The Intel Atom Thread

[jpiniero]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1396787827963277315

Ian apparently has gotten his hands on a Chinese Macbook Pro ripoff with a Tremont Celeron. Might get a review of it eventually.

 

[Dayman1225]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1396787827963277315

Ian apparently has gotten his hands on a Chinese Macbook Pro ripoff with a Tremont Celeron. Might get a review of it eventually.

$300 dollar seems pretty good for Tremont, SATA SSD and 12gb of ram.

 

[LightningZ71]

2x6GB "dimms"? That's a choice...

 

[Dayman1225]

Die size for the 4c Tremont CPU and chipset

https://twitter.com/x/status/1396826150245183492

 

[d-block]

Looks slick!

 

[Panino Manino]

It's true that an Atom Goldmont Plus is WEAKER than an Richland APU in single thread/IPC?

I ask because maybe I'll buy a very cheap new mobo plus APU to light browsing soon, and I had thought about getting an A4-6300 APU because it's cheaply available, but there's this alternative, and Atom J4005 that may be better because of the more robust media engine.

@Brunnis

 

[Shivansps]

It's true that an Atom Goldmont Plus is WEAKER than an Richland APU in single thread/IPC?

I ask because maybe I'll buy a very cheap new mobo plus APU to light browsing soon, and I had thought about getting an A4-6300 APU because it's cheaply available, but there's this alternative, and Atom J4005 that may be better because of the more robust media engine.

@Brunnis

That is correct, but mostly due to the Richland APU having a large frecuency advantage, i dont think it is below on IPC. You still gona have problems with both on Windows 10, as they are both slow. Im still handling some A6-7480 here, they are just slow, every time you load a web page it goes to 100%.

Try to get a 3000G/200GE with the cheapest AM4 board you can find, the diference is like night and day.

 

[Panino Manino]

Try to get a 3000G/200GE with the cheapest AM4 board you can find, the diference is like night and day.

Thought about this but if I go this way the price difference will be 3.5 fold minimum.

Lightning burned the computer.
Not that this is a problem, problem is that I don't have a way to test the APU. I'm trying to go buy another mobo that is the cheaper option but I just realized, because the lightning came from the HDMI that was connected to the TV I think that what burned was the APU and not the motherboard. Maybe I just need to buy another APU that's cheaper than the mobo... I'm lost.
I just need something, anything to play the role of desktop PC, as long as it's working it should serve.

 

[Shivansps]

Gemini Lake J4105:

The power use is very very low im meassuring just 1.5A of current at the 12v input of the DC-DC PICO PSU for 100% cpu use what is just 18W.
When doing CPU+IGP its the same because it goes down to 10W TDP, the difference there is that it cant keep the 2.4Ghz and 750mhz turbos at the same time, it goes down to 2.0ghz and 450mhz.
The bios allows to modify the PL1 setting and outright remove the TDP limit, by doing this the CPU goes to 18W TDP while doing sustained CPU+GPU loads and it needs 2.6A (31W) to maintain both 2.4ghz cpu and 750mhz gpu clocks.


It lacks AV1 decode, but this is expected, Tremont IGP should be the one having it right?

It can still handle 1080p AV1 youtube videos by CPU only (some of the 8K videos get encoded to AV1 as well at lower resolutions). VP9 is no problem.

 

[NostaSeronx]

It lacks AV1 decode, but this is expected, Tremont IGP should be the one having it right?

AV1 Decode is Gracemont Lakes only.

Tremont Lakes JPL/EHL Capabilities here:

media-driver/README.md at master · intel/media-driver

Intel Graphics Media Driver to support hardware decode, encode and video processing. - intel/media-driver

github.com

 

[Shivansps]

wait im confused now, what are those Elkhart Lake SoCs?

 

[IntelUser2000]

wait im confused now, what are those Elkhart Lake SoCs?

Elkhart Lake is an embedded brother of Jasper Lake. Both Tremont.

