Recent Tablet Shows ARM Advantage Over Atom at Robert Pogson

Recent Tablet Shows ARM Advantage Over Atom

Published by Robert Pogson March 8th, 2011 in technology. 9 Comments

The Register has a review of a tablet distributed by Dixon’s a chain in the UK.

The tablet is a bit unusual:

16:9 screen is best used in landscape, and
Android 2.2 instead of 3.0.

Price is good at 250 pounds.

What interests me though is a chart of battery life v some netbooks. The netbooks such as the MSI Wind have twice the size of battery but much less lifetime on constant video playback.

The Dixonian tablet lasted 380 minutes with a 24 W-h battery and the netbooks lasted about 300 minutes with a 48 W-h battery. Power consumption ratio is 48/24 X 380/300 = 9.6W/3.8W, better than 2:1. I am surprised the ratio is not larger but we don’t know what the software was doing for each and how cores were managed.

That’s what ARM Tegra2 does for small, cheap, and portable computers. It makes them smaller, cheaper, lighter, longer lasting but still powerful.

- Robert Pogson

9 Responses to “Recent Tablet Shows ARM Advantage Over Atom”

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1 oldman Mar 9th, 2011 at 5:14 am

But the unit got panned as a piece of crap Pog. If this is what we can expect for ARM based mobile devices on the low end, you can keep it!
2 Robert Pogson Mar 9th, 2011 at 6:37 am

Price/performance. It depends on what people want. I would pay less than half the price for something that lacked a feature I did not think was essential. People seem bent on paying top dollar for something thin or new. I find it refreshing that someone supplies the needs of the ordinary folk. I hate up-selling which is what Wintel has been doing for a few years now.
3 oldman Mar 9th, 2011 at 9:32 am

“Price/performance.”

Junk is junk, Pog – there is no performance that I can see, but I guess I missing something.
4 ChrisTX Mar 9th, 2011 at 10:04 am

Android 3.0 hasn’t been released so far.
5 Robert Pogson Mar 9th, 2011 at 10:38 am

see http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-3.0.html

If developers have it, the world will soon.

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf1zzKl3_Rc
6 Robert Pogson Mar 9th, 2011 at 10:39 am

I see multiples in speed of logging in to a usable desktop and opening applications.
7 oldman Mar 9th, 2011 at 11:28 am

“I see multiples in speed of logging in to a usable desktop and opening applications.”

Speed “improvements” don’t mean much if the application set is mediocre to inadequate. This having been said, the proof of this will be in the market reaction to android based mobile devices.

Now we sit back and wait…
8 Robert Pogson Mar 9th, 2011 at 11:39 am

I just read an article that reported 67million Android thingies were sold in 2010. I am not sure if that was just smartphones or all devices. The selection of applications in Android is huge. I am not sure anyone will be able to find things…
9 Bender Mar 9th, 2011 at 2:09 pm

You can call ARM whatever you want but if you get comparable performance with lower clock AND energy savings then i call it definite win and would love that to replace present CPUs and i think this is the actual agenda to be power efficient and ARM is definitely power efficient. It will get even better with planned shrinking production process. Intel can’t match,not now at least.

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