128mb Of Ram...

[jdh2550]

Lovely - now, do you want to re-consider talking about putting words in people's mouths?

Yeah, doesn't feel very good does it? I'm glad you got my point.


Oh yes, you educated me. I didn't have a clue until you came along. Thanks muchly kind sir.

 

[nubie]

Why was 128MB of ram chosen?

I too wonder, if anyone (who had a hand in deciding, and wishes to share with us the reasons for their decision) knows why, please let me know.


Off Topic (maybe?):

I like that there are 2 SD card slots, perhaps we can populate the second with a "swap card" for virtual memory if an application needs to use a lot of memory.

On the whole we are so much better off than the GP2X (I think even if the P & DOOR A had only 64MB we would still be a lot better off.) Basically the GP2X was "sharing" 64mb in a wacky way so that it couldn't even be used right off.

Hey, doesn't my Xbox only have 64MB of RAM?? I seem to recall running a Damn Small Linux and then a virtual machine with Windows 98 on that. Not to mention Tony Hawks Pro Skater 8, which is a fairly decent looking game considering, and we have the same screen resolution (I wonder where the GPU stacks up against a Geforce3, although it doesn't really matter.)

I want the Pandora to do anything I can imagine as much as the next guy, but my ultimate would be emulating some system, or browsing the web (lets be frank, I have 10 Firefox tabs open right now, including Youtube, and it is only using 77MB of ram, if a handheld this small could do that I would be fine, Actually now that I think about it my entire XP PC is only using 128MB right now .


So I agree with you in spirit, I am highly curious and want to know the motives behind these interesting and potentially crucial hardware decisions. In real life I doubt that it will make much of a difference, most all apps will need modification for their use on an ARM system, and most any software with an ARM target is likely to have memory constraints in mind as it is being written.

My number one want for this system is a minimal loader and a full OS, games that really need a lot of resources won't have extra stuff in the memory (and/or file system), and they can just get to it straight away. At the same time apps and hardware that needs full support can wait for the OS to load and you get all your file management tools and drivers etc.

 

[jdh2550]

Why was 128MB of ram chosen?

I too wonder, if anyone (who had a hand in deciding, and wishes to share with us the reasons for their decision) knows why, please let me know.

......

So I agree with you in spirit, I am highly curious and want to know the motives behind these interesting and potentially crucial hardware decisions. In real life I doubt that it will make much of a difference, most all apps will need modification for their use on an ARM system, and most any software with an ARM target is likely to have memory constraints in mind as it is being written.

FWIW, you're exactly spot on with my intent of the post. I'm sure folks will cry foul and suggest that I was being more negative. But, really, I just want to know why 128MB. My negativity was directed at folks who appeared to wish to dismiss my question out of hand without having read my first post very carefully - of at all.

I agree that most apps will need modification for the ARM - but with access to "most of" the Debian ARM repository and with high quality cross compilers for some others (depending on their nature of course) might open up the doors to apps that were not written with the ARM platform in mind (and thus may be less efficient).

 

[Pickle]

I think its time to stop the endless blabbering on this thread, theres no more value being added. The question was answered a long time ago.

 

[jdh2550]

I think its time to stop the endless blabbering on this thread, theres no more value being added. The question was answered a long time ago.

Hi Pickle,

At first I thought it had been answered - but if you look at what you posted from MWeston it hasn't really. There's no answer to the question "why" at all. Just that it's soldered in place and is unlikely to be upgraded in the future because of compatibility concerns. Or am I missing something?

Also, with other threads on killer bunnies and speeding tickets on the way to TDIC I don't think this post is so bad to keep going... ;-)

 

[javaJake]

So, are we done yelling at each other yet? I think all that can be said has been said. We've explain, we've debated, and we've done them both twice over. We understand jdh2550, and we understand where Exophase is coming from (there have been a lot of complainers, so it's easy to see this as another complaint). Both sides have valid points.

We need to shake hands and move on.

 

[Pickle]

I think its time to stop the endless blabbering on this thread, theres no more value being added. The question was answered a long time ago.

Hi Pickle,

At first I thought it had been answered - but if you look at what you posted from MWeston it hasn't really. There's no answer to the question "why" at all. Just that it's soldered in place and is unlikely to be upgraded in the future because of compatibility concerns. Or am I missing something?

Also, with other threads on killer bunnies and speeding tickets on the way to TDIC I don't think this post is so bad to keep going... ;-)

Well for exact reason for selecting 128 mb you should ask MWeston directly. This is his site My guess is that its purely based on availability and/or cost.

 

[nubie]

Well for exact reason for selecting 128 mb you should ask MWeston directly. This is his site My guess is that its purely based on availability and/or cost.


yeah, I for one was interested to hear that the RAM is soldered directly onto the OMAP!! I guess that is the ultimate in reduced latency and signaling power! As close as you could get without putting it on the same die. Perhaps there is a deal for the 128 setup? Or maybe the price would be $20-50 more (that would really make it too much.) I notice it is "mobile" Ram, this doesn't sound good, that means it is 1) Rare and 2) expensive.

To be fair we have it pretty good, I mean the GP2X didn't fall on its face because of only 64MB of ram (there are many many reasons why it sucks), and this device will really be an upgrade.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Maybe this thread should wait until The P-Team comes back from Texas.

