Be careful with your processor selection

Be careful with your processor selection

When you're ready to buy a new high-end camcorder or a new car, you probably spend a lot of time researching the product or reading independent reviews. In any case, you probably don't make a decision based solely on the vendor's marketing claims.

However, many design engineers are quite arbitrary in their choice of processor products. We wonder why such critical technical decisions are often made without any independent reference. Here are some of the observations we have made.

The primary reason is that most engineers are not aware that using third-party analysis is a valid approach, or they are unable to find independent benchmark results for a specific processor they are considering.

Second, there is the cost issue. For cars or most other consumer products, it is straightforward to do side-by-side testing. But for processors, this is not the case, and careful analysis and comparison requires a great deal of detailed work, even for experienced engineers. The cost is higher than comparing the features of digital cameras or road testing SUVs.

In addition, for consumer products, the analysis costs can be spread across a large number of consumers, while the number of chip users is much smaller. Therefore, some organizations provide chip benchmarking and analysis, generally relying on chip companies for funding. However, not all chip companies are willing to increase or pay for independent benchmarking, in part because their consumers do not insist on this work.

However, you have to consider that making decisions without independent analysis is a dangerous practice. The wrong choice of processor can lead to costly consequences. For example, you think the processor you choose can handle real-time H.264 encoding at less than 3 watts of power consumption. After spending 6 months developing the code, you find out that this little chip can't do the job and you have to start over with another chip. This situation can be avoided with the help of good benchmarks.