Intel Atom series is aimed at mobile devices with low power requirements and not so much need for a lot of horsepower. Atom will make it possible for Intel to broaden its mobile user base to other low power devices. This is a segment where processor manufacturer VIA has been an active contributor for many years and we’ve been waiting for a comparison between Intel Atom and VIA’s most recent creation Isaiah. Even if it’s still some time to go before we will see any real consumer products sporting these chips, a direct comparison between the two have now surfaced.
As both processors were clocked at 1.6GHz it’s quite interesting to see how the VIA processor really whips Intel’s Atom processor in the ALU performance test. German site Eeepcnews.de claims that VIA Isaiah offers 25% better ALU performance than Intel Atom in CrystalMark2004R3. The FPU performance is in favor of Isaiah, but with a very narrow margin.
We shouldn’t read too much into this thoguh, and it would be nice to see some power consumption tests and especially with products ready to launch. But still, VIA seems to have a competitive product at hand.
