[Droid Eris Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pkopalek:
The processor in our phone is that of the original 2g/3g iPhone, the 528mhz Qualcomm (that should have been updated 3 years ago).

The processor in the Droid is the same as the iPhone 3gs (except 550mhz clocked instead of 600mhz).

The Droid processor has a floating point co-processor (sort of) which is why the Linpack scores are WAY higher than ours (it doesn't actually mean the phone is faster, it just does certain floating point operations faster).

The Droid processor is also SEVERELY underclocked, probably for power reasons. There is more of a demand in the Droid crowd to control power usage while still increasing speed (hence the low-voltage kernels, etc). "Lower voltages" are found by using different ways to multiply the frequency, but in a processor like ours, we are limited in the different speeds we can multiply (not to mention a ceiling of reasonable operation being usually 800mhz or below).

See, some people want their droids to be at 800mhz. They want that great battery life, to keep things cool, and a small performance boost.

Some want to go up to 1300mhz, maybe because they play games, or because the think they're cool, or whatever. That requires different methods for overclocking (depending on which exact speeds) and uses a lot more juice. You could use a 1300mhz kernel and keep it down around 800mhz (or whatever specific speeds the kernel allows), but that kernel might not be built for low voltage - you might just be still multiplying a number that keeps your voltage high, instead of the 800mhz Kernel that only goes so high, but keeps things easier on the battery.

Our Eris processors are more limited. Pretty much, you want your Eris OC'd (usually to the 700+mhz somewhere is all you get), or you don't. If you don't want it OC'd, you just don't install SetCPU. If you do, you install and use it (or whatever other overclocking app/widget you want).

To use your Eris low voltage, you pretty much need to stay 480mhz or lower. I keep my sleep SetCPU Profile at 122mhz-480mhz. VERY good on battery, and it throttles up to 480mhz (so the phone rings faster) when it's time for a call to come in.

Some Kernels have some things enabled (netfilter for wifi tethering and other things, a2sd enabled, overclocking, etc - depending on how it's put together). It's probably best to have a kernel that allows everything, since with our processors, there's not much of a power drain penalty (none that I know of in fact) for having a different kernel, and just running at 528mhz. I notice no battery difference at 806mhz in fact, it's a matter of having SetCPU profiles (or whatever) set up correctly and effectively.

Here are a few Kernels you might find (but most are incorporated in ROMs already, so you'll virtually NEVER have to flash it - except that I use Ivan's Eris_Official 1.0 ROM with zanfur's beautiful v3 kernel - it works perfectly at 806mhz on my Eris).

AOSP kernel with all the goodies:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=688275&highlight=kernel

Zanfur's kernel (my favorite):

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=679102&highlight=kernel

Kaos posted this one for AOSP:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=688439&highlight=kernel

Darchstar posted this one:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=686797&highlight=kernel

The point is that for us, it's not that useful to flash kernels. Most of the ROMs you'll download (even the most 'basic' ones) have all the goodies enabled on the Kernel.

Different phone, different hardware, different ballgame.