AMD doubles the number of CPU cores it offers to Chromebooks
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Once the bottom end baseline is finally moved up to quad or hex-core, there should be a stronger drive for software not aimed at users with heavier workloads to be multithreaded well.
Meanwhile that dual core Celeron is using Intel's performance cores which are much larger and several times faster than those ARM cores. Even for multithreaded workloads the Celeron will run circles around cheap quad core ARM SoCs.
e.g. https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_celeron_n450...
Single thread performed is kind of close, 860 is faster though. And let’s not even look at the MT benchmarks. And generally it seems that most medium/high end chromebooks with ARM cpus are generally able to outperform x86 ones.
The N4020 is the model of Celeron used in the 2021 Dell Chromebook. I'm seeing N3060, 2955U, etc.
The Pentium Silver N5000, which isn't badged as a Celeron, is still much slower on multi-threaded and single-threaded perf: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_pentium_silv...
The entire Snapdragon 865 package cost manufacturers $150-$160. The Pentium Silver N5000 retails for $90-100. The 860 would presumably be even cheaper than the 865.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Celeron-7300-Processor-B...
Is the latest celeron which should be more or less equal to a 6th gen i7 while using a lot less power. They are selling a 3 year old celeron in a 2021/2022 chromebook which is inexcusable.
Acer sells a chromebook with an i5 that's routinely $430 refurbished (yes it's a refurb but it's basically always available) https://acerrecertified.com/chromebooks/?_bc_fsnf=1&Processo...
Sign. I would be surprised if dell is buying the Pentium N5000 along with chipset for more than $60. And that is excluding marketing rebate.
Says more about Intel’s Atom line than anything tbh.
There are plenty of Core-class x86 ChromeOS laptops and these smoke all ARM-based laptops excepting Apple’s.
Currently rocking a Lenovo chromebook Flex 5i with an i3-1115G4 and it's outperforming my phone's Snapdragon 845 in rendering video animations by a reasonably well margin.
I actually misplaced the magsafe cable before I had to charge it the first time. The little cores make the right perf/watt tradeoff for all but the heaviest workloads, such as slack. Sometimes slack pops onto a performance core for a few seconds at a time.
I don't want the lowest end offerings to become 15W TDP chips in $300 laptops. I think there's a perfectly valid place for 6W chips in $100 devices, which brings computing access to more people and places.
I'm typing on it right now and it's fine for casual use. (It gets a fair amount of weekend use because I neither want to undock my work laptop nor carry around something that large, expensive, and heavy.)
Would I run it as my only computer if $500 wouldn't pressure my family finances? Probably not. If my choice was between this and nothing, that's an even easier choice.
It doesn't take much manufacturer-supplied bloatware, bad drivers, or background processes to use up that much RAM but a Chromebook is just the kernel and Chrome, so you get a lot of bang for your buck.
The prices will eventually go down.
How can this be true? I'm not saying it isn't, but this makes it sound like ARM is just objectively better - lower power and higher performance? I assume it's more complicated.
Doing more per clock is difficult on an x86 compared to ARM. x86's instruction set is a hodgepodge collection of instructions of variable lengths and addressing modes. ARM64 on the other hand has far less addressing modes and a fixed 32-bit instruction length. When an x86 is trying to decode ahead of the instruction stream it needs to decode each instruction in order or have special logic to get around that which makes it more difficult to stay ahead of the processor. Normally you see an x86 chip described as having a certain number of complex and a certain number simple decoders because some instructions are just pigs of things to decode. Simple decodes will get stuff that decode to 3 uops or less while complex handles most of the rest. Some real pigs of instructions might even be sent to the microcode sequencer which generates a whole heap of uops which takes a while.
