source drivers
* low power consumption
* at a reasonable price

But an older ATI Radeon board could fit... (newer ones are not open source)

/RogerL

Guess some more homework is needed. If you plan to have a 3D
accelerator, have a look at that power consumption rather than the
main CPU. These things are compact heaters. Simplify you graphics,
have a look at the highend Sharp ARM microcontrollers. So let's assum
your graphics can be done with the embedded controller, the LH7A404,
ARM9 based micro might be your best bet.

Schwob

ghazan.haider@gmail.com (Ghazan Haider) wrote in message news:<1ad1e8b9.0411041702.8373c5f@posting.google.com>...
> > Well, if it doesn't have to be an ARM, why not consider a MIPS RISC
> > device? VR4133 from NEC is quite interesting. It includes an SDRAM
> > interface, Ethernet Macs and PCI. Power consumption at 266 MHz is
> > 200mA (typ.) at 1.5V and 30mA (typ.) at 3.3V. It will be less if you
> > run it a reduced speed. Performance costs power, so the question is
> > basically which kind of performance you have in mind for the 100mW
> > that you want to spend. And also look for on-chip memory or caches.
> > Accesses to external memory are very costly for the power budget.
> 
> Now this looks VERY interesting. I'm not too bothered about power,
> something like 100MIPS, or a 133MHz Pentium1 with 32mb ram is good.
> The idea is a simplistic Linux based computer, but with the full array
> of tools like web browser, office tools etc. I understand PCI takes
> both power, and requires 3.3v at least. External ram will also be
> costly, so I'll try to do one chip of 32mb, maybe at reduced clock,
> and the MCU itself at 100MHz or so, possibly running at dynamic speed.
> 
> The device will hopefully be able to run with disposable batteries,
> and should run for at least 10 hours straight (full use), unlike
> current laptops. So the higher the power usage gets, the more
> batteries I'll have to add, the less attractive it will seem compared
> to a laptop. It will also kill my remote hope for a solar powered
> 802.11-run laptop.
> 
> The PCI is necessary. None of the MCUs have a good video device (3d
> accelerated), none have 802.11a/b/g, few have pcmcia controller etc.
> Best would be to have an x86-based chip, next ARM, next anything else
> since the software support for ARM and x86, at least in Linux, is
> good. This mips devices gives me a good alternative to look at beside
> the x86 and arm, at the cost of wrestling with linux/netbsd to make
> things go.