[noonespecial]

The 500Mhz geode LX from amd is a fine powerful little x86 CPU with a full 686 instruction set and lots of on-chip goodies. It uses just 5 watts costs $20 with its little companion chip for a one off, and doesn't even need a heat sink.

Lots of small scale embedded manufactures like Soekris make impressive little boards that can be had for $200 or so and run full blown linux distros.

I have yet to see an arm or freescale that can even come close.

Sorry but I have to say !(Embedded + CPU != x86)

[ejs]

More commonly processors such as XScales are used for many of these applications. These are very common in applications like smart phones, Ethernet switches and the likes and are ARM based. Since of these can operate into the GHz range, I would say they would beat a 500MHz amd...

But the real reason to use them is for the applications that don't need a 500MHz processor like all the pxa250 and 255s out there running at below 200MHz.

I would have to agree that most embedded systems do not use x86 processors.

[noonespecial]

Ahh but they don't have to be. Most small arm, xscale, mips, blackfin, etc cpus lack basic functionality like an MMU, DMA, bus trancievers, large cache, etc making the linux you have to run on them very crippled and the toolchains used to compile for them very specialized.

With the geode, you can have a standard distro and are just an apt-get or a yum away from software bliss. Also a geode at 500mhz with its on chip mmu and cache runs most apps many times faster than a multi gig arm, particularly when multitasking.

Its true that there aren't any geode imbued cell phones that I know of, but they are small enough, and can be made low power enough by slowing freq that its certainly possible. I'd like a cellphone running stock centos5.