On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 6:49 PM, elijah rutschman
<elijahr@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I have recently heard that ARM CPU's tend to be more power efficient
than x86 CPU's.
I know that several free operating systems, Debian GNU/Linux included,
support some non-x86 architectures, such as ARM and MIPS.
So, this brought 2 questions to mind:
Which processor architecture, or specifically, which CPU lines are
specifically designed to be power-efficient?
Are there any non-x86 motherboards with PCI, SATA, USB, etc. that
would be powerful enough for moderate desktop use, i.e. web surfing,
compiling software packages, and playing movies?
You can build a desktop from an Intel Atom based motherboard
and CPU. 40 Watts maximum for the CPU and mainboard.
With a high efficiency power supply, I'm measuring 42 watts idle,
47 watts under load. That is with twin 320 GB SATA drives and 2 GB
of RAM and a DVD drive.
I have one running Debian for web server and mail server (light duty) and I also
run a desktop on it. Low cost hardware, low cost power consumption.
I am predicting this kind of product will be big the future,
as energy costs rise.