A Recent Presentation about the DragonBox Pyra

[Hồng Thất Công]

I pronounce Puh Rei like in Parade

 

[rygD]

Is 2GB of RAM set in stone?

Why is it too much? seriously, 2GBs on a lightweight ARM device is plenty.

Just curious.  I don't want to bring that discussion here, but some people might be able to make use of more.  I don't know until I try it if it is too much or too little.  The question about the location of the RAM was somewhat related to this, and I am content that we only need to replace the CPU board to get nearly a whole different system. 

I'm pretty sure I heard at least 2 different pronunciations of Pyra from ED during the presentation so maybe he was just covering all his bases. ;-)

- Neelix

That was what I meant.  I heard him say it similar to how I do, and at least one other way.  I just want to know which is more technically correct.  I am not ashamed of pronouncing things properly even if it isn't the popular way.

 

[thatgui]

"Panzwora"??

Why wasn't that in the poll ? Sounds great

Just curious.  I don't want to bring that discussion here, but some people might be able to make use of more.  I don't know until I try it if it is too much or too little.  The question about the location of the RAM was somewhat related to this, and I am content that we only need to replace the CPU board to get nearly a whole different system.

I guess space and derived from that money and power consumption are the main factors here. We only have a certain amount of space, including more RAM would mean increasing the cost significantly as one way to do it, would be to buy the same amount of memory modules, but with higher capacity. If space would be left to "just" buy more modules , you have additional modules that consume additonal power, with a memory module beeing a component that usually is always on. It's weighing the "costs" against each other, surely there will always be people that try to bring the hardware to its limits, but for the majority of users 2GB should be enough (and looking at the Pandora, this assumptions looks logical to me)

 

[_wb_]

Keep in mind that the kind of RAM the OMAP5 supports is not the most low-power one, and RAM power consumption is roughly proportional to its capacity, all other things being equal.

I think we could probably get away with 1GB of RAM -- after all that is still twice the amount the Pandora has, and I don't really see for what applications you would need more RAM. Higher resolution means full screen buffers are 2.4 times larger, and X would probably run at 24 or 32 bit color instead of 16, but how much memory goes to video buffers? Probably not more than 10% or so. All other things would not take more memory on the Pyra than on the Pandora.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

ptitseb's new memory hungry Minecraft

 

[rygD]

Like I said, I didn't want to bring the RAM talk in here.  I can't remember which thread it was, but some of this has been discussed wherever that is.

 

[Binky]

As a Brit, I would naturally pronounce "Pyra" much like "Pirate" or "Python"

"Pie-rah"

This good old quote is relevant here:

"I personally don't care how you pronounce, as long as you're using and bettering it."

You say nee-ther​

and I say ny-ther​

You say pee-rah​

and I say pie-rah​

Nee-ther, Ny-ther​

Pee-rah, Pie-rah​

Oh let's call the whole thing off!​

I don't really see for what applications you would need more RAM.

Firefox

 

[Null]

As a Brit, I would naturally pronounce "Pyra" much like "Pirate" or "Python"

"Pie-rah"

I'm from Britain as well (not saying Brit because i'll be forced to stab myself) and I say Pie-ruh so .

 

[fusion_power]

ptitseb's new memory hungry Minecraft

Minecraft doesn't need that much RAM like many people think, 1GB (system)RAM through Java on my PC (64 Bit), some people even limit the RAM Minecraft (java) reserves lower than 512MB to improve the performance, don't ask me why and how this works but afaik it's one of these Java things like  garbage collection. ^^"

However, a 64 Bit Java version would be still better for Minecraft but I guess the OMAP SoC does not come in 64 Bit.

 

[_wb_]

The historically accurate pronunciation is neither Pee-rah nor Pie-rah but Pü-rah. Too bad that is a vowel that is not in use in English.

In early Greek it was pronounced like English oo [u]. In Classical Greek, it was pronounced like French u or German ü, i. e., [y] (a sound that is not found in most dialects of English). This was the case at least until the year 1030AD.[2] In Modern Greek it is pronounced like continental i or English ee, [i]

So depending on how old the Pyrrha myth actually is, it could have been pronounced Poo-rah originally, then from 500BC or so it was Pü-rah for at least 1500 years. Then, in the last 1000 years or so, pronunciation shifted to Pee-rah in most of Europe (including Greece), and in the last 600 years or so, English underwent the Great Vowel Shift, which would gradually move it from Pee-rah to Pie-rah, like the word "time" on this chart:

 

[_wb_]

I don't really see for what applications you would need more RAM.

Firefox

Firefox works fine on the Pandora, with 512MB of RAM. You would need to open a lot of tabs to run out of RAM if you have 1GB of RAM.

Anyway, I'm fine with 2GB, but I'm just pointing out that for most users, for most use cases, 1GB would probably be more than enough most of the time.

 

[rygD]

So depending on how old the Pyrrha myth actually is, it could have been pronounced Poo-rah originally, then from 500BC or so it was Pü-rah for at least 1500 years. Then, in the last 1000 years or so, pronunciation shifted to Pee-rah in most of Europe (including Greece), and in the last 600 years or so, English underwent the Great Vowel Shift, which would gradually move it from Pee-rah to Pie-rah, like the word "time" on this chart:

I will look into this a bit more for my personal knowledge.  Thanks for giving me a head start.  

I think I might stick with Pie-Rah for now.  Pee-rah and Poo-rah are a bit too...funny.  I think people over here might get stuck on those pronunciations of the name when I tell them about it and not actually listen to what makes it great.

