Buick Regal Boasts Industry's Fastest Processor
November 13th, 2010 1:35 PM
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A GM press release subtitled Engine Control Module Reliably Performs 125 Million Operations a Second reveals that
A 32-bit embedded processor with three megabytes of integrated flash memory gives the 2011 Buick Regal’s Ecotec 2.0L engine microcontroller the quickest throughput, or processing power, in the automotive industry.
For the Regal driver, this means more precise fuel delivery for the best-possible fuel economy, emissions and performance.
Our question: why can’t this processor work in Chevy’s truck marketing?
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Only helps if it can yield 40 mpg or pump out 400hp, other than that even if it can sample the sensors 1 millionths times per sec is not going to change 1 iota. Mind as well change the cpu for u every 6 mths like Intel,Celeron does so your car can run smoother.
What else can Buick brag about, having been upstaged by Hyundai in the turbo-four sedan arena? That thing got an Intel?
But the big question is - can it get more than 30 FPS in Crysis? It is probably cheaper to use the new processor since the 16-bit CPUs are WAYYYY obsolete...Like it is cheaper to buy a 3.5" floppy drive than a lower-capacity 5.25" drive.
Marketing this is stupid on many levels. First, 125 million operations per second is, in the realm of processors in general, slug-like. While there are specific engineering concerns for the microcontroller on an ECU (e.g., heat dissipation) that largely invalidate the comparison, it invites the comparison to desktop processors which handle literally billions of operations per second. Second, as a stat, it's fairly useless and trivial to game. They advertise this, the next car from any manufacturer suddenly comes out with a faster processor that shows up in their advertising, since none of the car manufacturers are actually designing or fabricating their chips, to make GM look like idiots all they have to do is tell their supplier to give them the next chip up. And I could get in to the fact that they're emitting a press release about technology that they don't have anything to do with the development. And that the technology isn't driven by the auto industry anyway. And that even still it's largely a side effect of other processor development anyway. So it amounts to GM saying "We paid a couple dollars more for a better piece of silicon. Buy our cars!".