The x86 Power Myth Busted: In-Depth Clover Trail Power Analysis
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 24, 2012 5:00 PM ESTWireless Web Browsing Battery Life Test
For our final test I wanted to provilde a snippet of our 2013 web browsing battery life test to show what its power profile looked like. Remember the point of this test was to simulate periods of increased CPU and network activity, that could correspond to more than just browsing the web but interacting with your device in general.
Those bursts of power consumption are the direct result of our battery life test doing its job. That the tasks should take roughly the same time to complete on both devices, making this a good battery life test by not penalizing a faster SoC with more work.
Note that the W510's curve ends up lagging behind Surface RT's curve a bit by the end of the chart. This is purely because of the W510's garbage WiFi implementation. I understand that a fix from Acer is on the way, but it's neat to see something as simple as poorly implemented WiFi showing up in these power consumption graphs.
I always think about GPU power consumption while playing a game, but going through this experiment gave me a new found appreciation for non-gaming GPU power efficiency. Simply changing what's displayed on screen does burn an appreciable amount of power.
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yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
"The real deal will come with the complete new uArch for Atom and if they manage to "pull off a Core 2" again (which I believe) it won't look pretty for Team ARM."Maybe, but also keep in mind that android device sales have already eclipsed that of the x86 PC based market( in total numbers sold ). Which means things are not looking pretty for Intel already. Granted, it is a low cost market, which has less revenue potential.
"Core 2 based atom" would be pretty cool. If they managed to keep the performance up. We'll see how that works out. in a few years ( maybe ).
beginner99 - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
I would say phones always outsold PC in the last decade ( I have no proof) but then they were just that phones with pathetic ARM cores. Now they are more like computers.I did not mean Core 2 based, but just shocking your competitors and basically making them irrelevant overnight. It's a new uArch that will be way better than current design.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4333/intels-silvermo...
coolhund - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
There have been reports before that stated the super duper uArch (OoO) would become reality with 32 nm Atoms, but it didnt. Now the same crap is assumed (!) again with the 22 nm ones.I dont believe it.
wsw1982 - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
The different is assumed vs. official...coolhund - Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - link
Oh really?Show me that official statement then.
coolhund - Thursday, December 27, 2012 - link
Thought so.yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
My conclusion that android device sales eclipsed that of the total x86 PC sales came from an Article in an embedded trade magazine. It does make sense however as well.Personally, I feel that Intel is going about the idea of Atom all wrong. Lower powered versions of the latest processors they have now would make more sense. Say another tier under their current mobile line. While perhaps re-tasking Atom to embedded duties.
As it stands now. Atom is a processor that can not make up it's mind what it wants to be. In a few ways it is competitive, but in terms of cost it has a ways to go yet.
coolhund - Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - link
Well at least they are trying ULV versions now of Sandy and Ivy Bridge.IMO the much better way to go.
InsGadget - Sunday, January 6, 2013 - link
Your conclusion concerning Android vs PC sales is wrong. While Android is approaching (and perhaps, this year, surpassing) total PC sales per year, more PCs are sold right now than Androids. Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/01/16/its-a-mobi...Exodite - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
The iPhone 5 review contains some nice tables that includes both the Motorola RAZR M and Motorola RAZR i, even then the general performance category favors the RAZR i.Battery life is a more difficult proposition, as the RAZR M has LTE while the RAZR i does not.
Still, the A15 will make for a interesting comparison when available. Both for Intel as well as Qualcomm's Krait-based SoCs.