 

[ekianjo]

I don't really see for what applications you would need more RAM.

Firefox

 
Firefox works fine on the Pandora, with 512MB of RAM. You would need to open a lot of tabs to run out of RAM if you have 1GB of RAM.


Anyway, I'm fine with 2GB, but I'm just pointing out that for most users, for most use cases, 1GB would probably be more than enough most of the time.

Looks like you havent used the latest version on Pandora. Its slow as hell and nowhere near acceptable.

 

[slaeshjag]

Something happened with RAM-usage with recent firefox versions. A friend used to be able to have 3000+ tabs open on his desktop without any issues. Now it'll chug along until all swap and RAM is used, and then get killed by the OOM killer.

 

[ekianjo]

Something happened with RAM-usage with recent firefox versions. A friend used to be able to have 3000+ tabs open on his desktop without any issues. Now it'll chug along until all swap and RAM is used, and then get killed by the OOM killer.

And the mozilla monkeys said they would heavily reduce Ram usage though. What a bunch of clowns.

 

[rygD]

I have a lot of trouble with Firefox when I start building up tabs, which is why I limit what I use it for.

I don't really see for what applications you would need more RAM.

Firefox

 
Firefox works fine on the Pandora, with 512MB of RAM. You would need to open a lot of tabs to run out of RAM if you have 1GB of RAM.
 
Anyway, I'm fine with 2GB, but I'm just pointing out that for most users, for most use cases, 1GB would probably be more than enough most of the time.

Looks like you havent used the latest version on Pandora. Its slow as hell and nowhere near acceptable.

Very true.  I tried it and found that it wouldn't work for me, even for light browsing.  The PandoraLive article was pretty helpful.

 

[_wb_]

OK, with poor coding anything can be slow and/or use plenty of RAM. My point was not about a specific version of Firefox, but about the fact that 1GB should be enough for web browsing even with a fully featured browser and many tabs. Of course that does not mean that it is impossible to mess things up. I can make a basic ASCII text editor that requires 16GB of RAM and a 3GHz octa-core CPU if you want.

 

[rygD]

OK, with poor coding anything can be slow and/or use plenty of RAM. My point was not about a specific version of Firefox, but about the fact that 1GB should be enough for web browsing even with a fully featured browser and many tabs. Of course that does not mean that it is impossible to mess things up. I can make a basic ASCII text editor that requires 16GB of RAM and a 3GHz octa-core CPU if you want.

I don't want you to waste your time, but depending on how this was done it would have helped me illustrate a point to someone a couple weeks ago.

On the Pyra pronunciation, how would the ü be pronounced?  Maybe you can start with something like "pure" to help me get the sound and mouth stuff right, or direct me to other resources.  I am still reading through wikipedia articles.

 

[_wb_]

OK, with poor coding anything can be slow and/or use plenty of RAM. My point was not about a specific version of Firefox, but about the fact that 1GB should be enough for web browsing even with a fully featured browser and many tabs. Of course that does not mean that it is impossible to mess things up. I can make a basic ASCII text editor that requires 16GB of RAM and a 3GHz octa-core CPU if you want.

I don't want you to waste your time, but depending on how this was done it would have helped me illustrate a point to someone a couple weeks ago.

Just allocate some huge chunks of memory and write some random stuff in it to force them to be actually allocated and not be compressible with zram or something like that. Do some read and writes in them every now and then to make sure they don't end up in swap. And to make it need a fast octacore cpu, create 7 cpu stress test threads to keep 7 cores busy, and let the 8th thread be the actual ASCII editor where the main loop uses some amount of cpu stress test work instead of going to sleep while waiting for user input. You could make it crash if too much physical time is needed per cycle, so it would work fine on a 3GHz core but crash miserably on a 2.5GHz core.

On the Pyra pronunciation, how would the ü be pronounced?  Maybe you can start with something like "pure" to help me get the sound and mouth stuff right, or direct me to other resources.  I am still reading through wikipedia articles.

Like this:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Close_front_rounded_vowel.ogg


The name Pyrrha is based on the root word πῦρ, which is a Proto-Indo-European word (péh₂ur) for "fire". Germanic languages have all underwent the Great Consonant Shift which a.o. changed 'p' into 'f': e.g. Latin "pedis" became English "feet", but words like "pedicure" and "pyromaniac" still survive unshifted -- basically those words could also have evolved into "footy-cure" or "fire-maniac", but for some reason they didn't. Anyway, in Proto-Germanic the word evolved into fōr, which became Feuer in German, vuur in Dutch, fire in English, fyr in Norwegian/Swedish/Danish. Those are all basically the same word as the "Pyr" in "Pyra", they just underwent some phonetic shifts in all those centuries between Ancient Greek times and now.

 

[Kumaki]

Firefox:

I try to limit how many tabs are open in each window.  Currently, on my laptop PC, I have four Firefox Windows open, each running 4, 5, 7, and 8 tabs.  so I have 24 tabs open among 4 windows.

Mine goes kinda slow, but only since I added an add-on I'm thinking of removing, to see if it is causing the slowness.

And I suppose the pronunciation "Pyra" as "Pee-rah" COULD make sense, after all, in English, we can say someone had a Pyrrhic victory, and we pronounce that as "Peer-ic"

How about "PEER - Ah"  That gets rid of the slightly amusing "Pee" part of it.

Still, my pronunciation is "Pie-rah"  but I could see "Peer-ah" as being a good way to pronounce it, too.