r/AskEngineers • u/SypeiTerra • 3h ago

Discussion What would ancient SoC design remade using modern technology be like in terms of power draw

  1. Been wondering how little power a Gameboy Color or a GB Advance SP would use with completely modern manufacturing methods, like the Gameboy Color used 0.6 watts at the time which was nearly nothing (which is why it ran on TWO AA batts for hours on end) but made with a modern CPU design process it would use EVEN LESS power to the point it'd likely be an insubstantial percent of the power draw with the screen and sound being the primary power consumption but with modern high speed E-Ink displays and LED backlights it could run that down far more and a higher end speaker driver could run at a much higher efficiency albeit probably not a lot more
  2. For comparison my modern smartphone runs at 0.6 watts while running things in the background, and barely 3-4 at full tilt doing file transfers to an external PC (uses almost the whole damned things resources lol)
7 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

90% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

•

u/Capable-Walrus2703 3h ago

a gba sp chip on a modern node would sip so little power you could probably run it off ambient rf or a tiny solar cell no joke. the screen and audio would dwarf the soc by like 100x. an e-ink display plus efficient class d amp and the whole thing starts looking like a casio wristwatch in power budget

the funny part is nobody would bother because the market for a device that does 2002 things at 0.02 watts is a dozen hobbyists on hackaday

•

u/zekromNLR 2h ago

I don't think you can get an e-ink display that matches the GBA display's spec though? I know some people have managed to get e-ink running at a high refresh rate, but not with the full colour depth of the GBA screen.

•

u/SypeiTerra 2h ago

honestly I would buy that if it could be made into a mass production device ...  itd be hilarious running it without a battery on only ambient RF too

•

u/bunabhucan 1h ago

Laughing at "ancient." I wrote a 2D/3D wireframe mandlebrot render for the BBC Micro that could save the pictures to a floppy and then load eight of them in sucession at 0.3 fps. The last zoom at 2000 iterations per pixel took two months.