D-Link Boxee Box

[Exophase]

It has been revealed that this recently demonstrated set-top device is going to be sporting Tegra 2:

http://blog.boxee.tv/2010/01/07/boxee-box-internals-revealed-nvidia-tegra-2-ftw/

Will cost < $200. Release date slated for Q2 2010, see here:

http://www.slashgear.com/d-link-boxee-box-revealed-arrives-q2-2010-0865382/

So we could be looking at having this in just a few months. D-Link has a great advantage over other prospective Tegra 2 devices in that it's just bringing out a relatively simple box as opposed to a cutting edge smart phone or tablet. This will probably beat any other Tegra 2 device to market (especially since I'm not aware of any having been even announced). It's likely to also beat any other Cortex-A9 sporting device (please correct me if someone knows better), OMAP4 or otherwise. This is under the assumption that TI doesn't try to rush an OMAP4 BeagleBoard to market.

Personally I'm not at all interested in this device's intended purpose. I haven't been able to find out yet if you'll be able to easily run custom software on it, but it does use Linux and it has both SD cards and wired ethernet, so chances are pretty good you'll be able to launch executables or shell into it. This is very interesting news because this device could serve as a very nice Tegra 2 development platform, giving you both dual-core Cortex-A9 and powerful OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics. This will put people well in preparation for the next wave of Cortex-A9/OpenGL ES 2 devices. You can imagine the ramifications this can have if the rumors are true and the upcoming Nintendo handheld is using Tegra 2.

Tegra-2 can potentially be in a very good position - not only is the hardware very appealing in its own right but it might end up with a substantial head start to market. The only downside is that I don't think it'll have NEON, the rationale probably being that the things it'll most be used for will be better suited for deployment on the GPU or encode/decode chipsets. Sadly this doesn't cover what I would find NEON useful for (video rendering in emulation). Guess the full on second core will have to do instead.

 

[mali]

I've suggested a while ago that OP should order something like that from an ODM and sell it as Pandora Cube instead of using a Pandora without screen. It seems to be too expensive, because they would have to order a large quantity, though.

If you get a Tegra 2 nettop with Cortex A9 for sub $200, you should get an older A8 for far less. Maybe sub $100 from an ODM. Selling it for $180 to Pandora users would be possible, I think.

 

[Exophase]

A box isn't going to cost half as much just because it's Cortex-A8 instead of Cortex-A9. I expect the pricing will actually be pretty similar. I don't think they could sell this thing for sub-$200 if it included an SoC that cost substantially more than what OMAP3530 does. I certainly don't see you getting a Cortex-A8 box from anyone for $100, the component cost alone will almost definitely be more than that.

However, this thread did inspire me to check - it looks like i.MX51 is as available as OMAP3530 now. You can buy the MCIMX515CJM6C chip in quantities of 100 for only $34.34 at Mouser. I bet if you got a thousand of them it'd be even less. OMAP3530 is currently selling for around $44 in quantity.

i.MX51 has a Cortex-A8 with 32/32KB of L1 cache like the Samsung S5PC100 and unlike the 16/16KB in OMAP3530. This is at up to 800MHz. It also sports this 3D chip:

"The GPU with its 128 KByte memory enables high performance mobile 3D and
2D vector graphics at rates up to 27 Mtriangles/sec, 166 M pixels/sec, 664
Mpixels/sec (Z)."

Who knows what the IP is here, but the "Z fillrate" of 4x beyond the pixel fillrate sounds like TBDR talk to me, ie like how SGX has four times as many depth-stencil comparators as it has pixel pipelines. That 128KB of memory is hopefully texture cache, but I bet you could use it for other things. The 3D is OpenGL ES 2 compliant.

Only downside is that I hear that the memory bandwidth is poor. I don't know all the details of the setup. What I do know is that i.MX51 supports up to 200MHz 32-bit DDR where OMAP3530 only supports up to 166MHz. It also doesn't have a DSP, but it does have dedicated encode/decode hardware.

EDIT: GPU is AMD Z430. 128KB of RAM is used for binning. Shader architecture looks at least as good as SGX530 (2 vector-4 float operations and 1 scalar operation per clock instead of either 2 or 4 float scalar per clock in SGX530.. that part isn't totally clear), but the output fillrate is more limited (1 per clock instead of 2 on SGX530). The reference manual says more.
http://www.freescale...T=Documentation

 

[mali]

There were infos about a Pegatron iMX515 nettop around a year ago. Maciek speculated that it has an unknown SGX, someone alse said it might have an Ati chip(what would that be then?). I think that a nettop is extremely simple. You have no charging circuitry, no controls, just the SoC, power circuitry, USB and video out. A crappy simple case and a PSU. It's debatable if you can get one for sub $100, but I don't want to argue about that

Edit:
Oh, I see you found the GPU info, so Ati was right

 

[Nintendo]

Put tegra in Pandora 2 next year?

 

[jbrodack]

I had been thinking of getting a set top box for a while. I had thought about roku but seemed expensive for just netflix though it does allow some other stuff now. Also neuros link looked cool but seemed a bit unoptimized and expensive. For under $200 the boxee box seems to be the winner since it will play netflix and a bunch of other stuff including local content. Actually, after reading this thread I just installed boxee on my pc and thought it was great. Though the interface doesn't seem to be made with a keyboard and mouse in mind and was actually kinda awkward with that.

 

[gibberish]

Put tegra in Pandora 2 next year?

pandora1 lifetime will be longer than 2 years. pandora2 wont be around for 3 or 4 years yet, if at all.

 

[Exophase]

pandora1 lifetime will be longer than 2 years. pandora2 wont be around for 3 or 4 years yet, if at all.

You don't know that.. craigix has hinted that he wants the Pandora to have a core update cycle that's more aggressive than what's seen with consoles (not counting the minor or cosmetic ones we get). Something more in line with what we see with Apple, where they're already going less than 2 years inbetween using totally different chipsets.

 

[gibberish]

well theyd better start designing pandora2 now then, if they want it out in 2 years

 

[second exodous]

Craig has already said that the Pandora2 will most likely be based on Ti's OMAP4 platform, which won't be out for some time. Also, he stated that the case/controls/screen will be reused so that will cut a lot of time down. With the same layout the boards won't change much as far as layout, I'm sure Pandora2 will get out the doors a lot faster. Two years sounds good.

 

[Ravnos]

pandora1 lifetime will be longer than 2 years. pandora2 wont be around for 3 or 4 years yet, if at all.

You don't know that.. craigix has hinted that he wants the Pandora to have a core update cycle that's more aggressive than what's seen with consoles (not counting the minor or cosmetic ones we get). Something more in line with what we see with Apple, where they're already going less than 2 years inbetween using totally different chipsets.

So what you're saying is we should expect preorders for the Pandora 2 to start right after the first Pandoras ship?

 

[Exophase]

So what you're saying is we should expect preorders for the Pandora 2 to start right after the first Pandoras ship?

No, a company taking preorders for a device more than a year in advance is not normal. I'm sure that OP doesn't intend on repeating that with another iteration.

 

[icurafu]

Craig has already said that the Pandora2 will most likely be based on Ti's OMAP4 platform, which won't be out for some time. Also, he stated that the case/controls/screen will be reused so that will cut a lot of time down. With the same layout the boards won't change much as far as layout, I'm sure Pandora2 will get out the doors a lot faster. Two years sounds good.

Not so long. The next OMAP revision in a few months is supposed to be something very special.

 

[sam fisher]

Are people not just going to end up waiting for the Pandora 2 then?

 

[icurafu]

If you want a beagleboard. Products will always take many months later to be released, and the OP team is no exception.