Any chance on talking to anyone at Valve about the Pyra?

[TrashyMG]

Please remind me what ARCH are we using here?


Steam? For ARM? BwahahahahNO!


If you want steam, you got QEMU, and you can emulate the x86 steamOS in it. (Or even Windows)

Moving Steam to ARM means recompiling all the games.... that happened only once, when the Steam gone Linux... still very few games are available.


I hope the console will be powerfull enough to have QEMU running on it "faster than totally dead".

^ Well I think most people are talking about the new streaming service that Steam offers.

 

[ZetaNeta]

Please remind me what ARCH are we using here?

Steam? For ARM? BwahahahahNO!

If you want steam, you got QEMU, and you can emulate the x86 steamOS in it. (Or even Windows)

Moving Steam to ARM means recompiling all the games.... that happened only once, when the Steam gone Linux... still very few games are available.

I hope the console will be powerfull enough to have QEMU running on it "faster than totally dead".

 ^ Well I think most people are talking about the new streaming service that Steam offers.

Lets keep a note anyway:A SoC with Hardware-assisted Visualization is preferred. (x86 of course)

 

[WizardStan]

A SoC with Hardware-assisted Visualization is preferred.

You mean like the OMAP5? Absolutely a good feature, but I can't see much use for it.

 

[ZetaNeta]

A SoC with Hardware-assisted Visualization is preferred.

You mean like the OMAP5? Absolutely a good feature, but I can't see much use for it.

What? QEMU emulation should be BUILT-IN to the new device! Where are we going without that?


QEMU is the only thing which can bring "serious" windows gaming onto the console.

 

[WizardStan]

What? QEMU emulation should be BUILT-IN to the new device!

No? What?You said "Hardware-assisted Visualization" which I assume was a misspelling of "virtualization". The OMAP5 has hardware virtualization. It can virtualize other ARM systems, the same way that an x86 CPU with hardware virtualization can virtualize other x86 systems.

It was tongue in cheek: it was obvious you were referring specifically to x86 but I was trying to point out that "virtualization" actually has nothing to do with x86.

 

[ZetaNeta]

What? QEMU emulation should be BUILT-IN to the new device!

No? What?
You said "Hardware-assisted Visualization" which I assume was a misspelling of "virtualization". The OMAP5 has hardware virtualization. It can virtualize other ARM systems, the same way that an x86 CPU with hardware virtualization can virtualize other x86 systems.


It was tongue in cheek: it was obvious you were referring specifically to x86 but I was trying to point out that "virtualization" actually has nothing to do with x86.

Damn spellcheck!


You know Intel VT-x? Or AMD-V? I mean things like that.


(Also, check if you typed virtualization instead of visualization by mistake, because virtualization got alot to do with x86 imo)

 

[WizardStan]

virtualization got alot to do with x86 imo

No, virtualization has absolutely nothing to do with x86 specifically, that was my point.Virtualization means the hardware has the ability to act as a different version of itself, to run a "virtual machine" as it is. This applies to both x86 and ARM, both have virtualization technologies. The Pyra with an OMAP5 will be able to create an ARM virtual machine which can then be used to install other ARM based operating systems, just as your desktop can create x86 virtual machines for installing other x86 operating systems.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

^ Do you know you're talking to a robot?

 

[ZetaNeta]

virtualization got alot to do with x86 imo

No, virtualization has absolutely nothing to do with x86 specifically, that was my point.
Virtualization means the hardware has the ability to act as a different version of itself, to run a "virtual machine" as it is. This applies to both x86 and ARM, both have virtualization technologies. The Pyra with an OMAP5 will be able to create an ARM virtual machine which can then be used to install other ARM based operating systems, just as your desktop can create x86 virtual machines for installing other x86 operating systems.

Under virtualization, both the additional set of instruction, and special coprocessors/translators (in cross-platform. In same platform it would go a little different.) to assist executing x86 code at a greater speed.


IMO Cross-platform hardware-assisted virtualization on ARM would be a good feature, and i see that its not long till people will notice it.


x86 doesn't have much with virtualization except that sometimes it got the virtualization "add-on", but virtualization usually got alot to do with x86 XD


Sorry if i didn't point that there are no known SoCs with such functionality and its just my idea... just in case.


