Can Someone Clear Up Something For Me?

[RoboJoe32]

Is GPx2 a dual processor handheld or does it have a dual core processor?

Is the 2D acceleration in the cores ala AMD's 3DNOW etc...? Or is it it's own seperate chip/core?

'k that's all I wanted to know really. Been looking across the board and on the tech sheet and i'm still a bit lost.

 

[iignotus]

2 Separate Processors, both ARM types (forget the exact model numbers ATM), and I believe the 2D Accel. is built into the second ARM processor (it is basically a multimedia processor).

 

[Robster]

Nice try iignotus, but you're quite wrong The CPU is a single chip, with dual cores - one is an ARM920, the other is an ARM940. These cores are very similar except that the 940 has smaller caches and it does not have a memory management unit.

The CPU in the GP2X is the MMSP2 from MagicEyes. There's no publically-released data apart from what's on the site, but that says the 2D graphics acceleration is only one part of it, and there's a lot more hardware devoted to video graphics acceleration.

So we can expect to see hardware support for sprites, windows, fonts etc, maybe image scaling and rotation, and nothing for 3D. I don't know how useful the video acceleration will be in coding for games.

All of this is nothing like 3DNow!, which is a set of extensions to the CPU instruction set to speed up arithmetic expressions commonly used in games programming.

 

[iignotus]

Mhmm alrite then :lol:

 

[Alpha2]

While we're clearing tings up can someone shed some light on the thing I heard about how the second core can do limited floating point calculations and what it exactly means?

 

[DaveC]

Nice try iignotus, but you're quite wrong The CPU is a single chip, with dual cores - one is an ARM920, the other is an ARM940. These cores are very similar except that the 940 has smaller caches and it does not have a memory management unit.

The CPU in the GP2X is the MMSP2 from MagicEyes. There's no publically-released data apart from what's on the site, but that says the 2D graphics acceleration is only one part of it, and there's a lot more hardware devoted to video graphics acceleration.

So we can expect to see hardware support for sprites, windows, fonts etc, maybe image scaling and rotation, and nothing for 3D. I don't know how useful the video acceleration will be in coding for games.

All of this is nothing like 3DNow!, which is a set of extensions to the CPU instruction set to speed up arithmetic expressions commonly used in games programming.

​

So what is your prediction for how useful this CPU is for emulation, SNES and NeoGeo in particular? Good? bad? Do you think it to be possible at a near perfect state? If not how far do you think this can go for emus?

 

[Squidge]

Also, the 2D accelerator is seperate from both cores. So there's a ARM920, an ARM940, and a 2D accelerator, along with loads of gubbins for mpeg decoding, ac97 sound, etc... The 2D accelerator will be able to support throwing images around in memory pretty quickly (BitBLT's) as well as some simple transparency and mask support.

GPH have said the second core can do limited floating point, but I've yet to see how.

 

[abigsmurf]

*speculation alert*

as the magiceyes chip is designed for multimedia there's a chance the 2D accelerator has built in support for vectors so that it can handle flash well. That could potentially provide a big boost for 3D applications.

*end spectulation*

no evidence for this other than hints from GPH about support for floating point

 

[mr.mirko]

Nice try iignotus, but you're quite wrong The CPU is a single chip, with dual cores - one is an ARM920, the other is an ARM940. These cores are very similar except that the 940 has smaller caches and it does not have a memory management unit.

The CPU in the GP2X is the MMSP2 from MagicEyes. There's no publically-released data apart from what's on the site, but that says the 2D graphics acceleration is only one part of it, and there's a lot more hardware devoted to video graphics acceleration.

So we can expect to see hardware support for sprites, windows, fonts etc, maybe image scaling and rotation, and nothing for 3D. I don't know how useful the video acceleration will be in coding for games.

All of this is nothing like 3DNow!, which is a set of extensions to the CPU instruction set to speed up arithmetic expressions commonly used in games programming.

​

I cant find any datasheet about this cpu, but if the second core, does not support mmu, the two cores will never work as an smp system under linux.

This means the gp2x is a better gp32 with 33Mhz more core speed, and a second core, nobody knows how to programm.

2D accelerartion is a nice thing, but useless for emulators. 80% of all emus are in native 320x200 resolution, so there is no need to blit or stretch the graphics around. For video playback, where you can display a 720x360 movie on a 320x240 display it is very handy.

Another big hit is, that the gcc crosscompiler will only generate code for ONE cpu core, and the other core is sitting useless in the dark, until you programm it by hand.

I hope the machine will come with a good custom made linux system, supporting both cores in some kind. ( Hand optimization SDL lib, supporting second core, would be one thing, speeding up things )

But until now, nobody knows the hardware/software, we must wait, and bet that the system will not hit the 200Euro mark. (including vat and p&p)

 

[Inopia]

I don't see any evidence of floating point or vectors. In fact, 2D acc implying vector support is the stupidest thing I've heard all day. Please people, just quit speculating about things you don't know about, it's just so utterly pointless.

 

[abigsmurf]

I don't see any evidence of floating point or vectors. In fact, 2D acc implying vector support is the stupidest thing I've heard all day. Please people, just quit speculating about things you don't know about, it's just so utterly pointless.

​

The whole point of speculating is guessing what you don't know. GPH have stated there is some floating point support and the chip itself is also designed for internet use. Flash is heavily used on the net but uses huge amounts of CPU, especially with if there's no floating point support. It's not unthinkable that they would include some instructions on the chip to speed it up


Given that the console isn't out yet, there would be almost no conversation on this board at the moment if it wasn't for speculation.