In the case of ARM64 every 4 bytes you have an instruction come hell or high water. On a chip like the M1 it takes 32-bytes of instructions, splits every 4 bytes between its 8 decoders, and each will spit out uops in parallel. From there the chip will issue those decoded instructions to the necessary execution ports. Because of the less complicated decoding, the huge increase in decoding throughput, and the huge reorder buffers an M1 can keep more of its execution ports busy. If twice as many execution ports can be kept full it means you can do the same amount of work in half as many clock cycles. Because you're only running at half the clock speed your power usage is way lower.
It's honestly a garbage chip for disposable devices, which is just bad for everything.
I'd rather use one $300 device than 3x $100 devices over the same timespan.
Maybe that's a problem in of itself?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
There is nothing intrinsically different about computing from, say, 10 years ago. You might still want to read some text on a webpage, click on a few buttons and have them do something, maybe fill out some text fields, or even upload/download a few files.
Instead, you get "visual experiences" with overcomplicated UIs with similarly overcomplicated underlying technologies (edit: not to say that there aren't benefits to technologies like Vue/Angular/React, however they aren't "necessary" to get things done most of the time, in many cases even server side rendering without JS would be enough), all of which waste all of the resources that you'll give them, especially if you don't have ad-blockers on which means that you'd get bogged down with dozens if not hundreds of malicious scripts.
Of course, this is a bit akin to shouting at the cloud, but nobody should be too proud about the state the modern web is in and use it to justify wasteful hardware and software requirements: https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm
Even "garbage" arm CPUs are fine these days. All my real work happens when I remote into a machine that's faster than a $3500 workstation laptop. The remaining heavy workload is the web browser (and, perhaps, corporate email client / other crapware)
I agree, but do consider how many Chromebooks are purchased by schools. The calculus there might be different, because kids drop things.
Note that ethically, I'm not convinced this need outweighs the environmental concerns.
Question for any curious or innovative HN readers - what would you suggest to do with iPadOS' restrictions? I'm speaking both as an ipad owner disappointed with the software but also as an M1/Ax chip fan.
Potential solutions I can easily think of are: 1. Jailbreak - but it needs specific software and can be finicky, and very likely forces you to not get security updates
2. Physically remove the storage and *do something*. Except I don't know what even is possible, assuming that you're okay performing BGA soldering on a $$$ device.
It's also this thing that infuriates me to some extent. Apple can do amazing things if it wanted but... it doesn't appear to care about consumer benefit.
It’s the same processor as in the M1 Mac and the dev ARM kits had A14s.
2. If buying a proper computer, personally unless you only use MacOS it's prudent to get an x64 chip. Intel's 12th gen chips are (fortunately, finally!) again competitive even with M1s. An Intel/AMD chip can run Windows/Linux/MacOS/BSD/most OSes, but M1 Macs unfortunately can't.
Ironically I plan to upgrade from my Air to a Pro for the high refresh rate. Getting a 90hz phone really spoiled me in the most first-world way possible.
- Things 3 is another classic example of an app that would be very easy to port to other platforms if so wished, but the devs aren't interested in going outside Apple's Walled Garden. And if it makes them good money I can't even blame them.
A big factor is likely the quality of the UI frameworks on other platforms. On Windows, only the older "legacy" frameworks come close to the depth of AppKit but are a bear to work with (and in questionable maintenance status). GTK isn't the worst, but version 3 and up makes no attempt to fit in on non-Linux desktops. Qt probably comes closest but it comes with the caveat of being tied to C++ or Python, and distribution can be a pain. With Electron you have to bring your own everything.
I follow some Apple platform devs (on top of being one myself) and there's will from them to produce software for other platforms, but only once there's an option as nice as AppKit/UIKit to do so with.
Granted, it’s not Samsung tablet cheap.
My entire group at work bought iPads as dedicated Zoom devices at the start of the pandemic. Did we make a mistake because our needs are different from yours?
Personally I would say I don't really know what the top of the line iPads are _for_ that the midrange ones can't handle but I can imagine there are apps out there that stress them when multitasking. My point is that if you want a general purpose computer to fully use the hardware we should just buy those instead of trying to make an iPad one of those.
