Freescale's i.MX6 SoC Smacks The Old Intel Atom Z530

For the past few weeks I've had the pleasure of playing with CompuLab's Utilite Computer. The Utilite is a miniature ARM desktop computer powered by Freescale's i.MX6 SoC and is running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. This is a speedy little Linux system that for some workloads can blow past Intel's original Atom Z530 "Poulsbo" SoC system.

The full review of the CompuLab Utilite will be published in the coming days (likely next week sometime), including many performance benchmarks of the i.MX6 system compared against hardware new and old. In being excited about the Utilite, I decided to share some teaser benchmarks, which in this article is the CompuLab Utilite compared to the earlier CompuLab Fit-PC2. The Fit-PC2 had an Intel Atom Z530 while being about the same form factor as CompuLab's newest Linux PC.

Again, in the full review will be comparisons against multiple systems but for this preview benchmarking are just some numbers against the Atom Z530 system given that this Atom SoC was once dominant among low-power Intel hardware.

For those wanting to check out the CompuLab Utilite, visit Utilite-Computer.com. Just as with the other CompuLab systems I have reviewed, I'm quite liking the Utilite so far and its performance is decent given the size, low-power use, and ultra small form factor. The Utilite that was sent over contained the quad-core i.MX6 SoC clocked at 1.0GHz, 2GB of system memory, 32GB SanDisk SSD, and was running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with the Linux 3.0 kernel. There is OpenGL ES accelerated support but it does require binary blobs.
The Utilite on first impressions is quite a strong performance against the few year old Atom Z530 SoC.
The Intel Fit-PC2 from CompuLab though does command its lead in some benchmarks.
Stay tuned for the full review of the exciting CompuLab Utilite in the days ahead. Check out the rest of the early Utilite benchmark results on OpenBenchmarking.org via 1401249-PL-ATOMARM5943.