The Eco-PC is slowly becoming an new IT buzz. After all, we live in an eco-conscious world where the environment matters (or at least the new generation of eco-geeks think they have a better chance of getting laid if they claim that). Therefore, we need computing that’s friendly to the environment.
We already have LED TFT’s that don’t go much over 100W in consumption, but our desktop PCs still hit well over 450W and laptop chargers don’t shy in excess of 120W. Sure, netbooks and ultraportable laptops go for half of that, but you do have to cut on various luxuries.
The ARM architecture and its string of Cortex CPUs that we find in most smartphones and some netbooks is very eco-friendly. nVidia’s version, the Tegra and Tegra 2, integrate everything finally offering us the “computer-on-a-chip”. That’s nice, but the issue is that the only operating systems on the ARM are proprietary, boxed-in systems that don’t offer the functionality that Windows or Linux offer.
Is there hope? Sure, if we take a look at Evo’s two solutions (first and second). Average consumption of 14W, Intel Atom? Sure, that’s enough for a home media server. Hook it up to a couple of solar cells and you have something that will cost you a big nothing in terms of environmental impact or electricity bill!
But wait, there’s more! A $25 computer-on-a-chip dubbed Raspberry Pie is also available. Although only an ARM Cortex (edit: actually ARM11), the tiny tiny computer puts many other systems to shame boasting 1080p HD video decoding (the Eco-PC from Evo can also do that, but the video resolution is not supported).
The future looks bright for the resource-friendly eco-pc’s.
Hi, Just a small correction: The Raspberry Pi processor (BCM2835) does not have an ARM Cortex core, but a ARM11 core.
The EVO Eco-PC processor is more powerful, but the raspberry pi can do 1080p thanks to a Videocore GPU.
true, my mistake
. I stand corrected, thanks!