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By Stephen, on October 18th, 2010% I’ve been intrigued with low-power Intel Atom + NVIDIA Ion combinations for a while now and have recently put together a little net-top computer with a 1.8GHz Atom (dual-core + Hyperthreading) paired with an Ion2 plus 4GB RAM and the hard disk left over after I upgraded my PS3’s drive. The unit is a very small machine – bigger than a Mac Mini, but smaller than any minitower. It has Dual-Link DVI, so it can drive high-res displays, as well as a bunch of USB ports, eSATA, and a card slot.
Given the clock speed of this machine, I would expect it to perform pretty well. While it isn’t paired with a very new, fast hard drive, it seems to boot fairly quickly and is responsive (under Windows 7 64-bit). While I haven’t tried any CUDA tests on there, I ran Prime95 to test it and burn it in, and I’m surprised at how slow the Atom is. The 1.8GHz Atom takes between 8 and 10 times (not percent) longer than my 2.16GHz Core2Duo in my laptop for each of the Prime95 benchmark tests. My guess is that this is a very floating-point-intensive test, so it goes to show that the Atoms stink at floating-point computations (probably like the Cell in the PS3 stinks at double-precision computations). Perhaps FP is even emulated on the Atom.
So what? So the Atom is lousy at floating-point arithmetic? All people use them for is netbooks and set-top boxes, right?
Very true, but those netbooks and set-top boxes are sold as Windows (or Linux) machines that can run normal software, not special-purpose machines, like iPads and Android phones. Why does that matter?
Well, for years, FP speed has been getting better and better to the point that programmers were encouraged to use FP operations rather than faking it with fixed-point or making do with integer arithmetic. Games, graphics applications, and much more has become FP-intensive, since it is so fast on normal Intel and AMD processors, yet those programs will suffer if run on an Atom. Sure, we won’t be running equation solvers on Atoms, but this new reality is bucking a trend that has made programming easier (always a good thing) while providing good performance. While clock speed has never been a very good measure of performance, now more than ever, we need to be very clear that a 1.8GHz Atom is MUCH weaker than a 1.8GHz Core2Duo at some operations. Even older processors, like Pentium 4, will run rings around the Atom when doing floating point.
So I admire Intel’s ability to save energy with the Atom and to make it work well as a Windows host processor, but I am alarmed that they are willing to trade so much performance for power (though, frankly, Atoms are quite low power). Perhaps the power consumption is also 8-10 times (or more) lower than the Core2Duo in my laptop and is probably 50 times lower than that of a desktop PC, but the clock speed numbers are quite misleading when it comes to certain important kinds of performance. And that is bound to make some people unhappy.
By Stephen, on October 12th, 2010% Kudos to Skype for adding new settings in their latest iPhone app that should address some of my earlier complaints. It looks like the app can be set to sign out of Skype immediately or after a delay when it is put in the background. This means the power drain should go away.
Of course, I’d like the best of both world: have the app stop communicating with the Skype servers after a time, but allow a notification message to wake it back up in time to re-establish connection and answer an incoming call. I’m sure if such things are possible, they’ll work on it, because I assume the purpose of a Skype app is to help people use Skype as much and as well as possible.
By Stephen, on October 7th, 2010% Apple was late to the multitasking party with the iPhone. The reason Steve Jobs kept giving is that multitasking allows apps to run in the background and drain the battery and that nobody really has come up with a good way to fix that. For iOS 4, Apple defined a strict set of criteria for apps to multitask according to a set of profiles (music, VOIP, mapping, etc). This should have helped, but it doesn’t. Apps are, of course, written by people, and some of those people are not great programmers or lazy or just haven’t been taught these things, so apps that use multitasking often cause huge battery drain.
Skype is the worst offender on my iPhone. It is so bad that I am tempted to delete it. There really needs to be an option to disable multitasking for some poorly written apps, like Skype (and AIM isn’t that good either). I have been using Skype more often recently, as the number is on my business cards, so it is nice to have Skype handy on the iPhone. I noticed that the battery tends to drain very quickly on my iPhone 3GS after using Skype and that killing Skype in the multitasking bar (double tap Home button, press and hold Skype until it wiggles, then tap the minus sign to kill it) makes the battery drain stop.
It is so bad that last last night (well, 2 in the morning), the iPhone was fully charged with Skype idling in the background, yet it was fully drained and had shut itself off by this morning. Not only will that permanently hurt the battery a bit, it means my phone is now useless until it recharges a bit. VERY ANNOYING!
So what do I think should be done:
1) Have settings either in the OS or in apps that allow us to make them suspend rather than keep running when they are not in the foreground (I know, this is adding user-visible cruft, which Jobs hates, but if app writers can’t get it right, then we users must take things into our own hands)
2) Disable multitasking when the battery level gets below say 30% (perhaps make it user-settable – I’d choose 50% or 60%).
3) Reject apps submitted to the App Store if they use too many cycles or perform too much communications when idle in the background.
So far, multitasking in iOS for has not brought me any benefits on the iPhone (though I think it would help on the iPad), so I think there should be an option where we can just turn it off! And Skype should fix their damn app to stop draining the battery, dammit!
By Stephen, on August 22nd, 2010% This is a test post from the WordPress app on the iPad. I wonder if the password is sent in the clear, as seems to be the default with WordPress (and just about anything else).
Kinda nifty that I can apparently add photos easily…
By Stephen, on August 22nd, 2010% Orig: 8/18/2009
I’m really enjoying my new iPhone 3GS, particularly because of its large capacity and speed. I can fit my entire music collection on it and a bunch of apps and still have space left. The speed is really evident when launching AIM and many other apps that are slow to start. Also, the key press lag I sometimes noticed on the old iPhone is gone.
I like the new ear buds, as they have volume control on the little clicker. The sound quality seems to be the same through the ear buds, but the internal speakers on the 3GS seem a bit louder and maybe better than before.
By Stephen, on August 22nd, 2010%
Orig: 8/12/2009
I just got a new iPhone 3GS after having an original (2G) iPhone for about 2 years. While there wasn’t anything wrong with the old iPhone, I longed for the speed of the new one, as well as a few of the new features.
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