 

[Squidge]

I few months ago (before the OMAP was possible), I remember the people here were happy with a 360Mhz processor with 96MB RAM...

 

[jdh2550]

I few months ago (before the OMAP was possible), I remember the people here were happy with a 360Mhz processor with 96MB RAM...

Ahh, the good ol' days eh? I am happy now and was happy before too. I am looking forward to a pandora with 128MB which is better than 64MB or 96MB (thanks guys for pointing this out - I mean that might have been non-obvious to someone, right ), personally I'd like to see them do 247.32 MB just to be different :rolleyes: . Or maybe they could just leave the memory bus dangling out in the open and I could hook up some old ferrite core?

Anyway, as suggested I went to that site and sent an e-mail. I'm sure he's likely too busy to answer - there are more important things to be done right now. I'm still curious, and I still ask too many questions. :blink: Oh well.

 

[squeakypants]

My guess is that size RAM is much more expensive. I mean a 1gb stick of RAM isn't very expensive nowadays ($20), but that stick is a chunk of the size of the Pandora! I'm sure there's also compatibility issues with the ARM processor.

I'd love them to spring it to 256mb, but I'm sure they would have done that if they could have. Still, considering the DS has 4mb, and even the PSP only has 36mb, I think 128mb will be plenty. Hell, the Wii only has about 80mb!

 

[icurafu]

Why can't this thread be closed. We all know that 128MB is what is built into the SoC. If we want more than 128MB, we need to chose another SoC.

In an email I got from mw a while back he quoted...

QUOTE
"What we have selected is the biggest size we can get."


So yes, we will have to work with 128MB of ram, which will mean, no Ubuntu frontend, no matter how hard your close your eyes and wish it to be.

 

[jdh2550]

Why can't this thread be closed. We all know that 128MB is what is built into the SoC. If we want more than 128MB, we need to chose another SoC.

In an email I got from mw a while back he quoted...

QUOTE
"What we have selected is the biggest size we can get."

So yes, we will have to work with 128MB of ram, which will mean, no Ubuntu frontend, no matter how hard your close your eyes and wish it to be.


Err - you don't build memory into an SoC. An SoC is a system on a chip which has no memory - if you look at the OMAP diagram you will see it has an interface to Mobile DDR memory. So if "we" all "know" what you just said then we're all wrong.

It's also interesting that you seem to expect us to know the contents that you got from mw.

This isn't about the Ubuntu front end - but feel free to close your eyes and type whatever you wish to help extend the life of this thread.

 

[icurafu]

It's been said a few times before. Even before you joined this forum. I can understand that you don't want to read the hundreds of pages of spam to look for it.

And yes, SoCs normally have memory embedded. TI will not sell the SoC without memory already added to the board.

It's time to move on. There are lots more topics to spam about.

 

[Pickle]

Err - you don't build memory into an SoC. An SoC is a system on a chip which has no memory - if you look at the OMAP diagram you will see it has an interface to Mobile DDR memory. So if "we" all "know" what you just said then we're all wrong.

Its technically not part of the soc, but its directly on top of it. If all the TI chips came with the memory presoldered on, I would consider that pretty much part of the soc or least the same package.

 

[C B Felterbush]

true enough, if it if soldered on by TI then i would consider it part of a pre-configured package. however my question of whether it could be upgraded is still unanswered. not should it, or why would it, but could it.

i think the only way to see is wait till i have one and take a look myself.

 

[flatmush]

After programming for the psp and never running out of its 26MiB of user memory I have to say it would be some achievement to ever use the full 128MiB in a non-commercial project.
What I'm interested to know is if the ram is used as the video ram too (for framebuffers and depth-buffers) and if this will impact graphical performance (especially fill rate).

 

[ldesnogu]

What I'm interested to know is if the ram is used as the video ram too (for framebuffers and depth-buffers) and if this will impact graphical performance (especially fill rate).

I suspect the framebuffer is separate and probably has a low speed interface to the CPU.

This is what happened to PDA that started using 2700G (which is a PowerVR chip packaged by Intel/Marvell for Xscale). Suddenly the benchmarks that were supposed to say how fast the video chip was got very bad scores because these benchmarks were accessing the FB directly. That did not mean at all these video chips were bad, it's just that they were not used properly.

I am afraid the Pandora may look bad at first because of that (especially as I did not see anything an accelerated FB device driver in TI kernel).
But I am sure things will be much better after programmers get educated to the new rules

WARNING: all of what is written above is pure speculation, even though it's based on some facts

 

[Zarneth]

After programming for the psp and never running out of its 26MiB of user memory I have to say it would be some achievement to ever use the full 128MiB in a non-commercial project.
What I'm interested to know is if the ram is used as the video ram too (for framebuffers and depth-buffers) and if this will impact graphical performance (especially fill rate).
I think the reason SOME people want more memory is so they can easily run programs designed for desktop pc's. Programming is a lot of work, but grabbing a debian arm package, or compiling from source s a lot easier can be done by ANYONE vaguely proficient in using linux. And then they don't have to wait half a year for the pandora specific apps to become mature enough. 128mb is still fine, you just have less choice of what desktop apps you can use, particularly if you want to multitask. I think what I'll do is buy a small 1-2gb high speed/quality SD card for apps and swap file, then I'll use the bigger/cheaper/slower sd cards in the other slot for larger storage.