“Crusoe-based laptops have hit the market, and some critics
are underwhelmed. Are benchmark tests to blame?“
“Crusoe saves power by running standard x86 instructions in
software, rather than hardware, which allows for greater control
over how much power is used. During operation, the chip must
recompile x86 code into native Crusoe code, which slows down
performance. However, the recompiling process only has to be
carried out once, meaning operation speeds up during the course of
use.”
“If you’re performing a repetitive task, performance goes up
after a couple of iterations,” said Joseph Byrne, analyst with
research firm Dataquest Inc. “Benchmarks may not capture that.”