 

[Shivansps]

Then there is not really a point upgrading to a Jasper or Elkhart unless you really need the extra cpu perf for something. But thats not really the reason to get an Atom in the first place.

Gracemont on the other hand it is a massive upgrade, but its likely to use more power as well. I would be very suprised if they can keep the power use this low and at the same time bring all those upgrades to the CPU and IGP.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Then there is not really a point upgrading to a Jasper or Elkhart unless you really need the extra cpu perf for something. But thats not really the reason to get an Atom in the first place.

If possible, you can just downclock Tremont to get Goldmont Plus-like performance at lower power. If that floats your boat. Not sure how many Jasper Lake systems would really permit that though.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Gracemont on the other hand it is a massive upgrade, but its likely to use more power as well. I would be very suprised if they can keep the power use this low and at the same time bring all those upgrades to the CPU and IGP.

Gracemont is 20-40% faster than Tremont at the same clock. Since Tremont made similar gains you could make the same argument about Gracemont. So they could bring it to the 6W and 10W platform - it'll just limit MT performance compared to the desktop implementation and likely end up with quad cores or something.

The unconstrained TDP and double the cores is the big factor in the massive gains anyway but you won't see that. At 6W Tremont barely manages 2GHz and even at 10W it's under 3GHz.

Whether you see 20-40% faster than Tremont is fast enough is another question. I mean they'll probably manage another 5-10% clock speed gains to get roughly 50% improvement every generation.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I bet if someone came with a board that uses these chips but have 3-4 PCIe x1 slots crypto miners would buy them. At idle you can go from having 40W to something like 10W even with a powerful PSU. Also the boards are pretty damn cheap.

I thought of doing this at one point with just one GPU. The idea of being super efficient made sense to me. Also with one GPU the system power use takes a fair portion while these ITX boards absolutely minimize that.

 

[Shivansps]

I bet if someone came with a board that uses these chips but have 3-4 PCIe x1 slots crypto miners would buy them. At idle you can go from having 40W to something like 10W even with a powerful PSU. Also the boards are pretty damn cheap.

I thought of doing this at one point with just one GPU. The idea of being super efficient made sense to me. Also with one GPU the system power use takes a fair portion while these ITX boards absolutely minimize that.

somehow Intel Atom boards cant support more than 2 GPU properly, ive tested with a Asus J1800I-C, Asus J4005I-C, Biostar J4105 NHU all 3 have the same issue, for 2 gpus it seems OK, but at the 3rd gpu the boot loop does not work properly anymore and there is no way to fix it. That was tested with 1 to 4 PCI-E multiplier.

Asrock has matx models, like the J4005M that already comes with 3 PCI-E and i guess you could adapt the wifi M.2 key E to a PCI-E riser as well. But i never had a Asrock board so i never tested them.

The ones that work OK for that job are the AMD boards, belive it or not, the AM1 boards work very well for mining using PCI-E multipliers, and even single PCI-E slots ones with a E1-6010N like the Biostar A68N-2100K work very well.

 

[IntelUser2000]

somehow Intel Atom boards cant support more than 2 GPU properly, ive tested with a Asus J1800I-C, Asus J4005I-C, Biostar J4105 NHU all 3 have the same issue, for 2 gpus it seems OK, but at the 3rd gpu the boot loop does not work properly anymore and there is no way to fix it. That was tested with 1 to 4 PCI-E multiplier.

I read a bit into this and even if you use a multiplier it still uses lanes. The J4105 for example only has 6 lanes. Maybe that's the reason? The AM1 boards have 16 lanes.

6 seems enough but if it's being used by peripherals and I/O it would quickly be used. In desktops the chipset provides lanes in addition to the CPU while for these boards 6 is all you got since it's an SoC.

 

[Shivansps]

I read a bit into this and even if you use a multiplier it still uses lanes. The J4105 for example only has 6 lanes. Maybe that's the reason? The AM1 boards have 16 lanes.