(Me starts to remember Transmeta with their "universal" CPUs... what a genius project have fallen <_< )

^ Do you know you're talking to a robot?

00000000

 

[WizardStan]

You still don't know what virtualization is. You have some vague ideas about how it is used on desktops but fall short of understanding what that means.

It does not "assist executing x86 code at a greater speed" at all, that has absolutely nothing to do with it. Zero. Nadda. Zilch, zip. It is nothing specific to x86 in any way, shape, or form.

Virtualization lets a CPU (which may or may not be x86) create a little sandbox for running other software on the same CPU. It is not emulation, it doesn't make things faster: on your desktop it is literally just running x86 software on your x86 processor. ARM has the same thing, you will be able to create a virtual ARM system on the Pyra so that you can run ARM code (eg, other operating systems) in this virtual machine.

Cross-platform hardware-assisted virtualization

This is not virtualization. "Cross platform" automatically means it is not being virtualized, it is being emulated. Virtualization is running the same code on the processor: x86 code on the x86 processor, or ARM code on the ARM processor.

 

[ZetaNeta]

You still don't know what virtualization is. You have some vague ideas about how it is used on desktops but fall short of understanding what that means.


It does not "assist executing x86 code at a greater speed" at all, that has absolutely nothing to do with it. Zero. Nadda. Zilch, zip. It is nothing specific to x86 in any way, shape, or form.


Virtualization lets a CPU (which may or may not be x86) create a little sandbox for running other software on the same CPU. It is not emulation, it doesn't make things faster: on your desktop it is literally just running x86 software on your x86 processor. ARM has the same thing, you will be able to create a virtual ARM system on the Pyra so that you can run ARM code (eg, other operating systems) in this virtual machine.

Cross-platform hardware-assisted virtualization

This is not virtualization. "Cross platform" automatically means it is not being virtualized, it is being emulated. Virtualization is running the same code on the processor: x86 code on the x86 processor, or ARM code on the ARM processor.

Well, all i know about virtualization is my "serious experience of playing with QEMU", some research on virtualization and etc i accidentaly done using the "wikipedia paradox", and just everything i "heard".


I don't pose my self as a expert in this. But even if it is emulation, hardware-assisted emulation of x86 on ARM still seems like a useful feature.

 

[WizardStan]

That doesn't exist. It probably wouldn't make a lot of sense either, it'd probably be cheaper to design a homogeneous SoC with both an ARM and x86 processor than to try to build an ARM processor with special x86 emulation instructions in it.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

QEMU by itself is actually an emulator (that's why it's named QEMU, after all). The ability to virtualize was added later on - it is pretty much limited to KVM, the Linux Kernel's very own virtualization module.

 

[ZetaNeta]

That doesn't exist. It probably wouldn't make a lot of sense either, it'd probably be cheaper to design a homogeneous SoC with both an ARM and x86 processor than to try to build an ARM processor with special x86 emulation instructions in it.

Cheaper... maybe. But size matters quite in most of the cases, and i think someday there should be additional emulation instructions.

 

[WizardStan]

But size matters quite in most of the cases

Size of what? What are you on about this time?

 

[Caine]

Cheaper... maybe. But size matters quite in most of the cases, and i think someday there should be additional emulation instructions.

Emulation instructions? How the hell is that supposed to work? I can somewhat understand how hardware support for virtualization works.
But, please detail what an emulation instruction would do.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Well, Loongson got a limited x86 command translation unit (supports ~200 commands including x87, MMX, SSE1 and SSE2) that is supposed to offer about 70% of the native performance when using QEMU. However, from the little bit of what I've heard about it, it wasn't really that awesome.

 

[LuSimon]

No offence but honestly fuck valve they wont do anything.

John Carmack would be the guy that could make wonders to the pyra and he  is more likelly to say something if someone sends him a email or a tweet... or a pyra

 

[TrashyMG]

^John Carmack is pretty much retired from the Game industry. 

 

[StarG]

I think ZetaNeta is possibly referring to the Jazelle logic of previous ARM designs. It enabled to "run" java bytecode more or less directly on an enabled ARM cpu (think it needed a full context switch of course). This was accomplished by a hw arm machine code translator and could be possibly misused for emulation too. Specs weren't publically available so it wasn't used (to my knowledge).