The benchmarks show the processor soundly beating the quad-core, 2.4GHz Intel Atom Z3770 (Bay Trail-T) tablet system-on-chip while edging out a 2GHz, quad-core AMD Athlon 5350 “Kabini” SoC.In the leaked benchmarks, the Isaiah II is listed as a quad-core, 2GHz, 64-bit x86 core with 2MB of L2 cache and up-to-date instruction sets including AVX 2.0. No fabrication process, TDPs, or other details were listed.
The AMD Athlon 5350 has a 25 Watt TDP, and although Intel has not released TDPs for its Atom Z3000 SoCs, it lists a Scenario Design Power (SDP) rating of only 2 Watts. The SDP is an Intel invention, and is considered to be lower than the actual TDP. Still the 22nm Atom Z3770 is likely considerably more power efficient than the Athlon.
Patented x86/ARM hybrid?
The idea of a competitive new x86 processor is interesting enough, but ExtremeTech suggests the Isaiah II may be even more intriguing than the tests suggest. In covering the benchmark story, the publication referenced an email from a reader pointing to a patent Via received in 2011 for a hybrid x86/ARM processor. The publication, which recently speculated that AMD may be building a hybrid ARM/x86 processor, is now suggesting that Via may have its own hybrid design in play, and that it may well be the Isaiah II.