6 seems enough but if it's being used by peripherals and I/O it would quickly be used. In desktops the chipset provides lanes in addition to the CPU while for these boards 6 is all you got since it's an SoC.

nah, the ones used for mining are a x1 PCIe switch card to 4 USB3 ports wired to use PCI-E risers.
Something like this thing

they are actually petty cheap.

The problem is most likely a firmware bug because all other AMD and Intel boards work, altrought you will most likely need to have the option to "4g decoding" to go over 4-5 gpus.

BTW, it also works with pci-e x4 wifi adapters, i generally use wifi adapters to test if the switch/riser is working properly.

 

[Brunnis]

Seems the Atlas Canyon NUCs are incoming. I believe this listing just appeared on Intel's site and it marks the NUCs as "Launched":

Products formerly Atlas Canyon

Products formerly Atlas Canyon product listing with links to detailed product features and specifications.

ark.intel.com

The SKUs don't seem to be listed at any resellers yet. Will be interesting to see how the availability pans out. Would be fun to play around with the N6005 version, but to be honest it feels like Tremont is already old news at this point...

 

[IntelUser2000]

Would be fun to play around with the N6005 version, but to be honest it feels like Tremont is already old news at this point...

I'd play with a Goldmont Plus board. The delays made Tremont pretty much this year, which means Gracemont will be a year from now. The core itself is available much early as we can see from Alderlake. The chip however, is different unfortunately.

Not a big fan of NUC. It's essentially a laptop or a prebuilt system which has to be thrown away. Would like to see Asrock mITX boards again.

 

[dullard]

Not a big fan of NUC. It's essentially a laptop or a prebuilt system which has to be thrown away. Would like to see Asrock mITX boards again.

The main benefit of NUC is that they bring more of the cutting edge to small computers. I realize that this doesn't belong in the Atom thread, but the NUC 12 Serpent Canyon tempts me. 2.5 Gb ethernet and 6E Wi-fi are perfect for my HTPC replacement. Fast movie streaming (and even faster copying to/from my main PC). The only ASRock mITX for Alder Lake has 1 Gb ethernet, AC wifi, and only a third of the M.2 ports. Heck, at first glance it didn't even have a header for an SD slot for showing photos on the TV (true a USB adapter can be added, but there goes the nice looks and some of the smaller form factor). https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H610M-ITXac/index.asp And that is if ASRock even sells it in the US, as I've been stymied several times trying to buy ASRock mITX products that aren't sold here.

Also to address your concern the NUC 12 Dragon Canyon is socketed.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Also to address your concern the NUC 12 Dragon Canyon is socketed.

Socketed doesn't concern me. Intel supports one additional year at the best anyways.

Whether you can replace the motherboard or not is a big deal for me. Then it doesn't matter if the CPU, RAM or the chipset changes. The Atom-based boards have integrated CPU anyway.

If you are talking about absolutely sizing down, yes NUC is the way to go. But mITX on say the Asrock J5005 can be really small.

Look at the size of this thing: https://www.mini-itx.com/~M350

That's the size of the Netgear R7000 Nighthawk modem! And fully upgradeable.

 

[you2]

Not sure I agree here - i mean yes it is a prebuilt system but the primary difference between nuc and laptop is power consumption limits. The nuc is limited due to heat dissipation but otherwise it can consume a steady stream of current. The laptop has similar thermal issue but also is fighting for increase battery life which result in other constraints.

I'm a fan of the nuc form factor as long as it is one of the model that support 2 ssd (raid 1); makes a great mail server.

Not a big fan of NUC. It's essentially a laptop or a prebuilt system which has to be thrown away. Would like to see Asrock mITX boards again.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Here are the two big issues I see with NUC and also laptops. They use a cheap platform but you have to replace all so the cost is not really far away from getting a DIY Core mITX setup. An mITX Pentium low power setup only needs a board replacement.

Also part of the throwaway culture. You'll likely end up with a weak link somewhere but you can't do anything about it while on an mITX board you get to choose.

By the way Jasperlake features 1.5MB L2 cache and 4MB L3 cache. So it's the first generation with a 3 level cache system.