Sell it and get a proper computer.
If ipad os is restrictive for you then the ipad is not for you.
Restricted? It's capable of running:
* android apps directly from google play
* multiple linux containers (lxc)
* gpu accelerated linux gui apps (wyaland/lxc)
* docker containers inside lxc
* kvm virtual machines capable of linux, windows and even macOS guests
I'd be very happy to see 16 core Chromebooks tbh, I definitely make heavy use of all 8 of mine today.
I had a cheap ChromeBook I used for quite a while, basically until the battery gave out and it turned into a desktop machine, but chromeOS was pretty limited back then so I just threw fedora on it. Almost all my Blender dev work was on that poor little underpowered thing…
[1] Released since 2019 plus these: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/chro...
It's a work laptop, although I use it almost exclusively these days since I can easily use a "personal" profile. It's very easy to manage things like SSO/device policies on Chromebooks because of the GSuite integration.
There's pretty much nothing that it's "worse" at, other than in some niche scenarios - like there's a bug where the VM will return an invalid code for a specific CPUID, and it doesn't support nested virtualization, etc. Pretty niche stuff.
Otherwise... it works. Funny enough I'm now in quite a pickle with my Ubuntu laptop, which updated to a new kernel, failed, and now I can't roll back to the previous kernel. Because of this, virtually no drivers are working, so I can't connect to the internet... making it really really fun to deal with! Stuff like this doesn't really happen on my Chromebook.
In practise: what matters to users of these devices is web browsing performance (which is still mostly a single core job - perhaps a second core can be practical in some browser/OS combos).
Also, remember, this "restricted" OS is more than capable of bringing up a full Debian container.
(Disclaimer: I prefer Firefox. Sometimes I compare it to chrome. They're usually comparable, but on some machines, one completely blows the other out of the water.)
Do I have to buy an AMD Windows laptop, pay the Microsoft tax, and convert it to a Chromebook? (Assuming it's possible).
Another good thing about them, it’s very uncommon for enterprise-targeted models to have soldered RAM or SSD. For instance, my secondary computer is HP ProBook 445 G8 with Ryzen 5 5600U which I upgraded to 32GB RAM / 2TB SSD, can recommend. However, I have no idea about ChromeOS compatibility, I’m using Windows and ordered a version with the OS license included.
Nevermind - as you mentioned, it's been discontinued.
My Chromebook, at $300 is a great deal, compared to my new large iPad Pro (just the magic keyboard is $350, pencil is extra - both included on the Chromebook).
Already happened a few months ago. DDR5 doubled the number of memory channels in a normal desktop from 2 to 4. That’s 2 channels per DIMM.
Of course DDR4 still has lower latency today, but that should change next year.
Today the only way to reduce latency is to overclock your RAM. It’s pretty easy to get a $200 DDR4 kit to perform better than what you’d find in $5000 prebuilt PCs.
Interconnect is expensive.
Seriously. A Pentium IV was 40M transistors. A Ryzen V 2000 has around 5 billion transistors. It could fit 100 Pentium IV cores if desired.
That's not desired -- those transistors are better spent bumping up IPC a little bit -- but we can have a perfectly adequate processor at 1% of a modern CPU.
Pentium IV single-core performance is almost identical to a modern entry-level netbook processor:
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-4-300GHz...
>https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-4-300GHz...
No it isn't.
1. userbenchmark is a joke in the hardware community. just search for "userbenchmark bias". It's also banned from both /r/intel and /r/amd.
2. even they themselves admit that the "modern entry-level netbook processor" is 59% faster in single-threaded performance. The only making up for it is "Memory Latency", which I doubt can make up for a 59% gap in performance.
Almost identical? The wimpy netbook processor is 59% faster on a single core. Ignore that site's overall speed numbers, they make no sense.
But a fair comparison has to be to a desktop chip. Let's look at an i3-12300. It rates +597% on single core performance; seven times faster.
