[geeks] New Intel Atom-based barebones system

[nate at portents.com]

> Don't get me wrong, I love my D945GCLF. Since it's on anyway all the
> time I don't really mind if it takes twice as long to transcode. I am
> just a little bit disappointed that the whole motherboard and chip
> consume about 41W of power when the procesor only takes 4W of that - I
> suspect it may be better with future Atom's though.

Intel already has a low power chipset for Atom, called Poulsbo.  It was
mentioned in that Anandtech article I linked to weeks ago:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3276&p=17

And notice they went with a PowerVR SGX graphics core?  That's because
Intel apparently can't (or can't be bothered to design) a low-power
graphics core.

Using the old 945 chipset makes sense for Intel - I think they're still
fabbing it on 130nm, so they get to re-use old production lines, and it's
a fully debugged chipset, so the yields are probably fabulous, and they
can get away with re-using 945 for now - and it maximizes Intel's profits.

- Nate