 

[Htwo]

The whole point of speculating is guessing what you don't know. GPH have stated there is some floating point support and the chip itself is also designed for internet use. Flash is heavily used on the net but uses huge amounts of CPU, especially with if there's no floating point support. It's not unthinkable that they would include some instructions on the chip to speed it up

You're making huge leaps here that go beyond normal speculation.

Macromedia only release flash for the x86 platform on linux. Flash will not run on this system and I really doubt Macromedia will care enough to do anything about that, so there is no point "accelerating" it.

 

[woogal]

I don't see any evidence of floating point or vectors. In fact, 2D acc implying vector support is the stupidest thing I've heard all day. Please people, just quit speculating about things you don't know about, it's just so utterly pointless.

​

The whole point of speculating is guessing what you don't know. GPH have stated there is some floating point support and the chip itself is also designed for internet use. Flash is heavily used on the net but uses huge amounts of CPU, especially with if there's no floating point support. It's not unthinkable that they would include some instructions on the chip to speed it up

​

They stated it has floating point, but I'm guessing they didn't really understand the question (they've avoided the question of floating point hardware ever since). Yes it will support floating point calculations, but probably only in software not hardware (just like the gp32). I hope I'm wrong and it does have an FPU, but there is no evidence to say it will have.

And where do you get this thing about the chip being designed for internet use? The MMSP2 is designed for video/image processing/encoding/decoding.

 

[abigsmurf]

http://www.mesdigital.com/english/applicat...ions_webpad.asp

edit : also

MMSP｢・2 is SoC series meeting challenges of the forthcoming integration among digital home appliances, broadband wire/wireless communications, mobile broadcasting, automobile, Internet and contents that will provide leadership as six top technologies for the digital electronics in the 21st century.

 

[Creature XL]

I cant find any datasheet about this cpu, but if the second core, does not support mmu, the two cores will never work as an smp system under linux.

There is a datasheet available on teh site, but not much information in it. But the chip seems designed for usage in a PDA. The 2D Accelaration is about speeding up the Direct2D API for WinCE 3.0. Therefore I am terribley sure, that there is no tiling engine and no sprite engine in this chip ( they talk about HW cursor, so we have ONE HW-Sprite ) So, I dont exspect much increase in SNES emulation. Further, there is support for TWO screenlayers and I hope that the alpha-blending feature can be used to overlay those, BUT the SNES and the GBA have FOUR independent layers, so it will not help much in emulating those machines.

It is not perfectly clear, what the 2nd ARM9 core is for, but I assume it is not programmable, cause it seems like it is used as a video-preprocessor, like changing colors ( diming, ...).

TBH, I hope I am wrong with my assumptions, because I hopped that the 2nd ARM9 core is freely programmable in the way that it can do all for emulating the gfx hardware of a console and the main CPU has "just" to cope with the emulation of the CPU.

In the end we have to wait till first machines appear and maybe somebody finds ways to program the 2nd freely, but don't exspect that you can do C code and compile it with gcc

salut,
daniel

 

[DaveC]

It is not perfectly clear, what the 2nd ARM9 core is for, but I assume it is not programmable, cause it seems like it is used as a video-preprocessor, like changing colors ( diming, ...).

TBH, I hope I am wrong with my assumptions, because I hopped that the 2nd ARM9 core is freely programmable in the way that it can do all for emulating the gfx hardware of a console and the main CPU has "just" to cope with the emulation of the CPU.

In the end we have to wait till first machines appear and maybe somebody finds ways to program the 2nd freely, but don't exspect that you can do C code and compile it with gcc

salut,
daniel

​

Then howcome it says this on their site?

Dual CPU Cores
ARM920T : Host processor
ARM940T : Programmable Coprocessor
CPU Performance: 400+ MIPS with dual ARM9 processor
Operation frequency :200MHz
16 channel DMA
Interrupt, 4 Timers, WDT, Power management


I would think that means it is programmable unless it is en error or something.

 

[Squidge]

The two arm cores are certainly programmable independ of each other. I'm not sure how easy the second core is to program for, but it's certainly not impossible. It's sole purpose was to allow uploadable codecs's.

Also, I see the supported blitting operations being very useful - for example, if you wish to overlay keyboard onto emulated systems screen - rather than drawing it on top of the emulated system, like people people do now with the gp32, you can have both the emulated screen and keyboard as totally seperate bitmaps, and blit them both to the main frame buffer.

 

[Creature XL]

The two arm cores are certainly programmable independ of each other. I'm not sure how easy the second core is to program for, but it's certainly not impossible. It's sole purpose was to allow uploadable codecs's.

Also, I see the supported blitting operations being very useful - for example, if you wish to overlay keyboard onto emulated systems screen - rather than drawing it on top of the emulated system, like people people do now with the gp32, you can have both the emulated screen and keyboard as totally seperate bitmaps, and blit them both to the main frame buffer.

​

OK. I read the brouchure which offers more information than the datasheet.
And there is said indeed said that both CPU are programmable indepentently.
So there is still hope. But I hope we get better documentation.

salut,
creature

 

[Htwo]

OK. I read the brouchure which offers more information than the datasheet.
And there is said indeed said that both CPU are programmable indepentently.
So there is still hope. But I hope we get better documentation.

salut,
creature

it looks like they meant to release dev resources this week. I guess they're behind schedule.

 

[Inopia]

If you look at the datasheet, there's two cores, both fully programmable, no fpu.