[edit] or Maybe a Core-2 as that was 64-bit. E7500 with 3MB of cache was dual-core with 228M transistors, which puts you at 40 cores with 60MB of cache for 5B transistors.
Or one that doesn’t cost big dollars since the arm server chips seem to be going in this direction.
I mean, 256 x86 cores seems perfectly reasonable, right?
Alternatively an old 4 node server could get you there even cheaper if you don’t care that they are separate computers in one chassis. I got a used C6100 with 24 cores across 8 CPU sockets for $600 6 years ago. You could probably get >100 cores for the same price today.
If threads count, the Xeon Phi 7210 64 core 256 thread would be even better at $125. Still x86
A better architecture is to have the same, but as a co-processor for highly multithreaded tasks. That's basically a GPU. You get a few thousand cores on an NVidia 3060, in an architecture designed for this.
To the other comments in the thread:
- I'm mostly giving big-O / ballpark numbers.
- In terms of power, Pentium IV was 180 nm - 65 nm. A 7 nm process can be much more power-efficient.
Last time I checked, single vs dual channel was like a 5-10% performance difference, mostly useful for integrated graphics (and even then latency was the bigger problem)...
Similarly adding enough cores makes the extra channels helpful as well, for that reason servers often have 4x the memory channels as desktops (8 channels vs 2). Even with 8 channels often the performance scaling for using half the cores vs all the cores is poor, at least for the top spec chips.
AMD seems to have realized this and their next gen will have 24 channels instead of 8.
I wish Apple would bring back the 12 inch MacBook with the new M1 chip. Atom chip and butterfly keyboard was horrible at the time but now it would be a perfect ultralight laptop.
Probably even the cheapest part of schooling equipment too now. Never seen a textbook go for less than $100, at least in my experience.
I used to throw it into one of those mini fashion backpacks and bike to the park to write a bit of code on nice days.
Not much fear of breaking it because it was so cheap. Had external batteries too which I sometimes brought an extra of to swap out (which actually sounds crazy compared to how most laptops are now a days)
And despite my Linux vs Windows posts, it is actually Linux based, and was bought that way, also a proof that even that didn't help when regarding some common Linux Desktop themes.
Anyway, it has served me well during my travels, like you I am used to take it everywhere.
When it finally dies, it is going to be quite hard to find a good replacement that takes over similar responsibility.
When not doing docker or microservices everything, there is hardly any need to keep buying hardware.
WebGL 2.0 is based on OpenGL ES 3.0, so for that kind of graphics, any GPU after 2011 will spend most of their cores sleeping.
For compiled languages, even C++ (if using binary dependencies via package manager), the workflow is fast enough.
I am the opinion, even something like an Amiga 3000 would be more than enough for what most people do with their computers. :)
For my purposes, a $100 used Chromebook is perfectly adequate, and is the sort of device I can take on a hike, kayak, or bike ride, and not worry if it's lost, stolen, or damaged.
I am willing to adjust my performance expectations considerably, but the non-expandable storage has made me think I am in for a world of annoyance if I want to use anything other than a web browser.
https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en
Chromebooks near or past the planned obsolescence date can be had for a song, including decent models. The market is close to non-existent, so there's a glut of them.
My Chromebook has a 3200x1800 display, 16GB RAM, and takes an SD card (for expandable, albeit slow, storage). That's plenty for most of the types of work I'd like to do on a boat. It was under $200, almost expired. New, it would have been close to a grand.
The most popular way to install Ubuntu is with crouton:
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-on-chromebook#1-...
However, I installed it natively. Here's a random tutorial:
https://dbtechreviews.com/2018/09/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-c...
The key annoyance (really the only difference from a "real" laptop) is you have to hit a special key sequence on every boot.
I definitely don't think of it as a "world of pain." I wouldn't use it as my primary laptop, but it's great as a device I can use in places I'd never take my primary laptop.
Any idea if they're making similar non-chromebook versions of these?